Learn how to program by creating animations using scratch!

Computer programming, also known as coding can be understood as the activity of designing, writing, testing and modifying computer programming language in order to achieve a desired and predictable outcome(s).

Computer programming has changed over time, however the following characteristics remain the most relevant to what is considered important for programming today:

• Efficiency/performance: the amount of system resources a program consumes (processor time, memory space, slow devices such as disks, network bandwidth and to some extent even user interaction): the less, the better. This also includes correct disposal of some resources, such as cleaning up temporary files and lack of memory leaks.
• Reliability: how often the results of a program are correct. This depends on conceptual correctness of algorithms, and minimization of programming mistakes, such as mistakes in resource management (e.g., buffer overflows and race conditions) and logic errors (such as division by zero or off-by-one errors).
• Robustness: how well a program anticipates problems not due to programmer error. This includes situations such as incorrect, inappropriate or corrupt data, unavailability of needed resources such as memory, operating system services and network connections, and user error.
• Usability: the ergonomics of a program: the ease with which a person can use the program for its intended purpose, or in some cases even unanticipated purposes. Such issues can make or break its success even regardless of other issues. This involves a wide range of textual, graphical and sometimes hardware elements that improve the clarity, intuitiveness, cohesiveness and completeness of a program's user interface.
• Portability: the range of computer hardware and operating system platforms on which the source code of a program can be compiled/interpreted and run. This depends on differences in the programming facilities provided by the different platforms, including hardware and operating system resources, expected behaviour of the hardware and operating system, and availability of platform specific compilers (and sometimes libraries) for the language of the source code

• Maintainability: the ease with which a program can be modified by its present or future developers in order to make improvements or customizations, fix bugs and security holes, or adapt it to new environments. Good practices during initial development make the difference in this regard. This quality may not be directly apparent to the end user but it can significantly affect the fate of a program over the long term.

Read full article on wikipedia: Click here

Get Started learning how to program with scratch: Click here

Adding INTERACTIVITY to your website!

Follow these links for ideas on how to add INTERACTIVE features to your website:

http://www.123mycodes.com/

http://www.123-banner.com/

http://www.slideroll.com/index.php

http://www.phonevite.com/

http://www.makeagif.com/

Have fun and add at least 3 interactive features to your team-website home page.

Web Design Unit

Hey New Media students,


Sorry guys-the HTML we will be learning is
HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE!

I've put together some great links for you to begin exploring how HTML codes/tags are the basic building blocks of all websites.

Please have a look at the following links and start thinking about how you would like your own student home page website to look and how you would like it to work.

A good way to begin planning your own website is to sketch-out the design on paper and then go through some of the problem solving techniques we have discussed earlier in identifying how to build features into your design using the HTML coding commands.

1. W3schools.com
2. web source
3. html code tutorial
4. web monkey html codes
5. html codes

Also, see this site to get an idea how much it might cost to have a website built:

Design Quote: Website design calculator

Last but not least see this link for Adobe Golive Basics


Mr. Casas

Growing Up Online: Dialogue/Discussion

Click to view: Growing up online

CNMT New Media students,

Please share your thoughts and perspectives on what it means to you to be "Growing up online"
Are there any topics/issues introduced/explored in the Frontline film that were especially meaningful to you? Also, does the viewing of this film change your perspective on being a beginning web designer/developer?

Please post ASAP...

Mr. Casas

Hey CNMT New Media Students,
The First and Best Lesson You'll Learn this Year!

As we we find ourselves gearing-up to wind down for Winter-Break, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you of a couple of things. We will now be learning how to build our very own new media team-inspired websites. Of course this means all team members will have to "STEPITUP" BIGTIME!

Over the break I be will updating this blog to keep in touch with you all, and I will also require some over the break participation in preparing and planning and writing on your part.

YES, I DID SAY WRITING!

All the text on your team-sites will need to be original well written copy for your websites.
You will need to produce an introduction to you site, as well as the necessary writing to accompany any visual information, videos, photography, or animations.

Start thinking about what content or "stuff" you are going to want to feature on you sites.
I recommend agreeing on some way of keeping in contact with each other during the break.
Exchanging email accounts and sending invites through your blogger account may be the most practical. There may be others of you that prefer texting or Facebook-my sentiment is to use "whatever works".

To start I would like you all to visit and read the following blog:

A Writer's Guide to Web Building

Also, see:

Writing for the Web: Part 1

Be sure to check back for updates.

Mr. Casas

Websites that Suck-but that you could learn from

Worst Websites of 2010: The Contenders

Hey CNMT New Media STUDENTS-have a look at the following article summary and go to the website to see the many-many-many examples of WEBSITES THAT SUCK!
Please "learn from their mistakes" so your team can make a really interesting well conceived and well designed website -THAT DOESN'T SUCK!!!

Mr. Casas

(Click to see full article)

It's hard for me to believe, but it looks as if bad web design wasn't as bad in 2010 as it has been during the last 14 years. Plenty of bad websites still exist and since I have the cleverest readers out there, I have an almost never-ending supply of suggestions.

To paraphrase the great American philosopher Jerry Lee Lewis, there's still "A whole lotta sucking going on." I think Jerry Lee said that. I could be wrong.

In keeping with our theme of "On our 15th year of sucking," I've chosen the 15 worst contenders for 2010. These sites were featured as The Daily Sucker during January through early September 2010.

Useful site(s) in beginning to pre-plan developing your own website

Hey CNMT New Media Students,

Believe it or not-we will finally be taking the initial steps in working with our team-members to brainstorm and plan out our "teamwebsites" which we will begin developing this week. As we go through the steps in planning out "who will be responsible for doing what" when it come to our teamwebsite project I thought it would be useful to begin a dialogue about any issues that arise during this process through our CNMT New Media blog. Also, I would like all of you to carefully look at the website(s) I have reviewed for you to begin gathering insight into the process of team-based website planning and development. Follow the links below:

2PlanAwebsite.com
Experience needed to build a website

Starting Out Organized: Website Content Planning The Right Way

website planning