First, the original position was listed for an education major (I’m a computer science major), so I didn’t even think to apply. I ended up applying for a different research fellowship through ITS, and was offered a position to help develop the website for Full Spectrum Learning.

The first year of my fellowship was heavily focused on the technical side of the project and figuring out how to explain the project. The major projects I helped with included creating and updating the website, interactive grid design, teaser videos, and updating the grid. More of the first-year process can be understood through this blog post.

The second year of our project focused on the promotion of the initiative throughout the campus community. Our major projects included creating social media accounts and mugs to give professors who gave us data for our survey. Talking about the survey, my large project of the semester was to create an automatic updating data grid. This was an incredibly large project and my reflection can be found here.

Like much of the world, my experience came to a screeching halt in March of 2020 when we were sent home. We still continued to work on projects that could be done remotely. However, most of our projects at that point focused on the promotion of FSL to the campus community, which was much harder to do remotely. To top it off, the data we were collecting was about how professors were delivering their courses to students. The big problem with this data now was everyone was shifting to online teaching/learning and the old and new data could not be mixed. Also, so many students and professors alike were trying to just keep their heads above water, and we didn’t want to ask them to do one more thing.

Overall, in fall of 2020, we decided to not continue the FSL initiative. It was a bit hard to hear all of our projects would not be completed, but we had reached a natural stopping point. I am very thankful for the opportunity I was given to be a part of the FSL team, and I learned so much more than I ever was expecting.

How did this initiative impact me?

So, with all this being said, how did this project impact me and my career as a student? I’ve talked a lot about what I’ve done, but maybe not how it changed my view of education. Coming into college, I knew a lot of the majors I didn’t want to be, and on top of that list was education. I’ve always realized my brain works differently than many others I know and always struggled to explain how I learn. However, FSL was a framework and explanation of education that I had never understood before.

FSL is based on the intersection of technology and engagement in the classroom. Before college, almost all of my classes had been run exactly the same. It may have varied a bit from subject to subject, but for the most part it was about being handed or told information and I was expected to regurgitate it back up on a test or essay. However, there are a multitude of different ways to teach and to learn and sometimes other approaches work better for me. This realization has been one of the biggest and most important of my college career. I think each student finding out how best they learn and study is the crucial step that is so needed mainly during that first year of college.

If you know me well, you know I’m not fond of presentations and talking in front of strangers. So, when I was asked to start presenting about my work with FSL and also how it includes the Knight Domains program, it was incredibly terrifying for me. There are three incredible speaking experiences that stick out to me throughout my fellowship.

1. Board of Trustees Presentation in October 2018 ~ This one was probably the most terrifying because I had only been an SNC student for about 2 months and the Board of Trustees oversees all of the college operations, so it was for sure overwhelming. However, they were very nice and receptive and gave me confidence for other presentations to come.
2. Domains Conference Presentation in June 2019 ~ The Domains Conference was the first major conference I attended with more than people from the local community. There were about 80 people from across the world, mainly in departments such as Academic Technology at their respective colleges. The biggest surprise of the presentation and conference as a whole was that SNC was a leader in the domains program and many other schools were looking to us on how to start their programs. I loved the opportunity to attend the conference and learn more about the importance and also how blessed I am to have the opportunities I do at SNC.
3. Digital Pedagogy Lab in August 2019 ~ Although I didn’t present in a sense, the way the conference is run is essentially a week-long class on a topic in higher learning. The course I took was Open Learning and honestly, I struggled a lot because I didn’t really understand most of what was being discussed. However, I still learned from that experience and how different and important each of our voices is.

Although I never expected this opportunity, the way it has changed my life can not be described. A small amount is listed above, but another huge piece is how it connected me to the Academic Technology team and eventually being able to start as a Tech Bar Consultant who teaches other students about digital literacies, mainly domains. I love being able to work for Tech Bar and it is a role that I probably would never have been able to have if it weren’t for my work first for FSL.

