Update

So now that Thanksgiving has come and past, it is time to update. My website is now online. This process was much more time consuming and lack of a better term, annoying than I thought it would be. Still, in the process of creating and uploading a website, I learned so many different things, including how to make a functioning website. At this point I have total confidence that I could make a solid homepage in a day. Besides feeling confident that I could make a website, I observed the difficulties of switching operating systems.

 During class time we worked on a PC platform, but I am MAC user and have these programs for Mac. Despite this change, I did not experience any major problems. However, it did take a while for me to get used to the different layout that a Mac platform offered. Once I got used to the layout of Dreamweaver for Mac, this platform and program was much easier to operate. In addition to the different platforms, I was also working with two different versions ofAdobe Creative Suite. Again, there were not that many differences and the ones that I did encounter were extremely small, and did not appear to alter anything.

Taking the chance to work on these two different platforms, as well as taking this class, helped me become a better consumer of technology and writer. Because I had to significantly adjust my writing style. Instead of long-winded, wordy documents, web documents had to be more concise. At first this was difficult, because I was used to composing written documents containing the typical elements found in a paper, such as a thesis.

Without question, this class has been one of the most informative and worthwhile classes I have taken during my four years at Capital. Not only did I learn how to produce and upload a website, I also learned how the changes in technology have helped to change the world. By understanding these developments I learned how these changes impacted me and made my education easier. For example, without my laptop, I would not be able to write documents as easy and efficiently as I can. Also, I am lucky enough to have a laptop, which is technologically advanced enough to support Dreamwaver, and photoshop as well as other programs included in Adobe Creative Suite 5.

As the semester comes to an end, this blog will begin to do the same. This blog and blogging about my experiences during this class has been more rewarding and fun than I would have expected. As I begin to conclude this blog, please feel free to comment or share your own experiences; either with these programs, or technology, because we are witnessing its change.

Individual Website

  For me the individual website has been a challenge and before last night I was really struggling with it. I still am, but not to the point of feeling hopeless and lost. Dreamweaver is a challenging piece of software, but I feel like once I can figure out how to do certain simple things I can progress to more difficult aspects. I just have to remember to put everything into layers, instead of just inserting tables, etc. 

  My biggest problem is deciding what my color scheme should be. I like the traditional black, grey and white, but as I found out last night using these colors alone creates a mundane website. A "mundane" website might be okay if that's its purpose or it matches the personality of the website creator. I don't know, but I would like to think strictly black, grey and white does not meet my personality, although I could be wrong. 

  So last night I decided I would experiment with color and the results were AWESOME. I found this pastel like pink color. Even though the color itself was awesome and appeared as if it would work well on my page, I was not ready to throw all caution to the wind. I used this color for my navigation bar. The pink contrasted very well with the grey and gives my website the necessary "pop" that it needed. 

  Even though I had a major success on the color front, not everything with my website went perfectly. I did make a lot of progress, but I feel I should have done more. My technological biography is still causing me major headaches. I finally narrowed it down to the last two or three pages. The information on these pages is the most worthwhile to me and my website. This solves the first problem, but creates a second. How do I put this on my website? Does anybody have any ideas on how I can do this? Any ideas or comments would be amazing. Thanks. 

"Visual Social Semiotics:Understanding How Images Make Meaning"

In her Article, "Visual Social Semiotics: Understanding How Images Make Meaning" Claire Harrison explains how photographs can produce meaning. I have to agree with her one hundred percent. Although, I thought her explanation and reasoning was at times dry and difficult to follow, but her writing style and  rhetoric does not take away from the importance of this idea. Every day we see how meaning and semiotics are perceived through photographs and other non-textual elements.

Billboards, magazine covers and politicians all use this method to grab our attention, make a point, and sometimes a profit. For example, I was watching T.V. the other day and noticed a disturbing political smear ad. I despise these aids and believe they do not serve any purpose or add anything to the individuals campaign. Instead, these ads only amplify the immaturity of the candidate running the aids. What made the aid so disgusting was it used the candidate's own daughter to slam this opponent. The first visual element of the commercial is a picture of a baby lying in a crib. At this moment, we are emotionally involved because our attention goes directly to the child in the crib. From here we are forced to watch and see how the baby is related to the commercial. During the first five to ten seconds of the ad, we are unaware the child's presence in this ad is technically unrelated to politics. Still this method is effective. Even though I had no intention of voting for this candidate before this ad it did make an emotional impact. Several days later I still remember the ad.

This ad reminds me of the Time magazine cover that we looked at in class. Personally, I think Time magazine should have chosen a photo which was more visually representative of the war in Afghanistan. I thought the photo they chose implied the cover story was going to be exclusively about the young girl, not our role in the war. I can understand wanting to make an emotional impact on the viewers and readers, but I also believe there needs to be an element of truthfulness to the photo. I mean I think the photo should remain true to the story or the message. Companies, politicians and news outlets should not choose photos based on how they make someone feel. Instead, they need to make this decision based on their audience, the story and the message they want to convey.

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/

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?

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.