Final thoughts, and Rational

After presenting our site today in class, i am proud, and happy with how it all came out. As far as our design rationale went, it turned out completely different. WE first wanted to make an interactive site that the user could click images, and see certain sections of the zoo.

Instead though as a team, we made something that resembled more of a movie. It was still interactive and easy to get around, but we followed the simple, INTRO, HISTORY, OUR STORY,MORE INFO, and CREDITS. Along with the blog, we were able to put together a good story about the volunteers, and wayne at the Roger Williams Park Zoo.

Not only did we benefit by learning the software used, but also got the oppurtunity to go out and actually volunteer for the zoo. This gave us an in depth experience, to actually understand what our story was like. If there was one thing that I would do differently, it would be breaking up the work, and the amount of time we spent one particular sections. Although the errors we had were minor, we still did have to meet with roxanne twice for us to work out the kinks with the technology.

After doing this project, a visual essay, has become much easier to do and understand. I hope to that this can be a great piece for all of our team to not only have learned from, but also to be able to use later on after college is over, and we are in the real world.

Design Rationale..

So today is finally the last day of class and the day we present our site! The semester went by fast. We started off our project knowing from the first day that we wanted to work with the Roger Williams Park Zoo.
When we created our first storyboard we were a little confused, not knowing what direction to go in. We finally decided we would do a story and website on the volunteers at the zoo. We wanted interested people to be able to go to the website and get interested in volunteering. More than that though, we wanted to capture their attention with an enticing story.
We decided to go with Wayne, the head of volunteers at the zoo. Wayne was able to tell his story and point of view of the zoo along with how volunteer ism worked at the zoo. Wayne became the main story on our site. He was a great help answering all our questions, quickly responding to emails, getting us into the zoo for free, and sending us great pictures! Thanks Wayne!
Our team made two trips to the zoo, taking pictures, interviewing Wayne, and interviewing other volunteers. One interview I particularly liked was that of a boy our age who had been driving over a hour a few times a week to volunteer at the zoo. He came and worked unpaid and loved what he did because it is what he wanted to do when he was done with school.
We also got great pictures. We combined these photos and our music into sound slides. Along the way we had some issues with getting things on the site but Phil was able to figure almost all of it out... and in the end it all worked out.
From the beginning I think our team had a good vision of what we wanted the site to look like and feel. I believe we accomplished our goal. Good job to everyone!

Problem fixed

I was able to save soundslides onto a CD so we are ok. But the file does not start automatically nor does it have a title both which I had put on before saving so I don't know what happened.

problem with soundslides

I'm having a problem getting soundslides to work when I do the test run. All my pictures and audio has been loaded and setup but when I save and do a test nothing shows up. I'm not sure what the problem is here. Also when going back into soundslides to work I can not retrieve my old folder and have to start again. I have so many soundslides saved I'm not sure which is which anymore.

Our group was able to get a lot of things done today, with Phil's computer knowledge. Kevin finished the credits so those are up and running, and me and phil put together the pictures for the introduction page. Wayne sent Caitlin tons of great pictures from long ago that are going to be really good for the history page. It feels like things are really coming together.

See everyone Wednesday at noon...

Last weekend (too early in the morning) Tacy and I made another trip to the zoo. This time our focus was to video volunteers working with people at the zoo. We got lucky because the Boy Scouts of America were at the zoo and more than 50 stations manned by volunteers were set up. One video we taped was a boy who worked with the elephants for the last few years. He was our age and had been working at the zoo with no pay because he loved doing it and in the future wanted to have a career in animal care. Today Phil and I are uploading some more pictures to put on the website. We should be able to finish our site if we all sit down for a two hours and get errr done!

Pictures of Volunteers

We went to the zoo on Saturday and got some great pictures of volunteers. Sunday we are going to add the pictures to the website, and edit the audio we got the last time we went to the zoo of Wayne talking about various volunteer involvement.

In class today, we showed our website, the main thing we need to work on is getting all of our soundslides together. I'm working on the volunteer page, I believe the title name needs to be changed because it is confusing from what I got back from the feedback and the page is to long. we might put all the pictures in flash or do a soundslide of the various volunteers.