I am ON-CAMPUS today, but I am at a Professional Development meeting with a few other teachers.  For those of you concerned about your grade, please feel free to NOT play the iCivics game I am assigning today, and try and fix some of your unfinished or incomplete graded work.  

For those of you who ARE done: I challenge you to beat my high score of 367 Electoral Votes and 3670 Impact points in the iCivics Win The White House Game.  Click HERE to play the game. Please use your real name, and print your certificate at the end of your game to prove that you completed the game today. 

Don't forget, the Fall Festival is after school today.  Coach Riñon, Ms. Romo, and I have created an awesome "fishing" game.  Please stop by our booth and try and "catch" yourself a piece of candy.

Okay everyone, we are entering the final stretch on our Travel Agency Project.  Today I have a new Checklist for you that will hopefully help you keep track of all the items your Travel Agency Homepage needs.  The remainder of this project will be focused on continuity (making sure your pages have similar structure and layout) and communication (making sure anyone could easily understand the purpose of your pages and have all questions answered).  Please come to my desk and get a copy of this checklist on your own (I want to see who is reading my instructions).

I have quickly begun re-organzing an older travel site that I made to help you with this final step of the project. 

http://mrgriswoldsworldtravel.weebly.com

Notice how my Homepage is laid out in comparison to the rest of the site.  This is all about organizing information. I've got a nice logo (designed within weebly). Based on my summary, I clearly have a great reputation as a travel agent. You can click on any of my vacation packages at the bottom and it links you to that travel page. And more.

On your menu (click Pages), please add a "Vacation Packages" non-clickable menu item.  Then drag your vacation package pages to the right underneath to make them sub-menu items.

Also, add a standard Contact Us page, and a standard About Us page. We will work on both of these later this week. 

If you would like to create a logo for your company, may I suggest creating your logo on a powerpoint slide and taking a screenshot of it?

Final two days to complete your 4th vacation package.  Many of you look like you may not need FRIDAY to finish. You might finish today.  If you finish today, you will have Friday to work other school-related tasks. Maybe you need to complete some CPM homework?  Maybe you need to sign into google to work on a document for ELA/History?  Maybe you need to research and take notes on a topic for an upcoming research paper? 

Otherwise, please be working hard on your vacation packages.  Make them look exciting!

You have today, tomorrow, and friday to finish your 4th vacation!!! Work productively today! 

Good Afternoon everyone!

Only 4 more days (and that includes today)!  You must be done with your 4th Vacation package by the end of class on Friday.  If you finish early, I still have NOT graded your Tokyo trips, but I will be doing so by the end of the day this Thursday. So, work efficiently, but don't be sloppy.  

Layout!

Look at the picture to the left.  That is one way in which you could structure your pages in order to earn all of the design points and make your information easier to read.  Use Dividers! Use Columns! But most of all, DO NOT LEAVE UNUSED WHITE SPACE.  White space looks bad and makes the site look sloppy.  Be more strategic about using titles and headings please!

Here is a great example of a well designed web page layout:

Good afternoon everyone, I am on-campus today at a meeting. I completely forgot I even had these meetings until about 8:30 PM last night which is why I didn't mention it yesterday.  There will still be StudyLab after school today for anyone who needed that work time for some reason.

Even though I am not here, we will forge ahead with phase-4 of our project nonetheless. 

To recap: we have completed putting together 3 vacation packages thus far. We have yet to complete ONE additional package, plus we need to organize a homepage and make sure the look, feel, and organization of the entire site suggests that you own a reputable travel agency that can be trusted.  

Today we begin our 4th vacation.  The location of which is COMPLETELY up to you :-) Create a new STANDARD page with NO HEADER in weebly and get to work.

Your subtotal budget is $10,000.  All the other requirements from the previous 3 vacation packages carry over on this one. I have a checklist that will be passed out to you today.

HOWEVER, there is one thing that is different about this 4th vacation package.  The 4th vacation package is going to involve a competition. For this competition you will be voting, as a class, on which vacation package is the most fun looking, most luxurious, and the best organized.  I will provide more details on this on Friday.  But there is approximately 150 points on the line (That's a lot!) for the person who's vacation package gets voted to be the best (and no you can't vote for yourself).

Ok everyone, get to work. You only have 6 class periods (today is the first) to complete this package.  

Please log in to your FUTURE SMART account and continue where you left off today.  We are going to begin our final vacation destination tomorrow, and I will also introduce to you requirements for your Travel Agency Homepage (a pretty large part of this project!).