Monday, September 27, 2010

Interesting Article

While I was on Twitter the other day, I found this article which takes an interesting view on reading. Basically, the article examines the difference between on-screen reading and paper copy reading. I thought it might be something you guys might be interested in. Below is the link.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/36037/

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Technological Biography

I have to be honest. I felt like this assignment was extremely frustrating. First, I found it difficult to pick out certain events in my past that dealt with technology and how they made me who I am today. As I began to think of these events, I began to come up with several important events but I could not include all of these. Second, I had a lot of difficulty deciding which ones would be entertaining and important enough to discuss.  I have so many experiences with technology, past and present. Did anyone else experience any of these problems with their projects?

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

First Assignment

   Our first assignment for English 336 Writing for the Web was to critique a website. At first I was nervous about this, because I have never done anything like this before. How could I do this without having any formal training on deciding what makes a website good and bad. Even though I have my opinions on what does work on a website and what doesn't, I was not sure my understanding and opinion was educated enough for this project. Eventually, I relaxed and started to take my opinion and turn it into an analysis.

    I decided to  critique the Jazz Arts Group website. It is a non-profit organization here in Columbus, Ohio. This organization has many different roles, including increasing education in the community and in the schools. Although I knew this type of organization would have a significant and well put together website, I thought it might be fun to take on the challenge of trying to find something wrong or discovering an area that needed improvement.

  At first, everything  on the website appeared perfect. The use of color and Flash media was not over done. The website was easy to navigate and each different aspect of the organization had its own different section. Eventually, I noticed an area that might be of concern, the currency of the events that were listed. I was cautious with this though, before I bashed the entire website for this one little error, I took a step back and realized that maintaining a website like this is time consuming. Updating a single event daily may not be possible.
    
     Through this project I learned not only how to judge what makes a good website good, and what makes on bad, I also gained a since of confidence. I do not need to be a professional website critic to make these judgements.