Bennett VS. Boyd

I don't know if it's my own pessimistic nature, but I agreed with Danah Boyd. Boyd was honest in her opinion and to a certain extent right about people and their laziness. I am in fact one of those lazy people and that is a big problem that Boyd talks about.

A couple of times I agreed with Boyd when she said, that young people aren't using SNses to their advantage " It is this lack of motivation that we need to understand and address to improve our democracy and our government." I believe in what she says, but it's hard to change people's minds. People only do things when they want, not when others tell them to. 

I like how she uses the internet to prove her point to get young people interested in civic responsibility. People are all about self interest and flattery, why not use that to create a social networking site, "but social network sites certainly provide a platform for attention-seeking people to do their thing. 

With Boyd I have mixed feelings. I agree with him sometimes and disagree on others issues. Right away I agreed with his opinion of the younger generation being less interested in joining a political party. But, he is just wrong in saying young people don't vote. If you look at the last two elections, the youth vote was higher than it had been in previous presidential elections. There is a reason for young people turning out to vote. Young people and myself included feel like they can relate to the current president in his views. He has done a lot for education that matters to me and hundreds of thousands of college students all over the country. 

Overall, Bennett's tone was much better that Boyd's. It seemed like Bennettt had more solutions instead of placing blame on someone. Bennett is more realistic, "Learning to become an effective citizen does not happen automatically." 

I like the way Bennett writes and there is a flow to his writing. I find myself relating to him more, especially after my group worked on spruz.com to stop animal cruelty. "The bottom line is that digital natives largely do not participate in civic affairs out of a sense of duty or obligation but a sense of personal fulfillment." This quote is very true for me anyways. Honesty, I did not care about this project when it was first assigned, but at the end of the experience,you feel that you've made a contribution and a worthy one at that. 

Reflections on Social Networking

It's been a long process with using spruz.com for our social networking cause. Our cause is stopping animal cruelty. A very popular and worthy cause that can reach everyone. Our group has tried to play on viewers emotions. Playing on people's pathos is smart with a cause like this.

 It's sad to think animals are being treated so unfairly. Our group has done a good job of showing just how awful people can be mistreating animals. We also had interesting blog posts and discussion entries by all of our members. I would say, our group all cares about dogs and the well-being of dogs, but we tried to mix the posts and discussions up. Our posts and discussion threads was about puppy mills, cruelty in farming, elephant poaching, and cosmetics and household chemical testing on animals.

Overall, minus the bugs, working with spruz.com on this social networking project was fun and felt good to make a difference.

Reflections on Wikitravel

I have to say this was one of my favorite projects. It always helps when your interested in something and I think that is clear to anyone who reads my page.

I provided a lot of information that most tourists wouldn't receive. The key to any good vacation to a new spot is ask questions. You want to know where the locals go, because if they go, you know the food is good.

Also it's Maine. You can't go wrong with seafood. there is always plenty to do and see on the East Atlantic coast.

After reviewing my comments on this project, I went back and made some revisions. My sleep section sounded to much like an advertisement or phone book listing, which Wikitravel does not want. This is the time to be creative and write about lived experiences.

So I added a comment under each sleep option I offered. Trying to let people know what they can expect if they choose a particular hotel. I think this could be helpful. Its not fun when you wake up at 2am and people are loud outside your window. It's good to give potential tourists expectations near specific locations.

Reflections on Website Redesign

It is obvious that the new web page my group designed is far better than the original. All it took was a few simple design changes. Grouping like items together and lack of any organization was one of Matunuck Surf Shop's problems. By putting necessary information in the same area creates proximity. Contrast was another huge issue for the original site. The site was too immature and did not work with the site. So by adding some contrasting colors like orange and blue made a world of difference.

Knowing Your Audience While Blogging

It's important to know your audience and who you might be talking to while writing a blog. All  bloggers must know what they are talking about. This goes to their credibility. To introduce yourself to people reading your blog, it is good to have a detailed about me page. This about me page is like a snapshot. It lets the people reading the blog know who you are and why your blogging to begin with.

Next, bloggers should provide a type of mission statement. A sentence or two describing what this blog is about. This description let's potential readers know what the blog is going to be about, before even reading a single post.

The saga of Spruz.com continues

Oh spruz.com how you infuriate me. Why is it, that something goes wrong right before an assignment is due. For example, a student computer crashes in the middle of working on a 10 page research paper, not having access to online journals or not having access to spruz 48 hours before your final project is due. For the heck of it and because I was so desperate because I saved no work I did on spruz. I signed up for a $5 plan and voila spruz.com started to work. I don't see spruz.com becoming a successful site anytime soon, with all these problems they've been having. Soon enough this project will be over and will never have to interact with spruz.com ever again. Now I promise I'm done ranting. Goodbye.

Looking at sites I frequent for Web design

Sites I visit:

Vans.com http://www.vans.com/

                Has a lot going on, very busy. May not need all that information. Provides a lot of interaction for potential visitors. Good color scheme of red, black and white.

Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/

                Amanzon.com is pretty user friendly, very bright and easy to navigate. I like their color scheme of orange and blue. These colors are contrasting colors and work nicely against the black font titles and white background.

Todayshow.com http://www.today.com/

                Todayshow.com  provides viewers with plenty of information. If you can’t watch on a tv. Today has all their segments online available to watch or in case you missed something or would like to re-watch something like a recipe. Having a website can be better because you can print information out.

