Site is D O N E.

Design Rationale

Design Rationale-
Our group was Team 4, and our website is about the Bristol Animal Shelter and their adoption programs.
Our project was a long, sometimes tough, but ultimately rewarding project. We made several drastic changes before we decided on the final format, and I can say for everyone that we're really pleased with how it came out.
The people at the shelter were more than happy to help. They were more than happy to provide us with the information we needed. We truly appreciate their help; it really made the project easier.
The original design for our project was to have the website resemble a book with chapters. Each chapter was to tell a different aspect of life at the shelter. While I liked this idea, we quickly realized how a chapter-style layout was not ideal on the web page. The format was too hard to read and discern the information easily for the average viewer. We decided that something simpler would be more effective at telling the story.
Technology was a big part of building our website. We tried to use every resource made available to us. Our team used digital cameras, audio recordings through an iPod and a Mac notebook, Soundslides, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Image Ready, Garage Band (for audio editing), Adobe Go Live, and the Internet to compile the resources necessary to build the site. I must say that I found using Go Live daunting at first. I had not used it since my 2003-2004 semester, so I was more than a bit rusty at first. With time and group cooperation, however, we were able to build one heck of a site.
We also had some issues with group communication. Sometimes it was hard to get the team to meet, because along with classes, everyone had jobs as well. It all came together at the end though, and what needed to get done did.
The story we told was of Allison's adoption of a pet cat. That was one of the more constant parts of our project. It was nice that we had a story to work with. It allowed us to lay the framework early on and fill in the holes as we went along. Without the story, the website would not be as coherent and rounded out as it is.
We ended up with a nice looking, informative website. We scrapped our original web design at the last minute and gave it a 'face lift'. The white background allows for easy reading of the copy on the site. The navigation bar on the left-hand side makes it easy to navigate. As opposed to our original 'toolbar' design, I think the left-handed column looks much better.
All in all I would say that our team is happy with the way things turned out. Not only did we learn about Go Live, Photoshop, etc, we also learned about time management and team communication. I know we can use this experience to help with future group projects, whether they are school-related or out in the workforce.


-Posted by Phil Penny

Hello! I was wondering when I should be at the Mac lab today...give me a call or blog me back!

Hi.
So we present tomorrow, we have soundslides we need to put up, some stuff we need to center, we are planning on going in early. Phil Evan and I currently hate go live, after spending alll day on it we learn more and more. Some issues we ran into were centering some stuff and things like that, that are prob simple to fix. We changed out site a ton, it looks better and not as cheesy. We also have a paper to get done at some time tomorrow before class.Thats about it.

Hey!
Ok so in class we are editing our sound matching it up to the soundslides. We are going back to the shelter some time this week because we have found that we are short on not only pictures but audio. Basically things are going well we have a lot of work to do before its dues. Also we have to make some changes to the website after last weeks critique.

Hellooo! I was just wondering when we are going to the shelter today... I also wanted to give out a reminder that we need to remember to bring the release form for our interview. That's all for now.

Hello guys! In these last few days we are making a lot of progress. Today Phil and I are going to class at 4 to get an extra hour of work done on our website. We hope to see everyone in class so that we can finalize our timeline and make sure that we have all of our needed material lined up. We have some great photos, but we could always use some more to pick from. When each group goes to the shelter this week for the final time we should make an effort to get as much additional material as possible to select from. Most important is our finalized audio that we will be focusing mainly on this week. I will bring the scripts to class tonight so we can practice our interviews a few more times. See you guys tonight!

This Week's Shelter Visits...

Rachel, Evan and Allison are going to the animal shlelter on Tuesday at 3:30 pm
- Audio
Phil and Shannon are going to the animal shelter on Thursday at noon
- Audio

Uploading SoundSlides to Website

- Go to "publish to web" to format the time in and duration
- Export from SoundSlides after saving
- Export from a .fla (editable) as a .swf file (cannot change)
- File tab, then publish tab(to use on web)
- Action scripts are explained in Chapter 15 of the textbook
- You need to change the name of the SoundSlide folder from "publish to web" to something else when you are saving before exporting

Getting it into the GoLive project:

- Drag SoundSlide (from G5) folder into the main GoLive root folder window
- (GoLive will not recognize a .swf file - but don't worry it's there)
- Refresh
- Make connection to server
- Upload
- Linking:
- Link to index .html file (won't recognize a folder)
- The action script IS the link

Roxanne will be in the Mac Lab on Sunday, April 29th for extra help with this stuff

Test cut is due on Monday, April 30th in class first thing

Meeting tonight

OK so we are meeting to do our 2nd cut tonight, sunday around 6, be there if you can.
Phil, I am just now reading your comment to "when can we meet", sorry kinda late. I can go to the shelter with you Thursday and get more of what we need, which is a lot. Thank you for blogging too!
It seems that no one actually got to the shelter. I am hoping that you did, considering evan and I are going to be working, and had been the only two working on the test cuts....so it seems fair. So if you are around, meet us in the NC mac lab around 6.

