Wrapping

As, I’ve had in mind for awhile, I’d like to create a pretend organization called Save the Redheads to utilize the information from my personal inquiry. This type of product made a lot of sense and actually helped me decide which pieces of information were important in my query and which pieces were expendable. For example, the book Redhead Encyclopedia had so much neat information about famous redheads in pop culture and history, but I didn’t feel this was really important to my topic of redhead extinction. Although I enjoyed reading it, I don’t need to include information about famous redheads in my web site.

Other possibilities I considered were a PowerPoint presentation, perhaps meant to raise awareness on the issue of redhead extinction; a pamphlet or poster raising awareness of the issue; and even an original song about saving redheads. I decided my composition skills were a little rusty for songwriting, but I may do that in the future for fun. I still feel that a website would improve my personal technological literacy and be fun for people to explore.

This project has really helped me be more technologically literate. enGuage 21st Century Skills describes some of their technology standards as using "a variety of technology tools in effective ways to increase productivity" and using technology "to access, evaluate, process and synthesize information from a variety of sources"(22). I've used so many tools such as graphic organizers on the web(for the first time), Inspiration (for the first time), FTP software, Blogger, HTML, Excel spreadsheets, and several other things I'm probably not thinking of.

A web site is a great medium for sharing information because it can be very organized and groups information in similar categories. In L571, we learned how to make a blueprint of a website. This is very similar to making a concept map, in fact Inspiration has a template for web blueprints. I have taken the concept map (with questions and inferences) from my previous post and translated it into a blueprint for my Save the Redheads organization web site. In this blueprint, I also included explanations of each section and how I'm incorporating the material I found in my inquiry. Here's my blueprint, just click on it to enlarge and read:

To plan for my audience, I used the Planning Chart available from www.eduplace.com, as suggested by Lamb’s Teacher Tap. Click here to view a copy of my Planning Chart. Save the Redheads is an organization that would be very useful for redheads, family members and friends of redheads, and perhaps even doctors, biologists, and researchers. I will examine non-profit organization models and see how these mesh with my research findings to produce a web site that is user friendly, interesting, and informative.

This information is not only important to me, as a redhead, but it is important to a lot of my family, friends, classmates, and even the general public. I just think, what would the world do if all the blonds became extinct? Although the redhead population is probably not as highly regarded in the beauty category as blonds, they are still a significant part of the population. Just like any endangered species, redheads deserve awareness before they fade away.