National Park Project

The National Park Service (nps.gov) is responsible for the administration, upkeep and maintenance of all of the national parks in the US. Our NPS system is a bureau of the Department of Interior. There is one Director who is appointed by the president and approved by the senate. The director is responsible for approximately 400 parks.

You are going to begin working on your final project for this class today. You are going to begin by researching and choosing a national park from which to base your project. NO two students can have the same national park.

We will be using a variety of Web 2.0 tools in the creation of this project. This blog posting will be continually updated with instructions, tips, and deadlines.

This project will be a part of your FINAL EXAM grade.

When doing your research please make sure that you are choosing a national park that is large enough to provide you with enough information to fulfill the requirements of the project.

You will have several deadlines during this project. NO LATE work will be accepted. NO EXCEPTIONS! If you miss a deadline you will not receive the points for that piece of the project but you will still be expected to complete the work.

TO START YOUR RESEARCH:

Make a folder on your P drive called: SmithNationalPark (replace Smith with your last name). All work for the project is to be saved in this folder, except what is saved on Google Docs.

You need to find out everything you can about the national park that you are going to do your project on. Make notes in a Google document of your research (you will be sharing these notes with me and they are part of the grade).

Today find out the following:

• Where your park is located (be specific)
• What is the historical significance of the park
• How many visitors come to the park each year
• How much does it cost to get into the park
• When did the park become part of our national park service
• Find a map of your national park and bookmark it
• What would want to make someone want to visit this park
• What are the major highways you would use to get to this park
• Is there a virtual field trip associated with this park (make sure you include the hyperlink to the virtual field trip in your Google document
• Add a hyperlink for the park web site to the Google doc
• You should also make sure you are NOT copying and pasting from the Internet
• Your project will go easier and be a much better quality project if you actually take the time to read the information at the park website and then make notes in your own words

Schedule for project:

• Day 1: research national park, gather all necessary information, images, maps etc. Bookmark in Delicious and add your notes to a Google document. This document will be shared with me as a grade. I will tell you when to share.
• Day 2: Complete research if necessary. Make sure you keep track of ALL sources including images. You will be required to hand in a work cited paper that has been created in a Google doc. The work cited will be in MLA format. Images will only need the URL, not complete MLA format. Begin to work on your Google presentation. This presentation should be a vitural tour of your national park.
• The presentation should be set up as follows:
• Title slide (including your name and date)
• Your presentation should be at least 10 slides including the title slide and sources slide (which should be last)
• Images should be added to make your presenting appealing and make people want to visit your park.
• You should include where your park is located, main attractions and activities, typical weather at different times of the year, cost of admittance, history of the park, and historical significance of the park. Make sure you are including images to make the presentation more interesting.
• Day 3: Complete Google presentation
• Day 4: Create script for screencast in a Google document. Your screencast will be of your presentation. You are to narrate through your presentation. You will share your Google document script with me on this day.
• Day 5: Complete screencast. Share your screencast with me.
• Day 6: Create a brochure of your national park. Choose any template you like. Delete any items on your template that you will not need. Make sure your brochure is well thought out and professional looking. Use images as needed to enhance the brochure. DO NOT fill the brochure with a bunch of images just to take up space. Print and turn in the brochure. You will use MS Publisher.

Screencasting Video

Blog Posting for February 21

1. Please complete the Excel charts from last week if you have not already done so. Tomorrow we will be sharing those charts using Google docs.
2. After finishing the charts then you are to create a set of flash cards in QUIZLET to be used for the final exam. Yes, it is getting to be that time of the year. ALL DEFINITIONS MUST BE IN YOUR OWN WORDS. DO NOT copy and paste from the Internet. Copying and pasting someone else's words will not help you on the final exam. The final exam will be challenging. You need to make sure that you are completely prepared.
3. Name the flash card set as: SmithOnlineBExamTerms (USE THIS NAMING EXACTLY, including upper and lower case, substitute Smith for your last name please).
4. Add these tags to your flash card set: onlineB, exam vocab.
5. After completing the charts, and then the Quizlet flash card set then you are to work in KeyTrain. Work in either Reading for Information, Locating Information or Applied Mathmetics.
6. If something bizarre happens and Quizlet is NOT working then create your vocab terms in a Word document.

