So go check it out!
10 Steps To The Perfect Portfolio Website

Pros

• Flexible Schedule – Do assignments and read lectures, books, websites, etc whenever and wherever you want
• Learn Anywhere – Wherever there is an internet connection, you can be in class.
• Few “tests” – Most grades are based on projects that help show individual talent and understanding rather than simple memorization.
• Convenience & Flexibility – It’s good for those that prefer to work independently, but it does require a bit of discipline.
• Convenience – Don’t have to worry about weather issues (like snow).
• Anonymity – Because this is somewhat anonymous, people may participate more than they probably would in a traditional classroom setting where they would shy away from discussions.
• Dealing with professionals in my line of work – Most everyone is already in the creative field in one way or another, so we can relate.

Cons

• Cost – Currently about $70k for a bachelor degree)
• Many classes are dated – Quite a bit of interactive media assignments aren’t currently being used in the real world. I don’t care what the facilitators try to tell you, Authorware is dead…let it go.
• Lack of Social Aspect – There is no face-to-face interaction that students of ground schools get to experience. Network and socializing is somewhat more difficult and less effective
• Lack of Traditional Benefits – Due to it’s nature there are no benefits like you would find at a traditional campus, such as student gyms, doctors, social programs, stocked library, ect.
• Lack of Advice – The school only provides a minimum amount of guidance when pursuing financial aid and career guidance.
• Class Lecture Material/Textbook Choices – Most times, the information is so old in the lectures and even more often than that, the information included is not in depth enough. Quite often, the textbooks are less than helpful as well. There are many students that do not even buy textbooks…ever…and still make straight A’s.
• Anonymity – Yes, this is both a pro and a con. Sometimes it’s hard to be so alone…it’s not just being alone as far as classes go. It is being anonymous when it comes to administration, too. Academic advisers would seem to be more apt to help out if we were right in front of them.
• Waiting Period – Sometimes it makes things difficult when you have questions for an instructor and you have to wait for a response through e-mail or in the discussions….sometimes takes days. On rare occasions, the facilitator may not even respond, which negatively impacts assignments.
• Facilitators – They should still be teachers. Just because we are online and this is self-based learning, does that mean that they should simply give grades and feedback. We want the wisdom of their experience. There are some good ones out there, those that go above and beyond to do whatever they can to make the learning experience a positive one. Far too often, though, the bad ones outweigh the good ones…and a bad facilitator makes it a painful experience when you feel like you’re wasting 5 1/2 weeks and $1300+ dollars!
• Pre-structured Classes – The teachers basically have little or no input into what material we cover and how we cover it since it is all laid out in advance. Many facilitators blame the material rather than fixing it as they go. Then again, some facilitators step up and fix the mistakes, errors, and outdated material.
• State grants (outside of PA) will not be accepted at The Art Institute Online since AIO is a division of The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. If you receive a state grant outside of PA…well…you’re out of luck.
• No connection with most of the classmates! I mean yeah, we have bios on the first day of class but other than that, the postings are just blah and it’s easy to disconnect with people. It would be nice if we had a section in each class for more personal topics if someone wants to post whats new with them, life, pictures, to share what they did over the weekend, whatever. There is a student lounge for such posts, but the “new” classroom format makes it easy for cobwebs to form in that section of the forums.
• Session 2 of every quarter - The Art Institute Online arguably has the most screwed up schedule for “semesters”. There are two sessions in a quarter. Each session is 5 1/2 weeks long. The first session runs basically from Monday-Sunday (yes…you can be in class any day of the week, but the first 5 are typically the busiest). The second session though runs Thursday-Wednesday which means you do the bulk of assignments on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! It makes it incredibly difficult to get into any sort of schedule with work and life as you are forced to move everything around the changing school schedule. It flat out sucks.

