WebQuest

This assignment was very educational, interesting, and also very frustrating for me. It was a long one, requiring eight pages, and WebQuest was a new concept to me, so I spent a week reading all the lecture notes, readings, etc., from Dr. Yuen. Then I started doing the actual design. I was thrilled at first that I actually remembered how to use Google PageCreator, so I laid out the templates first. I changed the layout from my Web site purposely to experiment with the program, and I got the first five pages done with the plan that I would finish all eight, then come back and tweak the layout, add some media, etc.

Of course, the best laid plans sometimes go awry, and this one did. When I sat down to work on the site Thursday, July 10 — five days before it was due, and two days before my husband was joining me for our anniversary weekend — I couldn't even get to the site manager. The error message about enabling JavaScript came up. I went to my Media and Society class Thursday night and Robin Kauth, my classmate and friend, tried to help, but we couldn't figure anything out. Dr. Yuen and I e-mailed back and forth between Hattiesburg and China. I decided to go to the Cook Library computer lab Friday morning before Ken arrived, and guess what — neither Mac nor PC was any different. I was able to create another Google account, but my five pages were already done on the old site. In a panic, I called Robin and arranged to meet her at her office, and although we couldn't get anywhere with her laptop, somehow we were able to access the site on her PC desktop. So I hurriedly finished the last three pages just so that I would at least have the assignment done.

Although the content, I think, was good, it wasn't pretty, and I had really wanted to do more work on it, but Ken and I went to Biloxi for the weekend and I still couldn't access it when we got back. When we met for our IT 648 final, Dr. Yuen and I were able to look at the error together -- I can access my Web site through PageCreator, but the WebQuest site is still dead. Before I head home next week, I'm going to try to get with Dr. Yuen again to see about saving the WebQuest to another site so that I can continue to work on it. I'd like to use it in my classes this fall.

I'm not going to give up yet! Here's the link: http://donnawebquest.googlepages.com/home