My CIT 261 portfolio and sandbox will be updated here!
This week my team had not one, but two versions of the same application! Instead of communicating with the rest of our team two different people have gone ahead and created two versions of the application. I feel really frustrated because I have started to try and clean up the code and css on both apps. I'm also really annoyed because people just keep going ahead and doing their own thing instead of communicating with the rest of the group. I explained to my group multiple times this week that I would need to go out of town for a funeral and to please include me on group discussions so that I would have an opportunity to figure out how I could best contribute to the group application, however this did not happen. I've tried to explain my concerns about the lack of planning to my team politely, but I feel that this does nothing to solve the problems at hand. I've ended up telling my team that I no one else is allowed to work on certain aspects of the application so that I am able to make a real contribution in some way. So far I feel all of the coding contributions I have made have been reworked or abandoned because of other people who seem to refuse to communicate.
This week I created a simple wireframe for our group project to present at our team meeting. Unknown to me at the time was that another member of our team had already started coding our project. This really worried me because if people just take off and start working on things, not everyone on our team will have a chance to work together to form this app. I didn't feel we were ready to start coding yet because we hadn't created a solid plan for who was going to be responsible for what. I decided to sign up this week to start manipulating the CSS and JS on the app that has been started. My worry is that when people start acting without explaining and planning first then we will end up doing a lot of work that is unneccessary and creates more problems than it solves.
This week I wrote simple proposals for our group project in hopes of getting the ball rolling so that others could understand and contribute to what we needed to create for our project. In our team meeting we added more details together of what to add in our actual project. The hope is that next week we can start coding our actual project once we have discussed our group proposals. We also had a member of our team set up a simple index page on his website to host our project. I also explained for what I think is a third time, how to use Github to upload code to our team repository, this is frustrating for me because no one asks questions when they don't understand something, and it causes more delays.
This week was pretty hectic. I don't feel like our team is ready to build this app and I'm getting a bit frustrated because I don't feel like our communication is working. This week I tried to set up an assignment sheet for our group proposals, but only one other member of our team seems to understand how to work together on a team Google document. However when this idea was put forth and discussed in our team meeting no one had any objections or asked any questions about working together on a google Doc. I'm worried that this lack of effort in communicating is going to really effect our project.
This week I started working on learning more about Local Storage. My husband helped explain Local Storage to me, he helped me by giving the example that some websites or browsers might use local storage to store user settings, for instance in my Chrome Browser I have a certain background that is displayed, and this background is possibly saved through local storage, unlike session storage, local storage is not erased after a certain time limit, or even just because a user closes a browser. Local storage is just a way to store information "locally" or on a users machine rather then on the server side of the equation. I'm really glad I have a husband who can tudor me through all of this.
My anxiety still hasn't gone away. If anything I feel my anxiety is just getting worse. Hopefully I'll be able to get over that soon. I'm trying to just be proactive in all of my school work. Only 6 more weeks until graduation! If I do my best I will be fine. I'm glad I have my husband to tudor me in this class, because having to work in a group is - as usual- more of a hinderance than a help, none of us really know what we are doing so our meetings aren't exactly fruitful, and although we are trying to teach each other we barely grasp this ourselves, so it's more just stressful to try and teach one another. We are doing our best! This week I worked on incorporating JSON into my AJAX example, it's been tricky for me to figure out.
This week I was hoping my stress level would start going down, however I don't think that is the case. I keep trying to stay on top of my homework, but with so many places to check for information in all of my classes, I feel like I'm behind no matter what type of effort I put in. I don't feel like my team is very good at working together, and in a class environment where we are supposed to rely on each other to learn, that is really stressful. I hope things can get better over the next few weeks.
I feel like my team has talked multiple times about the creation of our project, but it keeps just being talk. I feel that I am going to need to take the lead and crank out the required proposals that are due soon if the ball is actually gonna start rolling in this class. I think once I take the lead, hopefully others will step up to fulfillings new tasks as well.