Summary

So there you have it…a rather extensive, honest list from actual students of the pros and cons of The Art Institute Online. Hopefully this will give people interested in attending AIO an inside scoop on what might be expected. I hope it also serves as a list of issues for The Art Institute that the students are most concerned about. A few of the cons are minor issues that could easily be resolved within the administration, which would make an immediate impact. The #1 pro was “convenience” as students like the ability to attend class wherever and whenever. I, personally, had an extremely hard time justifying the cost of the online version needing to be $100 more per class than the on-ground version at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh and I have never received a straight-up and honest answer for the cost. I’ve been led to believe (based on my experience as well as others) they can charge whatever they feel like since they are are private institute and operate it as more of a business than an educational institution…students just have to deal with it. Students simply do not get all of the advantages as campus students with computers, labs, software, library, face-to-face & immediate feedback, etc. Online learning may be the wave of the future, but the Art Institute is wading about ankle deep and not fully utilizing nor teaching many of the latest technology (as far as “Interactive Media Design” goes)…it’s still a rather rough and turbulent ride as they work out the kinks. If you can attend an on-ground campus, then I strongly suggest doing so. If your schedule prohibits that, then The Art Institute Online can still offer an opportunity to hang a degree on your wall.

Be sure to also read the numerous comments below posted by actual students as well as people who went through the application process for The Art Institute Online. You’ll find many reviews for the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division below.

Finally, here are a few other sources of student reviews of The Art Institute Online:
studentsreviews.com
associatedcontent.com
getdregrees.com
onlinedegreereviews.org

Do you have something you’d like to share about The Art Institute Online? Please do so in the comment section below!

My original pain began when I upgraded to Adobe CS3 Master Collection. As soon as I upgraded to CS3, Flash Player stopped working in Internet Explorer while it worked perfectly in Firefox…..aaaahhhhh Firefox….how I love thee. So my search began for a fix. I uninstalled, reinstalled, clean uninstalled, removed the ActiveX control, etc etc. I scoured forums, blogs, technotes, etc only to end up with the same result…Flash player working perfectly in Firefox but not Internet Explorer 7.

I FINALLY got everything working perfectly after a few simple steps, which I outline below, but I will say that I uninstalled IE7 and did the steps with IE6 and then reinstalled IE7 after everything was working. I don’t know if this helped to fix the situation, but I wanted to mention that before we get started. If the following steps don’t work, then try uninstalling IE7 (by going to Add/Remove Programs and removing Internet Explorer 7 from there).

Alright…here we go!

*DISCLAIMER*
Proceed at your own risk…I accept no responsibility for any outcome (good or bad) from the following steps as these are directions and files straight from Adobe and Microsoft. If you still feel froggy, let’s roll.

First off…go ahead and download the following files and save them in a folder so that you don’t have to open your browser until all steps are completed: (All links are to Adobe, Macromedia, or Microsoft for your ease of mind in knowing they’re legit)

1. Flash Player Uninstaller
2. SubInACL tool
3. reset_minimal.zip file
4. Install Flash Player 9 ActiveX.exe file from Adobe

Next, completely uninstall the Flash Player Plugin. This will remove the pesky Active X Control that seems to get in the way of getting Flash Player to work properly in Internet Explorer. The following instructions for completely removing the Flash Player Plugin is from technote kb402435 on Adobe’s site.

(You should have already downloaded this file from above….just place it in your root Local Disk folder…most likely C:\ ) Download the uninstaller for Flash Player from “How to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player plug-in and ActiveX control” (TechNote tn_14157). Note: The uninstall_flash_player.exe file must be saved to the same directory that the command window is in, for example C:\.

1. Select Start.
2. Select Run.
3. Type cmd
4. In the command window, type the following:
   uninstall_flash_player.exe /clean
5. This will remove all entries in the system registry.

The next step was what seemed to do the trick for me. This is somewhat hidden on Adobe’s site as technote fb1634cb

Using the SubInAcL tool from Microsoft to fix permission issues in the registry has solved installation errors for several products including Flash Player.

Warning! The following solution involves the Windows System Registry. Editing or manipulating the registry incorrectly can result in serious system damage which may require reinstallation of the operating system. If you are not comfortable editing the registry, then take your system to a professional. If you choose to proceed, then it is essential that you create a complete system backup and a Windows System Restore Point before proceeding. Adobe Systems cannot be held responsible for damage resulting from this information.

You must have administrator privileges to successfully complete these instructions.

1. (If you downloaded the files above, you can skip this step) Follow the instructions to download the SubInACL tool from the Microsoft Download Center.
2. Install SubInACL.
3. (If you downloaded the files above, you can skip this step) Download the reset_minimal.zip file .
4. Extract the reset_minimal.cmd file to C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\.
5. *Important: Be sure that both the subinacl.exe and reset_minimal.cmd files are in the same location here: C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\.
6. Double-click reset_minimal.cmd.
7. This will open a command window and execute the SubInACL tool.
8. Do not use the machine while SubInACL is running.
9. When it is finished you will see “Press any key to continue”.
10. *NOTE* This 10^th step is mine…I downloaded the Install Flash Player 9 ActiveX.exe file from Adobe (which you downloaded from above as 1 of the 4 files I mentioned) and ran that and went to the next step.
11. Install the Flash Player from www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer.

