Third Reflection, Blended e-Learning

My learning experience of defining and designing the interface for my lesson was a frustrating one to say the least. In an effort to produce something useable, I am making a lesson for the 7th and 8th grade Confirmation class at my Presbyterian church. I just completed the Intro. To Website Development class, and my final project was to design a website, and I chose to do one for my church. Learning HTML was a challenge, especially over six weeks, with various holidays and missing a weeks’ worth of class. I got just familiar enough with Dreamweaver to do some damage, but I know enough to know that using it will make my work come together more quickly.
It was my desire to maintain the consistency between this project and the website project, since it is my goal to integrate the lesson into the website once it is complete.
Reading the articles about the importance of interface design reinforced and reminded me that just like painting, it takes longer to prepare for the main job, than it does to actually do the main job! I knew all of that was important, I had just forgotten HOW important.
As previously mentioned, it was my desire to maintain consistency with the website already completed, so I chose to use the same CSS for both projects. I also wanted to make it unique for their class, so I chose an older photo which the church had provided for the website.
However, getting back into working with HTML code was extremely frustrating. I will presume that working with it on a daily basis greatly enhances one’s chances of keeping the knowledge at the forefront of memory and understanding, and I had been enjoying my break from it just a little TOO long. Coming up with a design that would maintain interest from the learners, ensuring that all the elements we had discussed in class were included (the links in the navigation bar, et c.) took some thinking, but actually translating the design from paper to webpage was overwhelming at times.
I had typical code problems, typos, misnamed files, mislocated files, et c. which further enflamed the process. Then when it came time to try and figure out how to post it, there was an additional obstacle. Now that I am familiar with Dr. Byers’ class format, I think I can pretty well keep things on track, but then something like that can cost me hours of frustration! I eventually chose to post it to the MSIT server as a url, but then there were technical difficulties there as well, although they were eventually overcome. It was a relief to have it done, and then I had to move on to the next big stumbling block, the Scavenger Hunt!