Michael’s Journal

Monday 12-3-07 I found a movie having to do with probiotics (it shows two little animated characters taking the trip through the body and is narrated by a pretty ridiculous guy but its pretty educational). I found two articles on Saccharomyces boulardii, and the citations to go along with them. We listened to Mrs. Jansen explain the project and how to work on our website. But so far I haven’t been able to change anything on my website.

Tuesday12-4-07 I researched and answered all but two of the questions for the project. I learned that Saccharomyces boulardii is actually classified as a yeast and is used to tread many different types of diarrhea. I also typed out and started my journal and timeline. But I’m having some trouble linking the sidebar to go to the page I want. I’ve tried pretty much everything but nothings working.

Wednesday 12-5-07 We listened to Mrs. Jansen today talk about reliable sources on the free web, there are so many website that are “crap.”The racist site aimed at elementary and middle school student was pretty disturbing. I put some serious effort into my journal and timeline. And it takes forever! It's a little hard to plan out what oyur going ot be doing two weeks form now. Also, i’ve been searching the web for tutorial on pbwiki sense Mrs. Jansen isn’t in the library. And nothing has yet proed itself helpful, its all crap basically. 

Thursday12-6-07 Pre-Lab

Friday12-7-07 I worked on trying to figure out how to change the background. I looked up numerous tips and suggestions but none of them mad any sense. Finally after like three hours i saw someones page who was really cool, i aksked them how they where able to change the theme in on their web page. She replied by saying that you need to go to setting and then skins. And it worked!!!I am very relieved that i was finally able to make the appearance of our web page more visually appealing.

Saturday 12-8-07 Today was spent revising my timeline. Before it was very vague and if you where to look at it you really couldn't tell what you where supposed to do. After i fixed it it was very readable and overall a better and guideline for peter and I to use. I also searched around websites for a little more general information on our bacteria.So now when i present it to the class i wont look like a complete idiot. And can confidently tell the class about our bacteria.

Monday 12-10-07 Working on making up past journal entries took up most of my time today. Its really hard to write two paragraphs without rambling about nothing to do with your project, or bacteria. But Mrs.Tucker informed me that the journal is mainly a place to express how your doing on the project, whether your having trouble or not. This was very helpful and i was able to consistently make more lengthy journal entries that will be very useful when having to evaluate my project.

Tuesday 12-11-07 Pre-lab

Wednesday 12-12-07 Today was interesting. I was experementing on what i could actually put on the website, i went to a myspace code site where you can embed things onto the page. I copied the code from the site and put it on my journal, and now i have an antiterrorism II game on my page. Useless, yea i know, but very entertaining. Oh!, and peter somehow figured out how to put music on the webpage. The player comes with like two-hundred songs, and is powered by google. The proublemis that it will only play on one page of our website. So we'll just have to put it on a page where peope will probably get bored very quicky. The intetrnet is proving to have many resources to help us improve our webpage. Its all very exciting and im sure our webpage will turn out nicley.

Thursday 12-13-07 Still working away. Finally got the other two citations we needed for the project. Citation machine is okay but i still dont know whether or not the citation is right, and that'll probably be somthing that they will take off for on the final project. Also, its almost impossible to find the authors name on any web page, probably its because its on the free web and they dont want anyone stealling they're identity or whatever. I guess citation machine is the best cite out there so far for making citations it just the amount of imformation given out by websites is allways very, very limited. And honestly, i dont think thats going to be somthing thats going to change in the next ten years.

Friday 12-14-07 Ugghhhhhh...today we got the rubrics for everything that needs to be on the website...it's ALOT! Way more than we've done so far, in terms of function, and userfriendlyness. And some of that stuff ive never even seen before. Oh well, i guess were just going to have to cram all this stuff in last minute like ive done on every other project. It hough the purpose of the timeline was to help us better manage our time, but when they dont give you the full rubric until the weekend the project is do is rediculous. Definitly somethign i'd put on the "what would you change about the project" portion of the questionare they gave us.

Saturday 12-15-07 Good afternoon, today i did some of the editing i was talking about above, although i couldn't do too much becuase i had to go buy lacrosse equipment and it my moms birthday today! All the spelling and gramatical stuff though, it's a pain in the ass...seriously. Right now while im typing this nothing is being checked spelling wise, so you have to copy and paste everything into microsoft word, and then paste it back into the website. Takes forever! Ohh well. I've been thinking of explaining how our bacteria helps people who are infected with the often fatal disease, cholera. It would that extra for an A thing. Looks pretty promising, theres alot on the web about how our bacteria fights cholera. And i think there was a recent outbrake in Iraq. Before we got there Iraq had the best medical care available in the arab world, now, because of all the fighting about 75percent of doctors and nurses have left.

Sunday 12-16-07 Crunch time...is over. I finally finsihed puting up the video and writing about cholera...ugghh, and i finshed editing and bolding all the little things i needed to to make the cite more "user friendly." Oh well, at least it's over. And i really think i learned alot about our bacteria and i'm sure ill learn more about other peoples bacteria once we start presenting on monday. Were going to need alot of time to load up all of our videos. I'm sure it going to take like 5hours just for one. We sould have waited untill after christmas break so then the enternet would be much faster. Everything woud run alot smoother with faster enternet, people wouldn't be falling asleep waiting for our stuff to load. But don't the teachers have faster enternet or something, hope so.

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