SoundSlides Post

Ok I wrote this post a while ago but just got access so now I can post it..

Blog entry for 4/2/07

The Sound Slides program is a pretty simple, easy to use program. It has a very professional template and it only took me about 15 minutes to have everything up and running. As far as audacity goes, I did not like the format of the program. While it was free, the problem I ran into occurred when I tried to convert an Audacity project file (.aup) to a MP3 file. Audacity prompted me to download the LAME encoder to encode the file to MP3, which after a few tries, I was able to find a mirror site that was not a dead link. The 3.97 Lame file was coded as a .tar file, which was not recognized by Audacity. I did a quick search on .tar files, and discovered it is a compressed data file that needs gzip or bzip2 extraction programs to extract the .tar file. Not wanting to have to download another program, I finally gave up and went with a shorter sound clip. The benefits of this were I did not have to edit down the audio, so I did not have to use Audacity to try and convert the sound file from .aup to .mp3. A little confusing, I know, but I was able to get around it.
Sound Slides is a program that I think I will use outside of class. It is remarkably easy to add photos and music or audio together in a short time frame. I hope that I will be able to insert custom audio by using my copy of Cool Edit Pro 2.

-Phil

when can we meet?

Hey, we have another test cut due tomorrow, since no one has blogged or emailed me about it i guess that means evan and i will be working on it . If youre around email me or call me.

Looks like everything went well when i missed class, bring what you got at the shelter and i will load it all onto my jump drive to keep it together. Also, im not sure if the sound slides are worth any grades but if you want them on the web, email them to me. thanks.

blog about your trip too!

Today's Class

Hey guys,
Rachel and I are the only ones in class today. Roxanne will be speaking with each group for half hour, and so here is what Rachel and I are planning on doing:

We are planning a trip to the shelter on wednesday around 2:00. I will give them a call to make sure we can go at that time. We are getting a microphone from Dave and we will be getting audio of the workers as well as an interview of me (for my adoption story). During class we plan on putting together a script of questions to ask the workers in addition to what Phil has already put together. We will also create a script of what I will say about my adoption story, and how I will respond to the questions asked.

Phil- we just recieved your email...hopefully you can come with us on wednesday to the shelter. Before wednesday, we need your script that you created to put together with ours. Also, Rachel is adding you to the blog right now, so whenever you get a chance please try to create one. I will be picking Rachel up at her house around 2:00 so if you could meet us at the shelter around 10 after that would be perfect. Rachel has your number so she will call you and remind you to meet us there.

Shannon and Evan- keep up the good work, kiddos!

We should schedule a time in which we can all get together after our visit to the shelter on wednesday to put the audio and visuals together. Next class we should focus more on the photos and putting the website together.

Shannon- I will give you a call on wednesday to let you know how it went.
See everyone next monday!

Hello, i wont be able to make it to class today i have to work. Also phil emailed me, he has to work as well. Evan and i tried loading our soundslides to the site, it didnt really work, i have to ask for help. Please email me your soundslides asap so i can load them once i get help. Also you guys can figure out times for the next visit to the shelter things like that during class. If you need paswords for the site you can text me while i am at work. If you have anyother questions just email me or write them in the blog. thanks see you soon,let me know the next shelter visit.

Hello bloggers! I am free most of the week to go on another trip to the shelter. Alison, Phil and I will work out a good time for all of us in class tonight. We are planning on doing a few interviews based on some questions that Phil had constructed. We are also planning on getting a lot more pictures of Alison and the cat that "she's addopting", as well as more pictures of the staff interacting with the animals...the more pictures we have the better off we'll be when putting together our final product! See you in class

first cut, and what needs to be done april 4

hey so when everyone gets back from easter, here is what needs to be done

rachael you need to get phil onto blogger, because he needs to start blogging, and we also need him to post the script for the audio

phil-when you get on, you need to post the script, i would like to see someone else go to the shelter, phil rach allison, for audio

we need both volunteers as well as the people who actually work there, are much audio and more pictures, so im leaving that up to you guys, i will load all of your soundslides to the website, just email them to me, rwu email, scasey787

allison- what you missed- we did a first cut of the site, we realized that we need way more pictures of interaction with the workers and the animals and YOU and the animals bc you look cute so we are using you as the story, also just blog a little, please.