It is still bittersweet to see FSL come to an end, but I am so thankful for the past two and a half years.

This summer I’ve had the experience of continuing my work for the Academic Technology team as a Tech Bar Consultant. It wasn’t the original plan for the summer, but I had so much fun and was able to learn a lot about different technologies!

Favorite Part

Hands down my favorite part was being able to work with Annicka, Caleb, and Maverick (the other students) on many different projects. I got to know them a lot better and am excited to be able to keep working with them as Tech Bar Consultants through next year.

Least Favorite Part

My least favorite part was easily not being able to work with everyone in person and see them. I think one of the biggest lessons for me over the past six months has been that I don’t think I ever want a remote job in the future and really need to be able to get out of my house. However, having my commute be 20 feet was pretty nice.

Favorite Projects

I’ve been able to help with a variety of fun projects including the Academic Technology website, video tutorials, and the start of a virtual tour of campus.

Academic Technology Website

The main project I worked on this summer was creating the Academic Technology (AT) website. Web Design is easily one of my favorite things to do, so being given a blank slate and told to go was really fun. It was also a great way to be able to have others understand what part of ITS I work for (I promise I will break your computer more if you ask me to fix it, but I’m your girl for a website or video editing). With everything being more technology integrated this semester, I loved being able to have a central place for all of those important pieces of information.

Navigating Digital Learning Video

One project I was not expecting at all was a video that I collaborated with the three other students on about how to Navigate Digital Learning and the uncertain semester we are going into. We used a program called Engage in the Oculus Quest Virtual Reality Headsets. I don’t typically like video editing, but this was a fun project to piece together the different views and audio pieces. I also had a bit too much fun with the ending credits (around 8:25 in). Another great part of the video was just getting to spend more time (virtually) because with the four of us together there’s always bound to be a lot of laughs and a fun time to be had.

Virtual Tour of Campus

One project that I have always wanted to work on is a virtual tour of campus! I’m so thankful that I live so close to campus and always had the luxury of visiting whether during the college decision process or while I am a student. I know not a lot of students have this luxury, so I wanted everyone to be able to have the beauty of campus in their pocket.

This summer I got to start the process of this project and have had a blast taking the images and learning more about the history of campus and how it has expanded to its current state.

I’m very thankful for the experience to continue my work with Academic Technology over the summer and can’t wait for this year and to be back on campus for a least a little bit!

View the short video below to learn how to get started with Elementor! The video assumes you already have the plugin Elementor installed and activated before starting.

There are over 30 widgets in the free version of Elementor including text editors, columns, buttons, music, code, icons, and maps. The pro version unlocks access to many more widgets. I’ve personally never used the pro version and have found the free version to be able to do more than enough. Below are some of my favorite widgets/features of Elementor and a variety of example websites from Tech Bar students at SNC all using Elementor as their base.

Best Themes to use with Elementor

1. Ocean WP (also install the plugin Ocean Extra)
2. Neve
3. Astra

Helpful Plugins

1. Essential Addons for Elementor
2. Premium Addons for Elementor
3. Contact Form 7
4. Duplicate Page (creates a duplicate page or post in one click – great for creating a template page for a more uniform look throughout your site)

Five of my Favorite Features

1. Templates

Templates are a great place to start if you aren’t really sure an exact look you want or if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed with starting from scratch. Refer to the video if you need help finding how to insert those into the page. You can also start your pages from scratch and create your own template page and make a more uniform site that way. My portfolio site was made by creating a template page to base the rest off of.

2. Shape Dividers

A very simple tool that can add a bit of depth to your page is a shape divider. They can be applied to sections and are found in the style tab (seen below). This allows the section borders on top and bottom to be something different than just a straight line. There are 18 different types to choose from with a variety of customization options for each.