Vocab Exam Terms

·         Authentication

·         Blogs

·         Culture of Participation

·         Delicious

·         E-Mail

·         Facebook

·         Flash

·         Flickr

·         Google

·         HTML

·         Hyperlinks

·         Images

·         Messaging

·         Password strength

·         Personal Web

·         Platform

·         Plug-in

·         Podcasts

·         Profile Page

·         Read/Write Web

·         RSS

·         Social Networking

·         Static Content

·         Streaming Video

·         Tabbed browsing

·         Tag

·         Thumbnail

·         Upload

·         User-generated content

·         Web 2.0

·         Web Applications

·         Web Browser

·         Web site

·         Wikipedia

·         Yahoo

·         YouTube

·         Authority value

·         Back link

·         Banner

·         Blog member

·         Blogger

·         Blogging

·         Blogosphere

·         Bookmark

·         Cascading Style Sheets

·         Compressed image format

·         Content management systems

·         Dashboard page

·         Embedded

·         Formatting setting

·         Forum

·         Gadgets

·         Google blog Search

·         HTML-formatted text

·         Online journal

·         Open source software

·         Permissions setting

·         Search box

·         Sidebar

·         Text editor

·         Uncompressed image format

·         Video blog

·         Widgets

·         Blog’s Web feed

·         Feed Reader ·         Offline browsing ·         Podcast ·         Syndication ·         Social bookmarking ·         Privacy policy ·         Identity Theft ·         Creative Commons ·         Flikr ·         Voki ·         Avitar ·         Online Image ·         Piracy ·         Attribution ·         NoDerivs ·         NonCommercial ·         Cloud computing ·         Cyberbullying ·         Phishing ·         Spam ·         Folders ·         USB/storage resources ·         Digital footprint ·         Mashup ·         Career Cruising ·         KeyTrain ·         Jing ·         Screencast ·         Subject directory ·         autoComplete ·         archive ·         File types: jpeg, bmp, gif ·         Live drive

Reflections of College and Career Project

Now that we have finished our college and career project it's time to reflect on what we have discovered. This should be a lengthy post. You should expect to write at LEAST 4 to 5 well constructed paragraphs.

Examine the spreadsheet you created and discuss IN DETAIL the following:

1. Which college offers what you would consider the best opportunity for you to get an education in the degree of your choice? Explain why you think this way.
2. Discuss the cost of tuition for all three colleges. Is one college much more expensive than the others? Why? Does one college charge high fees for room and board as compared to the other college? Why do you think this is so?
3. Which college are you most likely going to be able to attend? This may be because of GPA, cost, etc.
4. Discuss the classes that you signed up for next year and how these classes will help you prepare for following your career path and college choice.
5. Discuss in detail goals you will need to set and ACHIEVE in order to get into the college of your choice. Also discuss how you will achieve these goals.
6. Discuss how you plan to pay for going to the college of your choice. Make sure you tell us what the total cost of your college education will be.
7. After completing the research did you change your mind about your college or career choices? Why or why not?

Career and College Posting for February 6

After you have completed gathering all of your data you will be developing a podcast. This will be a new Web 2.0 tool that we will be learning this week.

I have another web site that I want to share with you. Go to the following link and register at the site. https://www.michigancap.org/. Make sure you complete the profile for this site.

Also please see this site: http://knowhow2gomichigan.org/freshmen/. Review the information at this site. There are several quizzes at this site that you need to take. Make sure you are bookmarking both of these sites in Delicious.

The first step in the process is to create your ‘script’ for the podcast. The script will then be recorded in Audacity and can then be published on a web site, blog, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, etc. RSS feed, which is an aggregator, will pick up the podcast for our MP3 player. It’s really pretty simple.

You should begin writing your script. We will record on Wednesday and create the podcast on Thursday. Friday we will share our podcasts with the class. You MUST be prepared so we can get all of these recorded. You will be required to turn in a complete script on Wednesday at the beginning of class. Use MS Word to write your script.

Your script MUST include the following:
• Name of colleges researched, location, and what type of college: public, private, technical trade school, community college, religious (Christian)
• How large are the colleges and how many freshmen are admitted each year
• Describe why these colleges appealed to you
• Describe the admission requirements for the colleges: GPA, essay, etc.
• Describe the name of the degree you intend to pursue
• Describe the major you will pursue
• Describe the career your degree will help you to follow
• Describe how many years you will be required to attend college to attain the degree you want
• Describe the costs associated with each college, make sure you tell us TOTAL estimated amount to attend each as well as a breakdown of the costs
• Describe at LEAST 5 skills you will need in this career
• Describe how the classes you will be required to take in your major fits with the classes you are signing up for next year
• Describe the median starting salary for your chosen career
• Describe the career pathway and career cluster that your career fits into
• Describe the normal daily work day for someone in your chosen career
• Describe the working environment for your career: standard 40 hours per week, Monday thru Friday, weekend work required, on call work, travel required
• Describe the types of businesses where you can get a job in your chosen career (list at least 4)

These do NOT have to be in the order shown above. You should put your script together so that it makes sense and has logical flow. I don’t want the podcast to sound choppy.

Email if you have questions.

Post For Sharing Scholarship Information

Use this blog posting to share information about scholarships that you can apply for as a freshman. Please include the URL and a short description of the scholarship.

You can NOT claim the same scholarship as someone else. First come first serve!

You will find these scholarships on the various web sites that I have given you for this class.


THIS IS EXTRA CREDIT!