For this week’s tech task, I am hoping that we’ll be able to finish up with our HTML hand-coding and still have some time to spend beginning to get familiar with Dreamweaver.  Here are this week’s tasks:

• Add a post to your WordPress blog in which you provide a link to your HTML page and briefly reflect on the process of creating and uploading this page.  (Note: we will continue to use WordPress as a kind of “gateway” to the digital work you do for the rest of the semester — for each “tech task” or mini-assignment, this will be a place for you to link to your experiments so that they’re all readily browsable from one location.)

• Begin exploring and becoming familiar with the DW interface.  If you have time: choose at least one of the DW5 CSS pages and play with it.  You could try pasting your technology autobiography into the page, try changing some colors, adding an image, and so on.  If you have time, save this and upload it to your web space, then create a link from your WordPress blog.

• Think about a mini-project that can be the focus of your Dreamweaver website (I will suggest some possibilities in class).  I’m asking that you choose something related to the themes covered in the course, and that there be some evidence of your own critical thinking.  It should be something that challenges your thinking and design abilities, but that can reasonably be completed (spending time working on your own + 2 lab meetings) in the time between now and spring break.

• If you plan to download Dreamweaver onto your home computer, see the post below about free options.

For your reference, here’s our rough lab schedule:

• Week 5 (readings on Multimodality, cont.) – Dreamweaver
• Week 6 (readings on sound, voice, orality) – Dreamweaver
• Week 7 (readings on New Media) – Dreamweaver or intro to Audacity/sound editing?
• Week 8 (readings on New Media) – Audacity/sound editing