Well if you told people about your site then they would visit. So your first step is to tell people. This step is usually easier said then done, or is it?

What does this mean for our blogs?

Well to start, try telling your friends. All it takes is a quick email. Starting like this.

Hi Friends,
I’m just writing to let you know how excited am I to announce that I have officially launched my first blog thanks to the help of my wonderful tech teacher Mr. Vaughan. The blog is going to be about ________ and I am going to be writing interesting articles that I am sure you will enjoy. To check out the blog visit the following link www.mrvaughan.com (add your link here). Be sure to bookmark/subscribe to it so that you can check back often to see my new posts.
Your help would also be appreciated in spreading the word so feel free to pass the link on to your friends and ad the link to your website if you have one.
Thanks so much for your help I look forward to reading your comments on my site.

Obviously this is just a template and you should use your own ideas to message your friends. You will be surprised at how many will genuinely help you out and all will at least check out the blog for 10 seconds. The more friends you send it to the better off you will be down the road.

Today I would like you to compose an email to your friends notifying them of your new blog, use my template or write your own when you are done send it out and be sure to forward a copy of the email to me at info@mrvaughan.com

Looking forward to reading them.

Mr. Vaughan

Your job will be to develop a professional blog. Keep in mind the difference from a professional blog and a regular blog as we have discussed in class. This blog should be focused on providing value to your readers and providing a service to them. In exchange for their loyalty they would support you by taking action on your recomendations.

In your blog I am expecting that you produce the following:

1) Produce at least 2 reviews of services or products related to the interests of your users.

2) Produce at least 2 educational posts for your users where you either instruct them on how to do something of value or provide them with addittional information related to your topic or the users interests

3) Produce at least 2 Opinion Posts where you are voicing your unique opinion on current issues in your chosen field of topics.

4) Produce at least 2 News related posts where you are sharing a story or information on current events, products, or issues related to your topic.

5) Additional you will need to include at least 3 articles related to your topic from external sources, be sure to properly reference your source by providing a direct link to the original article.

6) At least 3 Videos discussing various topics related to your blog.

Throughout the development of your site we will also be disscussing various marketing strategies, as these come up you will also need to complete some of the tasks to advertise your blog to the world. More information on this will be posted as we discuss it.

Addittionally we will also developing a means in which to hook your users, or have them call to action with your site. I will be showing you throughout this course how to set up a newletter to collect emails of your visitors.

To accomplish this assignment there are a number of steps you will need to follow. It will be important to save various versions of your assignment so that you can demonstrate your modifications and track your progress.

1) FIrst we will need the images to work with. On Tuesday and wednesday of this week will be doing the photoshoot. Come prepared with your smiles and glowing personailities. For these images we will be taking extreme close ups in high resolution under a controlled lighting environment.

2) Once you get your hands on the image the first thing to do is perform opperations on the whole image to correct for things like lighting, focus, dust, skratches, and minor imperfections. After you have completed the global corrections save an extra copy of the file named verions 1 and continue working on the original file.

3) Now that you have a decent high quality image to work with it is time to decide which parts of the image you would like to improve. There are all kinds of pieces you can enhance you just have to decide how indepth you want to commit to your image. The more effort you put in the better a result you will get. Here you can enhance your eyes, soften your skin, apply makup, put on lipstick, change your hair colour, add facial, or any other of collection of features that we will be discussing in class. Your are only limited by your creativity. After each feature that you work save a new version of your file (2,3,4…52) so you can track your progress.

4) Once you have complete all your modification you will need to produce a story board explaining the steps of your complete tranformation complete with each version of the file you created. You may choose to use your blog for this, photoshop, or a word processing application. As the assigments progress I will be giving more information on what I am expecting for this step.

Glad to have all of you back with the New Year.

Mr. Vaughan

Bellow I found  a site that offers complete tutorials on every aspect of a applying digital make up to a persons image and even some really cool special effects that can be added.

If you have access to a computer with photoshop over the holiday break you might consider trying these out as I am thinking of turing these tutorials into our next photography assignment.

So check this link out and try out some of the tutorials :http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/Photoshop-blog/2007/05/15/a-complete-guide-to-digital-makeover-in-photoshop/

Mr. Vaughan

This tutorial shows you completely how to use the pen tool to draw shapes and curves then transform them into a greeting card http://www.pstut.com/tutorial-christmas-card.html

The following site claims to be for beginners, they genuninely have some easy tutorials to get you started in all areas of design, these are particularly nice as some of them even have videos stepping you through the process. http://psdtuts.com/articles/web/50-great-photoshop-tutorials-for-clever-beginners/

Addittionally if you are looking specifically for text effects check this one out. Most are pretty easy but some are a little difficult or for older versions of photoshop. http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/Photoshop-blog/2007/07/22/the-best-80-photoshop-text-effects-on-the-web/ I had trouble however loading the page in IE6 on the schools computer so this might be one to try from home rather then school.

If your looking for cool backgrounds to go with your flashy text check this site out for a decent collection of background tutorials. http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/Photoshop-tutorials/Textures-and-backgrounds/Most-popular/1/

If you find any other interesting tutorials that are great for beginers feel free to post them here aswell.

Mr. Vaughan

I’m very eager to read your blogs.

Mr. Vaughan

Things to include in your reflection:

Describe your keyboard and what you did to achieve your result, explain its features and flaws.

What where the challenges of this project?

How did you overcome these challenges?

What would you do differently if doing this assignment again?

How could you have improved your project?

Write this up as a one page summary of your keyboard and hand it to me so that it can contribute to your mark for this project.

Mr. Vaughan

To resolve this issue there were a number of steps I took, first I tightened up my commenting policy now users have to be logged in and registers to post a comment. Second I added a plugin to add a picture file of text that users have to type in  before logging in, this is know as a captcha. Previously I was just banning all IPs that post garbage accept then they would just jump to a new IP via proxy and continue to cause a disruption.

If anyone has any additional advice they can give, I’d be very interested in hearing it.

Mr. Vaughan

Basically I plan on using the sms network to send you cool stuff you would probably be interested in anyways or quick little updates about the site or courses that I am teaching.

Over the next month I will be adding more canadian carrier networks that users might have, for now I just added Bell and Roges. I really believe as educators that we need to find ways to integrate newer technologies into our classroom rather then shut them out. Specifically for the time being no messages will be sent during school time as to not conflict with current cell phone policies.

There once was a time when calculators were band from schools, now their required.

Mr. Vaughan