3. Lightbox Feature on Images and Galleries

The Lightbox feature allows you to see a larger image when you click a smaller image on the page with a caption underneath. To find this feature, in the Content tab of the Elementor Editor select Media File under the Link option and then the Lightbox option will appear and you can select Yes.

4. SoundCloud Widget

One of the newest features I found out about in Elementor is the SoundCloud widget. It allows you to search a song on SoundCloud and has a variety of display options of what to show/hide. In the song below, because it is a GO+ feature, only the first minute or so plays before cutting out. However, SoundCloud has numerous options to play royalty-free. There is an option in Elementor to have it auto-play so you could have it play when your site loads. I haven’t personally used this feature on a website yet, but it seems like a great tool.

5. Image Carousels

Elementor offers many different options for animations on your website and one of my favorites is the Image Carousel. This allows you to showcase a variety of photos in one location without overwhelming the page with images. The one drawback to these carousels is in order to look the best, all the images should be cropped to the same size before inserting instead of that automatically happening. Also, it looks best if all images are horizontal or vertical as well. The widget allows you to specify how many images you want showing at a time (it is one in this example) and you can link the photos to a different website as well along with picking how large you would like them to appear.

There are a variety of other animation options in Elementor including the Counter and Progress Bar widget. Also, every widget and section has a way to animate how it loads called its “Entrance Animation” which can be found under the Advanced tab and then under Motion Effects.

Website Examples

Below are examples of sites made with Elementor including blogs, student organizations, initiatives on campus, and student portfolios. Click on the name of the website to view the full site.

Responsive View

This feature allows you to see how your website will look at a variety of widths and on different devices.

To find this feature, right-click anywhere on your website, and near the bottom, there will be an option called Inspect. You can also reach this by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+I.

Once inside the inspector, the left side will be the view of your website and the right side will be different elements of your website. To learn more about the left side of this page, look at the blog post here.

If your screen does not look like the one below, on the top far right next to the small x of the inspector, you can select the three dots and change where the dock (the right side of my screen) is located.

If the device toolbar does not automatically appear, click the device button on the upper right-hand corner (circled below). The keyboard shortcut to show the toolbar, it is Ctrl+Shift+M. This toolbar is what allows you to set the size of the screen to see what it will look like on a specified size screen.

With the toolbar set to the responsive setting, you can manually resize the web page by dragging the bar on the right side of the webpage as seen below.

On the top device toolbar, you can select a predetermined screen size based on common phones or the responsive option which lets you resize manually.

Below are a few examples of what my website looks like on different devices. Click on an image to enlarge it

Capture Screenshots

Another feature of the inspector can be found by clicking the three dots on the device toolbar (closer to the middle of the screen). Two options in this menu are “Capture screenshot” and “Capture full size screenshot”. These options download a picture of your website.

For example, this is what these options look like on my site.

Looking at storage through CPanel

You can check how much storage is being used up on your domain in a few short steps through the CPanel. 

First, travel to https://knight.domains and click the “login” button in the middle of the left-hand side. The site will prompt you to login with your SNC Google account. Once logged in, travel to the “CPanel” Tab on the top right-hand side

Next, while in the CPanel, on the right sidebar, under the statistics section,you’ll see your overall storage under disk usage.. To view a more in-depth description of your storage, click “Disk Usage.”

The Disk Storage screen will show you a breakdown of what items on your domain are taking up the most space.

For example, my website on cassienooyen.com is taking up 209MB, techbar.crnooyen.knight.domains is taking up 310MB, and lastly, public_html is taking up 286 MB. (public_html is the main website hosted on your domain. For me, it’s crnooyen.knight.domains.)

Reducing the size of uploaded images (Imsanity)

Imsanity is a plugin that will reduce the resolution of images uploaded to your media library, thus reducing their file size.

To download Imsanity, select the “Plugin” option from the menu on the left-hand side about halfway down. On the top left, select “Add New” next to the word “Plugins.”

Use the search bar on the right-hand side to search “Imsanity”. Click “Install Now,” the first option on the left side. Once it is installed, click “Activate.”

