First of all, just a couple of quick closing thoughts on Project 2. With our project all but done now, something that has really struck me now, and BBA2's will understand this better, is how this project ended up tying in with what we did in BIT 301 in the form of FrontPage (For those of you who are BBA1's, the final assignment for us in 301 last year was to create a web site using FrontPage). I found it really cool and useful then, and even more so now. I know that Prof. Gibson emphasized functionality and not appearance, but from what I saw in presentations, everyone seemed to go the extra mile to make their pages look pretty impressive anyway, and to me it was much clearer how what we were doing could be so useful for organizations. When I saw all those layouts it was easy to imagine how the pages, with all the functionalites, would actually be used by an organization (way more so than just seeing a Parent directory and whatnot). As far as I know, most groups used FrontPage to design these pages, and it was cool that in our group myself and the other BBA2 already had knowledge of FrontPage from 301 and so we were able to get the job done more quickly and efficiently. Another thing that sticks in my mind after doing this project is that I finally understand how organizations's IT costs for databases could be as staggering as they are, seeing how much work and resources (not to mention Oracle which we conveniently had available to use for free but in a company this wouldn't be the case) it would take to design a full-fledged functional databse for a college organization like Dance Marathon, it's easy to believe the millions and millions of dollars a behemoth multinational corporation has to spend.
And now, I want to clear something up. It's become clear to me at this point, through some blogs and emails, that there is a strong possibility that some misconceptions going around about the intent of my last blog, about the blogging experience in this class. So I wanted to make sure to clear this up, juuuust in case: I cannot emphasize strongly enough that my intent was absolutely NOT to get the percentage of the grade determined by blogging to be lowered for our term. To me, that would be like spitting in the face of the many people who went above and beyond what was required of them in passionately blogging like crazy all semester, and most were very useful and insightful blogs for the class I might add. It would basically amount to me saying that I think these people should get less credit for something they gave 110% on. I am shocked and disappointed to see that my comments may have been interpreted in this case. When I stated that I believed blogging shouldn't count for such a large % of grade I was talking about in the FUTURE, since Bud had asked us to suggest possible changes in the future. However, going over my blog again, I can see how this misconception might have been made and understand that my choice of words may not have been the best, and for that I apologize to Bud and my classmates. I ASSURE you, i was NOT campaigning, or trying to make a play, or any other way it could be called, to get blogging's weight on class grade lowered for this term. To use a cliche, I have too much respect for my classmates to do that. Bud asked us to provide feedback and opinions on our blogging experience, and I thought that's what I was honestly doing. A positive lesson probably comes out of this for me:this does go to show how bloggers should be careful about what they write when a lot of people will be reading what you say. I should have gone over that blog before I posted it. Anyway, let me close by restating that I did enjoy the blogging experience, thought it was a very value-added activity for the class that greatly enhanced the spirit of the class as a whole, and should definitely be a part of not only this class but other classes in the future, and I regret that the part about my blog that stood out was the one about the grading policy. Have a fun break, everyone!
~Jason~