evan-you've done the animal shelter thing, took pictures, blogged and sent me your sound slide, so you are all set, just continue blogging and we can talk about fixing the first cut

so, our first cut went over well, we need to fix it a little make it more like everyone else, more interactive rather then portraying the story, i think Rachael took the notes for that, we will look over them monday bc no one will be around this week.
if anyone needs help of me to go with you to the shelter please email me asap. thank you

Evan and I went to the shelter again over the weekend. We took more pictures of the outside for the history section of our site. Also we completed the mock PowerPoint. It was interesting to see the direction in which our site will be going. It really helped putting what we had into viewable format. Not only did this help it also made me realize how much more work we have to get done. More pictures, more audio.

We also worked with sound slide today. I used my pictures from Ireland and had planned to use audio of my voice talking about the trip. We attempted to use garage band, but we couldn't get it to work. We used the aif format but it would not change into mp3. So we just used songs. Using songs let us get the hang of sound slide and putting the pictures with the audio at the right time. It was a lot of fun and made me want to really get into flash to add more "flash".

meeting

Hey hey, you all def got the email from roxanne saying that we need a first cut done by monday. We will be meeting at main campus mac lab at 5 on sunday, please come. Also, blogggg more please, thank you!

Shannon & Evan

Audio/Photos Class today

We learned about audio and photos today, here are some tips from roxanne...
Audio
Identify segments that have potential by using time
make notes about the story that will evolve
save as uncompressed format-wave or aif format
Photo
Use Iphoto
Use Usb to DL photos into Iphoto

Teamwork!
Phil-script some questions for the shelter
Everyone-bring money for the recorder and get the recorder
we also need to meet with Diane and Jen, they work during the week, Jim on the weekends

UPDATE...

So, we have a decent amount of pictures from the shelter, but need more. We also need to focus more on the main idea of the project (the adoption story) so we need to do more work on that. As things stand currently, we are on a good track and have good support from the shelter. Just wanted to keep team moral at a high level (where it has been) and encourage further progress to the completion of our project! Great job guys woohoo!

sound recorder

Hey so I have been reading some other blogs, another group is planning on buying the 70.00 sound recorder for the ipod. They asked if our group wanted to pitch in with their group. There is 3 of them and 5 of us so it wouldnt be that much.
Let me know by monday, through the blog or text or im, so i can let the other group know. Thanks

REMEMBER...

Remember to make sure that one of us brings a release form to the animal shelter for legal purposes.

Bring multiple copies J.I.C.

Read me before 2nd trip to shelter

Interview/Pictures/Flash tips

-When asking questions on camera, cut out our voices "dont step over the interviewee's voice", allow space
narration, ambiance (example: couple seconds of waves not a few minutes), interview
-looking at camera but not posing**
-black and white to color**

Things to think about before second trip to shelter!
who is interviewing, who is writing the script, who is getting the boom mic for ipod
questions to ask workers
questions to ask friend who adopted pet

-also we need a lot of images of our friend who adopted playing with his/her pet in and out of the animal shelter to present the story in the best manner and make it a "moment in time"

keep in mind, we are presenting the story of Jamie adopting his pet and the steps he will take, while incorporating the importance of donations, volunteers and the reasons they employees love their jobs

Trip two

Hey guys! I can go to the animal shelter at 2, I talked to evan he is going too, I think. What we need this time is more pictures of the workers while working and while interviewing. Also, the pictures of the animals could be a little bit better. Hopefully they have gotten some cute kittens. So if you are going this week with us bring a camera and a notebook for notes and blog as much as you can.

Great first trip to the shelter, however we need to go back to take more pictures of the inside of the shelter... Wednesday we have an appointment at 2 guys so come if you can! We also need to work on our storyboard and start putting the website together... I'm sure we'll be working on that in class today. We also need to plan a day this week to have a meeting in the Mac lab.

We are currently in the process of setting up a visit to the Bristol Animal Shelter. The visit will consist of us taking pictures and videos of the shelter, as well as interview some of the volunteers. We also plan on finding information about people who have adopted pets from the shelter; the steps they had to go through to do so. This visit will take place later on this week.

What we've done...so far

So, we are all finally part of the blog and here is what we have done in the last few weeks
-made a group consisiting of Phil, Evan, Allison, Rachel, ME
-figured out that our non profit would be bristol animal shelter
-created an essay proposal
- designed a mock up