Travel back to the Dashboard of your site. Then hover over the “Settings” option on the menu on the lower left-hand side, then click on “Imsanity” from the second menu that appears.

The screen below should appear with the default settings shown. I decided not to change any settings, but if you wanted to make the images smaller than suggested, you could change the max-width and height to less than 1920. If you decide to change any settings, remember to click “Save Changes” near the bottom of the screen.

Once the settings are to your liking, scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and click “Search Images…”. This will search your media library to find images larger than the settings above.

Above the “Search Images” button, you may notice the disclaimer to try it with only one image at first. I decided to deselect all the images except the top image.

In a new tab, I navigated to my “Media Library” and found the picture the disclaimer was referencing. At the very beginning of the image name, WordPress gives you the month and year the image was uploaded. For example, the image below was listed as “Image 1394: 2020/02/IMG_3146-scaled.jpg” meaning it was uploaded in February of 2020.

After the image name, the current dimensions are given. These can be compared to the dimensions given in the media library in the top right section. 

After checking the image, I went back to the “Plugin Settings” tab and clicked “Resize Selected Images”. I then went back into my “Media Library” and saw the selected image was now 1920×1440 [originally: 2560×1920]. This is how I knew it worked so I went back and resized the rest of my images.

After running the “Resize Selected Images” the “Media Library” showed that they all were correctly resized and the image sizes were decreased.

Finding and deleting duplicate and unused images (Image Cleanup)

Another plugin that can help reduce storage space is called “Image Cleanup.” This plugin removes all the images that are uploaded to the Media Library but are not in use on your website.

The first step is to travel to the “Plugin” page in order to download the plugin. “Plugin” can be found about halfway down the left-hand side menu. Once on the page, click the “Add New” button on the top.

In the top-right search bar, type in “Image Cleanup” and hit enter.

Once the search results load, you may have to scroll down a bit down the page. The plugin is on the right side of the screenshot below with the gray triangle picture. Click “Install Now” and then afterward “Activate”.

To use the plugin, hover over the “Tools” option on the left-hand menu and then select “Image Cleanup” from the smaller menu that appears.

Once on this screen, click “Index Images” on the top of the screen. Once the results load, the two groups of images that we are going to delete are the “Unreferenced Unused Images” and “Obsolete Referenced Images”.

For each of these two categories, click the checkbox next to “Index” on the top bar of the table. Then, right above, click the dropdown and select “Delete”. The default option on the dropdown may be set to “Quick Action.” To delete the images, select “Apply.”

Once this is done for both categories, all of the unused images are now deleted.

Alongside installing these two plugins, another thing to look for is the number of videos that are in your Media Library. If there are multiple long videos, instead consider uploading them to YouTube! When uploading a video, YouTube gives the option to make it “Unlisted” meaning only those who have the link can view it, and then that link can be used to embed the video on your site.

The end of the semester was honestly a bit rough for most of the people around me, and I was no exception. About halfway through last semester, I got an offer to return to a company I had previously worked at, so I added my third job. This meant I was working about 15 hours a week between the two, and also during easily the hardest academic semester so far.

Because of the added job and loads of stress, I wasn’t able to work as much as I would have hoped, but the team was able to work to complete a few major projects!

The Logo

The major project of the last semester that we completed was being able to create the logo for FSL! Ruthie created the main design on paper and we worked to digitize it and create different colored/grayscale versions.

Promotional Items

After we had the logo, it was time to move into the promotional stage of the project!

Mugs

A large project that we accomplished was the creation of the mugs to hand out to faculty! Starting this week we were able to start handing them out to professors who filled out the form on the participate page of the website.

Postcards

The other major promotions we did last semester and again this semester has been creating postcards to send out to professors in order to get them to participate in our participate interactive grid! Here are the three different postcards we have recently sent out. The first is for Halloween, then Christmas, and most recently Valentine’s.

