Stephanie • 24th May 2007 • webdesign • accomplishment, bcit, CADE, Catt-Trax2, conference, hockey, presentation, Terry, travel, work
I was in Winnipeg speaking at the CADE/AMTECH Conference last week. The weather was beautiful and I saw an excellent hockey game in which the Manitoba Moose (the Vancouver Canucks’ farm team) played spectacularly only to to be knocked out of the AHL playoffs in a very Canucks way (up 2-0 at the end of the first, lost 2-3 in OT).
As part of the Technology Enabled Knowledge (TEK) initiative at BCIT Danny Catt, one of the faculty, was sponsored to take a trip around South America and Antarctica studying local research and responses to sustainability and environmental issues. Throughout the journey he used blogging, digital photography, virtual lecture software, shared file storage space, and of course e-mail to keep in touch which his students and communicate with the world.
Terry Fuller, the instructional development coordinator that was helping Danny with the project submitted a paper to CADE to talk about “Using the Internet to make Meaningful Global Connections in the Classroom.” I was involved in creating the web page and blog that was the highlight of the project and Terry asked me to talk about the “technical” side of designing the website.
Rather than boring the crowd with PHP, HTML, CSS, CMS and other TLAs. I talked about the rest of the stuff that goes into the design process: user needs, site objectives, functional specifications, content requirements, information architecture, navigation design, visual design, and all that good stuff but for those of you who care the site was driven by Drupal and included a XML driven flash photo gallery, a Google map mashup, and some video and audio recordings, though not as many as we’d hoped – apparently it’s tough to upload media files from the middle of the Amazon – who knew?
The project was a lot of fun and very different my usual daily duties. I’ll post a summary and the slides soon.
Stephanie • 7th May 2007 • webdesign • busy, CADE, conference, css, excited, metablogging, nervous, presentation, work
I have lots to say but trouble finding the time and words to say it.
Blog posts I hope to make in the next two weeks:
- Taking credit where credit is due – in response to a discussion about women in IT at zeldman.com.
- My thoughts on the hiring process and the job market and why I do what I do where I do for the pay I get.
- Some of the steps we’re taking to convert our templates from tables within tables within tables to just… one table, well it’s an improvement.
- Highlights of our presentation at CADE and my thoughts on the rest of the conference.
Until then, if you think of yourself as a web designer – go take A List Apart’s Web Designer survey.
Stephanie • 20th Mar 2007 • personal, webdesign • accomplishment, bcit, CADE, career, Catt-Trax2, excited, nervous, presentation, Terry, Winnepeg
One of the projects I’ve worked on at BCIT is Catt-Trax2. The website is for Danny Catt who is traveling through South America and Antarctica exploring conservation and sustainability issues and talking to the people in those regions working with those issues daily. He’s taking photos, video, and sound clips of this journey and blogging about his experiences. I helped architect the website and did some design and implementation work on it. We have fun stuff like a Google Maps mashup showing his route too.
The project manager for the project is an Instructional Development Coordinator named Terry Fuller who has done an excellent job pushing the team to give their most while restraining Danny’s overwhelming enthusiasm to keep the project in scope.
She’s asked me to co-present about the project at a conference for distance educators that is happening in Winnipeg in May. I’ve applied for funding to go with her. Our names are already on the website, so I hope I get the funding :)
