Mr. O'Connell's Technology Home Page

Web Favorites Project 2018

(updated 1/31/2018)

The objective of this project is to enhance student's Internet search skills and to be able to save their search results for future reference. The focus is on enhancing the student's search skills for academic research in all subject areas. By the end of the lesson, students will know how to preserve and organize their search results in a web browser by creating bookmarks as well as folders to organize these bookmarks by subject area (math, science, web design, art, music, physical education, etc.). Students will also demonstrate their ability to create a web page that features these organized bookmarks. Students should understand the concept of organizing information and presenting this information in a web design context.

Part One

• Open Google Chrome.
• Click on the "Customize and Control Google Chrome" button in the upper right hand corner . A diagram appears above.
• Chose Bookmarks
• Confirm that there is a check mark on Show Bookmarks Bar.
• To create a new folder, right click the bookmarks bar, and choose Add folder.
• Create Bookmark folders for each of your current OAHS courses, one folder for General Education, and one folder for an area of personal interest. These interests must be High School appropriate, and legal according to Massachusetts State Law.
• Add two high quality links to each of your Bookmark folders
  • These links must be appropriate for High School
  • They must be directly related to your current courses and interests
  • Do not include links to your search results
  • Important note: Do not include links to Spark Notes! Read the book! Don't short change your education! Your project will receive an automatic ZERO if you link to Spark Notes or anything like it.
• Helpful Shortcuts:
  • Ctrl+D=Bookmark (or click the star icon)
  • Ctrl+Shift+B=Hide/Show Bookmark Bar

Part Two

• After you find all of your links:
  • Open your Links page in Dreamweaver.
  • Create a new Div tag and label it favorites.
    • Click below your title
    • Insert<Div
    • Insert<at insertion point
    • ID: favorites
    • Click New CSS Rule
    • Under Rule Definition, choose This document only from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the dialog box.
    • Click Okay
    • In the CSS Rule Definition dialog box, click Box
    • In the Box dialog box, enter the following:
      • Width: 840
      • Height: 840 (you will most likely need to adjust this later)
      • Margin (remove check mark on Same for All)
        • Left<set drop-down menu to Auto
        • Right<set drop-down menu to Auto
    • In the CSS Rule Definition dialog box, click Background
      • Choose a light colored background for your project
    • Click OK
    • Click OK
  • Click inside favorite Div tag, and create an unordered list (also known as a bulleted list).
  • Create a bulleted list of the courses you are currently taking based on your folders in Google Chrome. Also include General Education as well as your area of personal interest, as described in Part One. Add all the websites you bookmarked below each subject, as per "Sample of a work in progress:" below.
    • right click>copy the name of the website in Google Chrome (or use Ctrl+C)
    • right click>paste in Dreamweaver (or use Ctrl+V)
    • right click>copy the address of the website in Google Chrome (or use Ctrl+C)
    • select the name and then right click>paste the address in the link field in Dreamweaver's Property Inspector (or use Ctrl+V)
  • Include a short description directly below each link.
    • Click to the right of the link, and hit Enter
    • In Properties, use the Indent button to move the bullet to the right.
    • Type in your description. The description should be one or two sentences long, written in STANDARD ENGLISH. Yes, this includes things like proper capitalization, and periods at the end of sentences.
    • SPELL CHECK ALL OF YOUR WORK EVERY TIME! Shift+F7 is the shortcut.
    • Do NOT write a one word description.
    • Save and check your work often.
      • If you find a dead link, delete the link from the Link field in Properties, and relink.
    • An example appears below
  • To adjust the height of your Favorites Div:
    • If necessary, Reset your workspace.
      • Standard<Reset Standard
      • Window<put a check mark on Properties
      • Drag the Properties Panel to the bottom of your workspace until a blue line appears, then let it go.
    • Click the CSS Designer panel
    • Click the All button
    • Select ALL SOURCES
    • Collapse the @Media panel
    • In the Selectors section, scroll down and select your #favorites Div.
    • In the Properties section, select the number next to height (this should be set to 840), and type in a new number. Try 900 to start, and then adjust the number as needed to fit your work.
    • Notice that you can change other settings here as well, including your background color. Feel free to adjust as needed.

Sample of a work in progress:

• Algebra One
  • S.O.S. Math - Algebra
    • An excellent algebra site that starts off with the basics and then gradually moves into the advanced.
  • Ask Dr. Math
    • A sub-page of the Ask Dr. Math site, which also contains information and tutorials on just about every math problem imaginable. This site is great for review of earlier concepts as well.
  • Coolmath4kids - Geometry
    • This geometry site gives clear explanations and examples of basic geometry concepts.
  • High School Algebra Curriculum
    • This is a well organized website that seems to have solid explanations of every concept in Algebra.
• Family and Consumer Science
  • FoodDaily
    • This site looks great- the pictures on the home page make you hungry!
  • Cooking With The Single Guy
    • A great site for single people cooking for one.
• Guitar Building
  • Guitar Heroes- James D’Aquisto
    • This is a website from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City about my friend and mentor, Jimmy D'Aquisto.
  • James D'Aquisto by George Gruhn
    • George Gruhn's excellent observations on James D'Aquisto's life and work.
  • Sadowsky Guitars
    • Roger Sadowsky has a thorough knowledge of D'Aquisto's guitars, having repaired and rebuilt Jim Hall's guitars for many years. His archtop guitar designs reflect what he learned.
  • Stewart-MacDonald
    • Stew-Mac is an excellent site for guitar parts in general, and archtop guitar parts in particular.
  • Archtop.com
    • A terrible website, but they have great instruments and great information.
  • Mouradian Guitar Company
    • Jim Mouradian is the best guitar repairman in New England, if not on the whole East Coast.
  • GuitarNuts.com
    • GuitarNuts is a good source of information about wiring guitars, selecting components, and assembling guitar wiring harnesses.
  • Robert Keeley Electronics
    • Robert Keeley's excellent site on hand made guitar effects.
  • Harmony Central
    • The most popular site for posting reviews on all types of guitars, amplifiers, and electronics.
  • BYOC
    • This website markets kits to build your own effects. There are clones of various commercial effects as well as a variety of unique and highly customizable designs.
• Web Design
  • How to create Hyperlinks in Dreamweaver CC 
    • This is a YouTube video tutorial on basic hyper linking. It shows several different methods, and it is easy to follow.
  • Codecademy
    • This site was recommended by a former student. Ari informed me that it was the best site she found on how to learn HTML and other web-related code. According to Ben, "This website is actually amazing and I have been looking for a resource like this to teach me other coding languages. I would honestly use this instead of the html books you have in your room. It checks your syntax every time you try to move on, so there is very few mistakes that get left. The site won't let you move on until your code is perfect. As you type it updates a preview window so you can see exactly what you are doing instead of setting up chrome on one side and note pad on the other. Tags, attributes, and scripts are different colors so it is easy to read and find mistakes. The lines of code are numbered also making it easier to read. The lessons it goes through are the same as the ones we learned in the book but are very much more memorable because of how easy it makes it to learn. The steps are easy to read and understandable. Best of all it is free!
  • One Extra Pixel
    • A great site to learn more about color schemes. They have lots of free resources for web designers.
  • Google Sites
    • A website that tells you all you need to know about making a free web page with Google Sites.
• General Education Sites
  • Blackboard
    • Blackboard is Framingham State University's website for online learning courses.
  • Socrative
    • An excellent site for both students and teachers. Socrative allows you to create a variety of different assessments that can be accessed on any device.
  • Quizlet
    • Quizlet is a great online learning tool that allows you to learn and study. You can create flash cards, play learning games, "star" information, and more.