Next Steps

The team recently created an Instagram and Twitter (@FSLatSNC) and the next major step will be adding content for that! We were also able to film two new videos, so I will be starting to edit those next week. We also had a great response to the form of the next round of professors that we can reach out to for videos, so that will be a major part of this semester!

I am very glad to be getting back in a rhythm and balance of working both TechBar and FSL this semester!

This grid has been such a process and a learning experience for me. There have been a few major concepts I have learned including:

1. How much I love spreadsheets and formulas
2. How complicated a simple visualization actually is
3. How easy it is to become discouraged

1. How Much I Love Spreadsheets and Formulas

Now, this may not seem like much of a surprise if you know me, but for some reason, I forgot how much I love to write formulas and how satisfying it can be. I mean formulas basically combine my two favorite things: code and math.

This data grid uses a multitude of formulas. First of all, it takes the form responses (all in words [or strings]) and converts them into numbers [or integers]. The easiest way to solve this problem was to do all of the math calculations on a separate sheet of the same spreadsheet as the responses.

The newest formula I learned how to use was an Array Formula. The main idea of this formula is to be able to apply a specific formula to an entire column instead of just a specified range. This came into importance when for some reason all of the formulas liked to change line numbers once a response was added on the main sheet of the spreadsheet (it was odd). However, it was very helpful to have the array formula set and then never have to worry about it again. Other formulas used include a VLookup, Countif and many If/Then statements.

Here is what the spreadsheet of formulas looks like currently:

In case anyone else is interested in this, the way it works is:

1. The responses are translated into number format using a large if/then formula (columns G and H)
2. The corresponding intersection number is found by multiplying the engagement number by 10 and adding the technology number. This is solely for the purpose of creating a unique number for each intersection in order to be able to count the responses in accordance with each intersection (column J)
3. Column J is then used in a count if formula to see how many times each specific intersection has been responded to (the answer goes into column B)
4. This intersection number is then translated into the intersection name using 25 nested if/then formulas (column L)
5. Once the intersection count in column B is found, and the intersection name in column L is established, the specific intersection count can be found. This is found using a VLookup. The formula tries to find the intersection name of the response from column L and match it to the intersection name in column A. It then returns the count of that intersection found in column B. The final answer is then inserted into column I
6. Finally, the intersection count found in column I is translated into a word based on the number of times this course is on the grid. Currently, these words are low, medium, and high and that value then gets translated into column K

As you can see, a LOT of formulas and behind the scenes work is going on here. I love it because to me it is like a giant interlocking puzzle. This puzzle can be incredibly frustrating when one simple thing isn’t working and can seem like a lot of work for such a simple end result (see below), but for some reason, I continue to fall in love with this kind of work.

2. How Complicated this Simple Visual Actually Is

As you read earlier, there are a lot of puzzle pieces of formulas put together to make overall a pretty simple visualization. However, each of these formulas is necessary to make the grid happen. Here is an easy breakdown:

1. The engagement and technology numbers let the bubble know where to be placed on the grid
2. The intersection number is used to set the bubble size, but to get the number 4 different formulas are necessary
3. Lastly, the number field sets the color of the bubble to finish out the look of the grid

Besides the actual grid, I added the title and description along with the axis names.

The other major hurdle I recently had was trying to eliminate the data labels when a bubble was hovered over. The problem with these labels was they showed ALL of the information that was needed to place the bubble. This meant five pieces of information were shown. Some of these pieces of info were helpful like the Intersection Name and Count, but the rest was unnecessary. We decided the easiest thing would just be to get rid of it. There was an easy solution of putting a transparent rectangle over the top of the grid so when a mouse was on top of the grid the mouse was really hovering over the rectangle, not the grid.

3. How Easy it is to Become Discouraged

This grid has been almost a year-long process since the creation of the idea.

There were many problems I had absolutely no idea how to feel and it required me to look either on the internet or ask for help from those around me.

