Reflective Journal (Week Two)

Reflective

In the last week I had been at the Regional Center for Educational Planning of UNESCO at the University City in Sharjah for my work placement. I was really happy and I am really interesting in going here for my work placement because I really believe that the UNESCO is stated purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture. Moreover, I feel  it is a great opportunity for me to work with any of the UNESCO branch which was my dream because I believe that the propose of this center suit our society and community my college staff.  Furthermore, I think that this work placement allows me to apply what I have studied at my college. Also, I think that this work placement helps me to know how to deal with adults which is a new thing for me to work learn about. I have studied different information about that in my Work Placement Course and from some other articles that I read of how to deal and motivate adults, but now I have chance to practice it firsthand.  Moreover, I believe that this course helps us a lot to connect our studying with the real environment.  In my view point, I believe that this work placement helped me a lots to share my improve my skills in creating website using Dreamweaver and how to deal with adults trainers.

While working with the staff in the Regional Center for Educational Planning of UNESCO, I learnt about the main propose for this center. After we had our first meeting with Mr. Taha, I noticed that this center helps the Ministry of Education for planning new strategies in teaching and creating different workshops for teachers, administrators and the ministry staff.  Moreover, I found that Mr. Taha has a good experiences in different places. Although he is an IT Engineering in Network Security but he is familiar with different  technology. I noticed that he is like an encyclopedia in Information Technology, because he is knew different information about the Technology age I knew different information about the newest technology about the solar energy system on using personal Computer.  In addition, he spoke with us about the budget of the Ministry of Education and how did the use the money for improving the Technology use in schools which I found it interesting because I was thinking about the budget of the Ministry of Education and how they spent them.

Moreover, Mr. Taha  discussed with us about our work that we are going to work in the two last weeks in our working placement.  The first task that we are going to work in is to develop their website. And the other task he is going to show us some new technology about video captures for the conferences. He gave us his business card to open the website of the centre to write down some suggestion.

When we open the website we wrote some suggestion because we have to show Mr. Taha our planning for developing the website. I noticed from sharing our ideas that this helped us a lot to scaffold each other and it helped me to recognized the meaning of groups work were we share ideas and thoughts to complete task or to produce materials or products. Moreover, we went to have a meeting with Dr. John Raven and Mr. Peter Campbell who gave us some suggestions to help us to improved the website effectively . I believe that Dr. John and Mr. Peter  suggestions was very  effective and useful for developing the website.

We find that we have to:

·        Centered all of the pages.

·        Changed the Main Menu font color.

·        Change the scroll down menu by adding some submenu

·        Justify the text.

·        Create style sheet.

·        Small navigation bar

·        Check the hyperlinks to work effectively.

·        Make some paragraphs

·        Add some advertisements about the workshops.

When we brainstormed  we tough that this will make the website attractive more than it is now. Mr. Taha liked our plan for developing website but although we would like to improve it more but the administers refused to make the changes that we would like to do.

We started to develop the website using Dreamweaver it is ongoing and we hope that we will finish it soon.  First, we created the template for all of the pages this will to save time because we can apply this template for different pages instead of creating the pages for the beginning. Then we decided to divide the website between us to help us to develop the website. I took the English site and Salha took the Arabic site. After that each one of us started to developed the pages following our plan. Moreover, we used Dynamic website to help us to make the website more attractive and interactive. Mr. Taha had with us a regularly meeting to know how far we are in. Furthermore,  I learnt from showing Mr. Taha our work day-by-day helped us to get different feedback which scaffold our learning and brainstorming helped to improve the website step by step. 

While we were creating the website we faced some problem in developing the RCEP website. The first problem that we faced was the button. After we created the buttons we did not preview the site so we create all of the pages and then we recognize that the buttons did not appear in the website. We really become crazy because we spent all of our time in creating the buttons and page. After that when we solved the first problems, we faced the second problems. The second problem was the button we cannot link them to the pages. So we decided that instead of wasting our time in trying to solve the problem, we created our own buttons using Adobe Photoshop and Paint.

 During my working placement at the RCEP, I recognized the differences between working in an organization than working in a school. First of all, I learnt how to deal with adults which force me to deal with them in a professional way. Also, I learnt how to plan for creating effective website and the main point in evaluating websites.

By the end of that week we finished about 70% of the website which I worked on them from Sunday until Thursday.