ABOUT US

Hello all, our team name is the Dark Knights .We have four members in our team. They are as follows: Ratboy the Researcher, Rex the Typist, Teddy the Organiser and lastly Noddy: Secret Agent the Webmaster.

None of us have had any experience with making websites before, making us all amatuers.

We aim to target children who want to research about Crop Farming in Australia.

Our topic is Crop Farming in Australia. We chose these five crops because they were the highest produced crops in Australia. We also chose the topic because we thought it would be very interesting and we are impressed with the results in information we got back.

 

Our Project Journal

Monday 19 May 2008
Today we talked about regional Australia, like what it was. We then went on to the computers to look up ‘regional Australia’. I found out that Regional Australia meant the difference in the industries (agriculture, retail, etc).  

Monday 26 May 2008
Today we built a marshmallow tower. I worked with Ratboy, Teddy and Noddy. We named our tower ‘Lucy’, in which it had a few versions, because it kept crashing down. In the end, all we did was piled it up and it looked revolting. In the end, Lucy was about thirteen centimetres tall. If I could have altered or modified mine, I would have made it into a rigid cubical shape, or maybe triangular shape. The idea of the lesson was teamwork. However, we did not win; as one of the other group members had a twenty centimetre tower. After that we reflected on rural Australia.

Monday 2 June 2008
Today we started observing previous attempts at the competition. We also observed three sites, two about pollution and one about anti-smoking. We also filled out a chart on what they did and how they did it, and who they acknowledged. We also joined groups, and our group consists of Rex (me), Noddy, Ratboy and Teddy. We did an activity of how many movie names we could think of. Ratboy, Rex and Noddy (Teddy was doing something in the class at this time) and after about two minutes, we named twenty-eight. We then put ourselves into an ant’s perspective and thought about what we know about humans. After that we had to invent some reasons why suddenly all the shops in Australia had sold out of string. As yet in the third week, Mr. McClement has not started doing the actual project yet. The idea of the lesson was creativity and observation.

Monday 28 July 2008
Today we started research on our topic, Australian Agriculture. We selected Ratboy as the researcher, Noddy as the web designer, Teddy as the organiser and Rex (me) as the typist. We also had a look back at previous websites. This is also our first lesson in approximately five weeks.    

Friday 1 August 2008
Prior to August, Mr. McClement organised a bonus session for the first of August, and as such, we started learning how to link documents. We are also running out of time. We used a program called Platypus Web Builder. When you save it and then click on the green globe icon, it transferred it to the Local Intranet. Of course with approximately half an hours’ work, it looked very basic.
Ratboy and I worked on our own Platypus, and I was very self-cocky and said I’m the best. Ratboy disagreed, but that didn’t matter (ha-ha). Teddy and Noddy grouped into pairs themselves and worked on their own.
I think this was a very educational lesson, possibly one of my most favourites.

Monday 4 August 2008
Today we did a mind-map and researched on agriculture. Although I’ve edited it in the journal already, we changed our topic to Australian Agriculture, instead of Western Australian Agriculture. We decided to change it because our first selection of topic was too specific. We also talked about copyrights and how Wikipedia has free copyright usage. This means we can copy and paste it without requesting permission, but we still have to acknowledge the source of information. We are now going to have two lessons per week, as there is only about five or four weeks left.

Monday 8th of August
Today we were working on our notes on the mind map and a word document. We also had a few mind exercises before this. The Olympics starts today!

Friday 11th of August
Today we changed our topic from Agriculture in Australia to Australian Crop Farming. We also restarted our notes on the word document, and found we now have more notes on this topic than we had on the previous one. Today we had only Noddy and Ratboy taking notes.

Friday the 15th of August 2008
Today we further progressed on our notes and started to turn them in to sentences. We are almost finished writing them in sentences though we still need to do a bit more research. My code name for our website is Noddy: Secret Agent.

Monday 18 August 2008

We have now changed our topic 3 times. Firstly, we were doing Aboriginals, then Agriculture, now we’re doing Crop Farming In Australia. We researched wheats and oils like Canola, Wheat and Barley. There were also some others. We didn’t do anything apart from research and entering into our journals today.

Friday 22 August 2008
First off in today’s lesson we finished off the ‘polishing’ touches on the research on the Top 5 Crops in Australia. After that, Mr. McClement proof read our notes and information, and we had to delete a few things that were in reference to worldwide, and not just only Australia. After we finished off that, we began on our template using the software on Noddy’s computer named Platypus. We just downloaded a customised text banner four our homepage title theme, and at this present time, Teddy and Noddy are doing our buttons whilst I am entering this journal. Ratboy is watching Noddy and Teddy. I predict that by the end of Monday we should be well into our website, possibly even decorating it. There are also only two weeks remaining. It’s bucketing down with rain at the moment, and so is a wet lunch, so Noddy and Teddy just volunteered the team to stay back during the wet lunch break, which I’m not too concerned about. It is currently 1:13pm, two minutes prior to lunch.

Monday 25 August 2008
Today we went straight into a new website for web buttons. The site used a different target file (.JPG) which enabled us to successfully apply buttons. We also copy and pasted the information text, which means my calculation was slightly incorrect, but that’s okay, because we’re not far off target. There’s about two weeks left; that’s just an estimation off the top of my head though. We linked up most of the buttons from the index/template. This week we’ll be doing three lessons as the senior grade (Year Sevens) are on camp. These are only personal lessons though. We should be able to finish the links on Thursday, providing our group is on Thursday.  

Friday 29 August 2008
The present time is 9:38am. Before I begin my official entry, I would like to congratulate Ratboy on turning 11 today. We are having a private session with Mr. McClement currently, but will still come in after the break.