Even thinking of the formulas needed to get that information was a mental puzzle. I enjoy this type of project when it works (obviously), but sadly most days this isn’t the case.

There were many little obstacles on the road to this seemingly simple project. Many of these things I was overthinking, others I was just thinking about in a very different way.

Honestly, some days I look at my work and am impressed at how far the project has come. Meanwhile, others I feel saddened that it has taken this long to figure out something so “simple” looking back. There were many days that I felt so unmotivated to work because I would just stare at the screen and have no clue how to fix the problems staring back at me. I know this type of work is a process, but so frequently I feel like I have to know how to immediately do everything.

Overall, I have learned an incredible amount over the course of this project. The major lesson I have learned is how important it is to push through when you are stuck but also taking breaks is important. Also as much as I like to think that I have to know everything, I am thankful I have strong support around me and that I can always reach out when I am stuck.

Before college, I used my phone’s Apple Calendar, but it pales in comparison to the blessing that is Google Calendar in my life.

There are five major advantages of Google Calendar that I think everyone (especially college students) should know.

1. Convenience/Ease
2. Colored Events
3. Sharing Events
4. Checking Others’ Schedules
5. Reminders

1. Convenience/Ease

The major reason I love Google Calendar so much is simply the fact of how easy it is to use and how accessible it is. Since the calendar is linked to your Google account, you can easily access it on any device, from your phone with an app or by going to calendar.google.com on a desktop or laptop. Unless you have a MacBook, Apple’s calendar does not translate to a laptop or desktop, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t constantly have their phone on them, making their schedule always easy to check. Personally, this is much better than a planner because I ALWAYS forgot it. Even if it was with me, it was such a hassle to write in and then I would say yes to events and forget about them. Now, with my whole schedule on my phone, this is never a problem.

To schedule an event, all you have to do is to click and drag on the calendar and a popup should appear to schedule a new event (seen below). Then you can just fill out the information listed, or go into more options for a more detailed event. Just click Save and then the event has been created!

2. Colored Events

As you can see in the image above, events can be colored to create an even more organized schedule. For example, my classes, different jobs, and clubs are all different colors. Google Calendar has 11 different color options to choose from! Personally, I am a very visual person and this colored view helps me to organize my schedule mentally as well as on the app. Another visual perk on the desktop/laptop view is the color fade that happens after an event is completed.

3. Sharing Events

Google makes it incredibly easy to share events with other people and groups of people. You just have to add their email address under add guests on the right side. When a person is added, Google automatically adds the option for a hangout meeting.

On the main screen for Google Calendar in the left sidebar, Google also gives you the option to meet with a person. This allows you to type in an email address and that person’s schedule will also pop up on top of yours.

4. Checking Others’ Schedules

As I mentioned a bit before, Google allows you to check other people’s calendars. If a person has an event on their calendar, it will show up as busy. This allows you to easily be able to check and compare schedules with those you are trying to meet with. When all of your events are on your calendar, others can also see when you are busy. An event can also be set to free, meaning you are available during that event. This can be great when blocking time to study for exams.

You can also create and share specific calendars with certain people so they know what you are doing at a specific time. However, when a person types in their email address only their main calendar appears.

You can also set the privacy of your own calendar. Automatically, it shows everyone busy instead of specific events, but you can allow certain people to see the events/places you are at.

5. Notifications

One feature I use frequently on Google Calendar is the notifications of events. If you have notifications turned on, your phone will automatically send you a reminder ten minutes before the event. Personally, this has been really helpful with classes or club meetings because you can get to pretty much anywhere on campus in ten minutes.

When creating an event, you can personalize when you want the notifications as well. This can range from minutes to weeks before an event and multiple notifications for each event can be set.

These are just a few of the many reasons that I love using Google Calendar and it allows me to organize my schedule and never miss an event.