This week my team started working more on understanding our projects and expectations for this class. The instructor explained that the purpose of our sandbox examples is to learn to combine all of the different topics we are learning about so that they can work together for an interactive experience. This was helpful because I needed an explanation on what was really expected from our sandbox code and examples. I worked mostly this week on setting up a page on my personal website where I will start combining these topics into one giant example.
This week I also gave my team a tutorial on how to use Github and Github desktop so that we could easily share example code together. I hope this will help so that in the future we can more easily help each other learn. I feel like my strong sets in this class are in relation to HTML and CSS and design of our overall project. However I could really use some help with JavaScript, so I hope the intro to Github will help us share sandbox code more efficiently.
This week I also taught about CSS Animations and Transitions, I picked up where Kelly left off last week. CSS transitions and animations are very similar in the way they work. The real difference is that CSS Animations "animate" and object. In my example below, the square box bounces, it is on object that is animated. In CSS Transitions, objects are transformed, for example a square could be transformed into a triangle, or my example below could switch from a square that says hello to a square that says goodbye, the transformation changes the state of the object.
The differences I learned in CSS transitions this week really helped me understand the purpose of having the two different genre's. I think this will help me in the future as I continue to work on creating more useful and interactive web experiences. As a web designer, the use of CSS is huge for me, I enjoy learning about how to get the most out of it
This week we were separated into our groups and started to get organized. We set up a group Google Community, a Github repository, and our Google Drive where our group would keep all of our documents. We also briefly discussed our elevator pitches and started narrowing down our choices for our group project. It is hard for me to say that I have ever had a group project in college that I thought was successful or enjoyable. I feel as an online student the normal issues that crop up in group projects are elevated and more problematic, so I must admit that I have some apprehension when I think about how this project will go this semester.
That being said, I think it is important to try and keep our project simplified. It will likely not be simple to execute, and our team will need to be as organized as possible to pull this off, so a simplified project will help us keep things organized I believe. There are some members of our team that have not communicated, and so we are wondering if they have dropped the class. I'm pleased that the members of my group who have been communicating seem to be dedicated to being responsible and helpful teammates. Always a good thing! This makes me feel that we are off to a good start, if we keep communicating than I think we will be able to pull this project off this semester without giving ourselves to many headaches!
We had our second class meeting yesterday and talked about CSS Transitions. Kelly taught this week which started around 14:50. I feel I equally contributed to this discussion and asked questions throughout the meeting (16:30). We also showed each other our elevator pitches, I started my pitch around ( 24:15).
My sandbox code for this week can be found in my personal github repository for this class. I played around with creating checkboxes in CSS and using transitions within the checkboxes to make them more unique.
This week we started CIT 261. I'm a little nervous for this class. I don't feel like I've had many group projects in school that have actually felt like they were beneficial to me. I'll do my best to be a good team player, I hope my fellow teammates will do the same.
This week we worked on getting everything set up so that we are ready to start splitting into groups next week. I've already got my Github and code editor linked to the class repository I've set up for myself for this class. We will be doing a lot of communication with Google + this semester which will be interesting, hopefully its not more confusing to have a third site to look to for information regarding classes. Here we go!
My JSON example is entertwined with my AJAX example below. The AJAX example uses javascript and AJAX to grab a random image from a JSON object and display it to the user.
My JavaScript example is entertwined with my AJAX example below. The AJAX Example uses javascript and AJAX to grab a random image from a JSON object and display it to the user.
I've used DOM Manipulation to add the images from my JSON file into my AJAX to display. My Local Storage than insures that the same image never displays twice in a row.
My JavaScript file applies a new class stylization to my random image button after the initial click.
My CSS animations have been mixed in with my Coding Topics example below. I have used CSS animations to apply effects to the button that controls my pictures.
My AJAX example below uses local storage to insure that the same image is never displayed to the user twice in a row.
I've used AJAX to load a random image that is loaded from my JSON file pulled through DOM manipulation.
Double click on the button below to see!