Once I did that, everything worked great in Internet Explorer 6!!! I then downloaded IE7 and installed it and everything continued to work perfectly. If these steps worked for you also, please share your success in the comment sections below. If you have another solution that works, please share that as well!

Some of the features I’m stoked about are:

• php & mysql!
• Sweet Drag & Drop design mode
• Shipping integration
• Template driven to separate the content from design
• SEO Friendly!!!! The URLs it generate are simply…yummy
• AJAX used to enhance experience
• Even the default layout they show blows away just about every other shopping cart software package I’ve ever seen

If you have an Ecommerce project coming up, I highly suggest you bookmark the StoreSuite shopping cart software by Interspire. You’ll be seeing a lot of websites using this in the near future. I can’t wait to set some of my own projects up with this!

What am I talking about? Your digital resume. “What is a digital resume?” you might ask. Well, think of it as everything you do online that can be viewed by others. This includes MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, forums, websites where you leave comments, etc. ANYthing of yours online that can be seen by others is your digital resume. It is you and how your employers, clients, and customers will perceive you whether it’s the “real” you or not…to them it’s the real you. Period.

I’ve unfortunately worked on projects in the past where people were either fired or not hired based on certain activities they were involved in online. How were they discovered? Simple…just searched for their name on various sites. You might think you can be sneaky and use a nickname, but you’re going to slip up somewhere and that nickname is going to be linked to your real name…then the trail starts. It’s up to you how that trail looks. I can’t stress it enough to be conscious of what you do online. You may not give a hoot what people think about you and you may make a living going through life with that attitude, but just be aware that you’re not “hiding behind a computer screen” lobbing out an “online lifestyle” that is “different” that your real life. To people that come in your life down the road…the two are the same.

On the other hand…use your “digital resume” as a tool to build a foundation for where you want to be down the road. Participate on sites, forums, groups, etc that parallel your plans. Leave a trail that shows how you got to where you are today. The people you communicate with and that see your activity may end up being the people who pay for that roof over your head and the food on your table. Don’t lose site of that.

Remember this…perception is reality…especially in the online world. What you do will be seen by someone important to you down the road. It’s up to you as to how they will react.

I have closed the forum off to new registrations, but I’ve left it open to view as it has a lot of great info about The Art Institute Online and the various fields of study. I don’t know what type of forum the Art Institute offers the students outside of class these days, but hopefully there’s something. I started the forums here simply because AiO didn’t offer anything like it at the time. They have since started Talk-On (the official school forums) and I hope it’s still up…because I’m retiring these forums. This was the first forum up and I like to think it sparked AiO’s desire to put together an official one…if not…oh well, let me think that anyway.

What I do have planned for this site, though, is something I hope many people will benefit from. I’ve been in the multimedia industry since around 1996 and have learned quite a bit that I want to share…specifically about interactive media. I’m going to share a ton of information moving forward that will definitely help anyone interested in interactive media and internet marketing.

If you’re thinking of attending The Art Institute Online…scan these articles and browse the forums to get the full scoop.

If you’re already attending…well…get your degree there and I’ll help you get an education.

If you’re an alumni…CONGRATS! Now the real fun begins.

Buckle up with me and hang on…this will be a fun ride.

Assignment Planner is an application which allows you to keep track of homework assignments for a number of different courses. It includes features that allow you to display only those assignments that are yet to be completed, add information to all your assignments, courses and textbooks for reference, filter assignments by their type, color code assignments by a number of different criteria, and much more. you can also export your assignments to a text file or to iCal, to easily view your assignments from your iPod.

Swing on over to http://assignmentplanner.burgundylogan.com and check out a nice way to keep track of your assignments in classes.

I saw this video over at Smiley Cat, which is an excellent web design blog. Although the video may be funny and being spread all across the web as a joke, there is an important lesson here – viral marketing. It is being spread like wildfire and is in-turn building traffic to his website. All of the links and traffic will increase his web popularity, which will result in better search engine results…regardless of how silly the video is. So while you laugh at the video, just think about this guy might actually know what he’s doing…at least that’s what I like to think.