As a reminder, my goals for last year were:

1. Understand the different styles of teaching and types of learning around the campus community.
2. Learning how to communicate in a group to gain teamwork skills
3. Become more fluent in shooting and editing videos
4. Develop a deeper understanding of WordPress and how to develop a more functional website.

A few of these goals I have decided I have completed to the level that I wanted to; mainly goals 1 and 3. I have refined two of my original goals to encompass more of the projects I am hoping to work on this year and then I created two newer goals.

Goal 1: Gain a deeper understanding of Google Forms and Google Sheets formulas and how that data can correspond to a visualization of data through Data Studio 

I have gained a lot of experience in this category already this summer and early this academic year, but I am hoping to continue to learn how much they can be conveyed with such a simple data set.

Strategies 1: Working with Taylor to Create the Data Grid

I have learned a lot about formulas and the possibilities inside Google Sheets with Taylor. I learned almost everything about formulas in Excel and everything is just a bit different. Also being able to understand the possibilities and connections of Google Forms and Sheets is a strong skill that might be helpful for Tech Bar and professors as well.

Measurement 1: Have a Working Data Grid that Changes Automatically when New Data is Added

The ultimate goal for the data grid is for it to be able to fill automatically when a professor fills out the form. This makes it easier for me as I don’t have to manually import anything and it can help the efficiency and speed. The other problem of Data Studio is making the data well represented visually. Input from the team once more data is added will help to understand how to combat this issue.

You can view the progress of this goal on our newly created Participate Page!

Goal 2: Understand how to become an effective leader of a group of students and how to effectively communicate and assign tasks to others

This is a similar goal to one that I created last year, but I wanted to add the leadership aspect to the goal. Before this fellowship, I was horrible and preferred not to work in groups. After just the first year, I feel comfortable in this position and I am hopeful that I can help to mentor the newer students who might have felt the same way as I did the first few months.

Strategies 2: Asking for Feeback

The easiest and most important way to know I am doing this well will be asking the team, especially the students for feedback. I know a major downfall already this year has been a slight lack of communication causing confusion. Making sure each student and member of the team knows their assigned tasks will be important to the flow and timeline of projects.

Measurement 2: Timeline of Tasks and Analyzing Feedback

A major part of knowing if I am doing well will be the feedback I receive from both the leadership team and other students. Making sure everyone is organized and tasks get done in a reasonable time frame is going to be important as well.

Goal 3: Understand on a deeper level the customization and plugin options in Elementor and WordPress themes (also comes from working with TechBar)

This goal is also a slightly adapted goal from one from last year. Coming into last year, I had no experience in WordPress and I still feel like sometimes I feel trapped in trying to change certain aspects of my site. I have learned a lot in the past year, but I want to continue to understand the higher-level options in WordPress and maybe other applications as well.

Strategies 3: Researching the Best Options

I think the major way to make sure we are using the best options is research. Most people use WordPress, but is it the best option for our purposes? I am not sure the answer to this question. My guess right now is yes, because it is the most user-friendly and looking forward would be the easiest to explain to whoever would take over for me. In my personal domain, I might eventually want to use something other than WordPress, especially if I decide to create a portfolio website later on in my college career.

Measurement 3: The Progression of the Website/Other Projects

The main way to see this progress will be looking at the progression of the website from the beginning of the year to the end. The blog has already been a large step in this goal, especially having to use specific plugin options on top of Elementor. This goal can also be seen in the transformation of my personal domain with the skills I learn through TechBar and the FSL website.

Goal from Susan

Goal 4: Organize and develop the Student Explanation Video with other team members, that will be shown on the Full Spectrum Learning site and shown to students before recording 

This video is something that I have been thinking is a good idea ever since we first started filming videos. I think many students are confused about what Full Spectrum Learning is and having a short video that explains many of the broad concepts will be very useful.

