Evaluation

Overall I think the product isn't really successful as it could've been; our plan wasn't full proof, and had many flaws within it, and following it instead of making a "plan B", took down our whole project. Firstly my gantt chart said that everything must be finished by 28/2/2010, when we finally finished it in 18/3/2010, it was still not completely finished. Our original plan was that, the website will have a home page, benefits page, limitations page, pictures page, videos page and a forum page. Whereas the final product had: Homepage, benefits page and a forum page plus a process journal page. Such a small amount of pages wasn't enough to show everything we had accomplished. Although the information in those pages is vital, its not enough to explain and demonstrate how Skype helps school. If this was shown to DR. Hedger, it would be the same basic things he would see on any other Skype advertising site; nothing special.

I think the downfall of the website is completely my own fault, and I attest to that. I was really disorganized in the course of this project, when I realized that my gantt chart was wrong and had incorrect dates, I should've changed it. I also, later on in the project, decided to use a different web designer, which I should've added into ,y plan, so I would know what to do as I continued to do my project. The main reason why didn't do much, was too much reliance on my team members, when in turn they didn't do much themselves. I was also lazy for ht e fact, that there is too much work anyway and that on the last day I'll know what to write anyway. This was not the case, i should've done research beforehand and saved all my resources onto diigo, which I left aside for the whole project, because I was in a rush all the time and often forgot to save soruces. Next time I better make two plans, in case one fails, be attentive and do thing calmly; if I don't finish everything in school, doesn't mean the world is going to end, I can do more later at home.

The impact this website has on the life of others, namely the teachers and the students, is it makes life easier, when a child is sick at home, and teacher has to prepare work for that particular student. With Skype, the student can just chat with the teacher online, and the teacher can explain any hands-on activities the student needs to do; better yet the teacher can just set up Skype video chat, and just put it on a stand so the student can see the whole classroom and work along with them in each period. This will help both the student as well as the teacher; the student doesn't need to have any stress, since all his work is going to be done anyway, and when he comes to school, it will be much easier to "fit back in". The teacher has less work to do, as he doesn't need to waste his time on one particular student and preparing so much work for that one student. There's also a way this helps the environment; normally the teacher will need to print out a lot of work for the student. If its a irresponsible student, half of the sheets won't be done, which is a waste of paper. However, if the files are sent to the student via the fast accessible Skype, even the student doesn't do the work, no papers are being wasted, meaning the paper taken from so many trees can be used in other ways, such as for end of unit tests or reflections.

Overall, I think this project was a good experience, especially learning how to embed codes and learn html codes for your website, which was tough for me, even with a tutorial, but it will definitely help me when I get a job, say, if I need to make a website for my company, with pictures and videos.