Strategies 4: Develop and Organize a Script and Visual 

An important factor of this video is making sure that we don’t rush into trying to create the final project too soon. The basis of making this a successful video is going to be the script. Making sure that the script explains what we want it to in collaboration with Lexi and Britney is going to be crucial. The next step would be brainstorming how we want to visualize the process and then working to put it all together.

Measurement 4: The Final Product and Approval

Creating a visually appealing and informational video that encompasses as much information in a short time that we can. Gaining approval from the rest of the team and officially publishing it to the FSL site or starting to show it to students as part of the process will be the ultimate goal.

I’m not going to lie saying the first six weeks were easy, sophomore year hit me much harder than freshman year. However, I am finally feeling like I have everything under a bit of control.

With that being said, I am also starting to get some projects rolling for this year with Full Spectrum Learning!

1. Data Grid

The major breakthrough I have had near the end of this week was the progress of the data grid! It took MANY months and a lot of trial and error, but I think I finally got it to a point I am happy with presenting to the rest of the college to hopefully get some data.

Here is the current progress of the grid:

It does not look like a lot currently, but I am excited to see how it grows when more data is added.

The major problems (and fixes) I have had with this report have been figuring out the data labels, the coloring, and getting the actual data to look correct.

The first problem was solved by making the data labels based on the intersection name instead of the actual class of data. We want a broad visualization of the data instead of class-specific and when you hovered over the point on the grid, only one class of information showed.

Second, Data Studio only allows 20 different colors to be used in a report, and there are 25 intersections on the grid. We decided to instead base the colors on the number of classes in a specific intersection. I have it set to three different levels of popularity, low, medium, and high. The shade of purple darkens the more popular it is. Because of the low amounts of data, there aren’t any intersections that reach the medium or high popularity level.

Lastly, the hardest problem of them all was just getting all of the data correctly adjusted on the grid. I figured out the easiest way to make it all work was to have all of the data on a separate sheet and auto-fill based on the new data that is filled in. Previously, when I added new rows of data from the form, the formulas on the other sheet would adjust and break. Working with Taylor, we figured out the easiest way to solve this problem would be using an Array Formula to fill the columns when the new data is added from the form. This allows the data grid to autofill seconds after the form is filled out.

2. Website Tweaks

A constant project I am working on is trying to add to and update the website. Currently, we are up to 9 videos on the interactive grid!

The major project of the few past weeks was adding a blog to the Full Spectrum Learning site! I found a plugin named Premium Addons for Elementor that allows me to show previews of the blog posts on a blog landing page. This also allows me to use Elementor to create a base and then add the previews without changing the theme of the site.

I also added a featured post section featuring three different works from professors and students.

Currently, there are six blog posts on the site. The majority of these are implementation reports from the SNC DigPINS site. I worked with Taylor to set up syndication of the blogs, meaning each time a blog is posted on DigPINS with that category, the post automatically is created on the Full Spectrum site. This process uses a plugin called FeedWordPress. Another great thing about this plugin is that when the link to the post is clicked, it brings the post to the original home. This makes sure that each post is not creating a duplicate, causing other issues.

For the posts not on the DigPINS site, we are using a plugin called Quick Page/Post Redirect. This allows a post to be redirected to the original when clicked, allowing the individual’s site to be featured. With this plugin, only the first few lines that appear on the preview need to be copied, the rest is not seen due to the automatic redirect.

Last week we updated the Full Spectrum Learning website to include the blog and a few minor other changes including changing the feature colors to purple and adding a bit more information.

You can check out the changes here: https://fullspectrumlearning.knight.domains/blog/

3. Tech Bar

This year I have had the opportunity to become a Tech Bar consultant and I am really enjoying this new opportunity. Even though Tech Bar and FSL are not directly connected, they overlap a lot. I appreciate being able to explain my passion for websites and offering help to students who may not know where to start.

These first few weeks have been a bit hectic, but looking back a lot of progress has been made for Full Spectrum Learning especially with the Data Grid and Website in only a little over the first month!