IMDB.com http://www.imdb.com/

                Has just the right amount of tabs, not to busy. Has multiple functions. Imdb provides updated top news, TV news , movie news, and celebrity news.

3 Tips From the Wikitravel Manual of style

The Manual of Style is a set of guidelines that provide continuity on Wikitravel.

Tip 1. Choose the correct template for writing on Wikitravel. I am talking about a small city of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. So I chose a small city article template. Even though Old Orchard Beach is relatively small, OOB still offers a lot to do.

Tip 2. External Links are links that are outisd Wikitravel and can be very helpful for anyone viewing a particular page. Use bare minimum links

links such as the city of commerce, a hotel, restaurant or park are all considered primary sources.

Tip 3. Another tip that I beieve can be helpful is Don't tout – describe, don't push. I think I have trouble with providing information in a way that's descriptive and not advertising.

Wikitravel Writing

I'm starting to really get into writing on Wikitravel. I never realised how much I knew about Old Orchard Beach. After I started writing all my subheadings under Wikitravel, I realised how much has changed since I've been going 15 years ago. I have a better undersdtand of the type of writing Wikitavel is looking for. There is so much to do in OOB. I have so many categories like Sleep, Get In, Get Around, Eat, See and where to Shop. I remember when I first started going, you had to ask the locals where to go. This is essentialy the purpose of Wikitravel. The author is giving the potential traveler insider information on the best places to visist.

What good is a social networking site if you can't get on it?

I'm sure I'm not the only one in my class asking why we can't get on spruz.com. It's infuriating when you have a task to complete and you can't even get on the site to do it. If I were spruz.com, I would seriously rethink the site and it's functionality. I wouldn't say I know everything there is to blogging, but I know when a site is user friendly and not. To me, spruz.com goes beyond user friendly, they are a pain in the ass.

After this mini episode with spruz.com, I don't expect to get any members to join our stop animal cruelty page. It's hard to take the project seriously or spruz.com seriously if the entire class can't even get on the site.

Matunuck Surf Shop Web Redesign

The Matunuck Surf Shop desperately needed change. After reading the Basic Design Principles for non-designers, I understood how certain changes can make all the difference.

For instance, alignment can make a huge difference. Having the right alignment can make a site more functional and easier to navigate. So our group left aligned everything and once the alignment of the site was finished, your eye naturally sees organization which was clearly lacking in the original site.

Contrast is a very important concept of basic design principles.  The way our group used contrast was with color. We used blue and orange as the background theme for the new site. These two colors work very well together because they are contrasting colors. Contrasting colors like green and red, purple and yellow and blue and orange really pop when used together.

The same goes for proximity,on the original site information was never linked together, it was all over the web page. Our group organized everything together on a contact page. Having information in close proximity together just makes sense. Proximity can help create a brand and an identity.

Another concept of design principles is repetition. Repetition means that you use the same elements over again. On each page of the new site left alignment is carried over. Just like the orange and blue theme that we chose for the Matunuck Surf Shop.

Blogging Professional

Maybe I over exaggerated. I am not a blogging professional, but I'm getting there. I am more comfortable and familiar with the writing online process. I am a bit delinquent in my writing and the blogging five times for each project. In that respect, I have no rhythm or schedule that I follow. In a perfect world I would be blogging periodically during each project, but I didn't or haven't.

Even though this is a 200 level class, this course is tough work. I underestimated the amount of time I would have to put into this class and the writing that corresponded with each project.

During this last project a social media project, I will stay on top of my writing and remember to blog five times about the progress my group and I have made. So far, I have posted twice. Took me long enough, but better late than never.

Working with Spruz.com on Animal Cruelty

I cannot say it enough, I do not like spruz.com. The site is way to slow and I know it was explained to me that because it's a free site means more users which means the site slows down. I get it.

The site is also a little difficult to navigate and can be confusing with members and the log in process. Our group came across an issue today with the way spruz is set up. Our group needed a songs tab and we couldn't add songs because we would have had to pay for the upgrade. so we adapted and used YouTube videos that played music. However, it's things like this that deter me from every using the site outside of class for a future social media project.

Animal Cruelty my Social Networking Cause

Our last writing in an electronic environment project is social networking. The purpose of this project is to become active on social media sites about a cause that we're passionate about. My group members and I chose Animal cruelty as a platform to voice our opinions and outrage(or disgust rather). Ideally this site would inform people, if they don't know already about the horrible mistreatment of animals, and how laws against animal cruelty are not what they should be.

Through this project, we as a group must come together with one voice and speak out against animal cruelty.

Let the project begin.

Website Redesign

I was so surprised by the amount of websites that are horribly designed. Whether it's aesthetics or actual content websites need a lot of work. As a group, we all have a basic understanding that simple is key. The Matunuck Surf Shop had no cohesion to it, color choice made no sense and some pages had dead links.

Our group made more simplistic design choices without compromising the feel of the surf shop. We're going for this orange and blue contrasting color feel. These contrasting colors work well together and instill a calm feeling when browsing the new site.

Wordpress

Our next project required groups of students to use wordpress.com to redesign a website. That sounded complicated to me. To get familiar with wordpress.com, we had to watch some tutorials on lynda.com. They were very helpful, however when it came to actually redesigning a website I found more help on YouTube.

In the process of redesigning, our group decided that our website a matunuck surf shop needed drop down menus. So initially I went on Lynda and there were so many videos to sift thru. So I went to Google and was directed to a simple video on YouTube. That clip on YouTube made it very easy for me to create drop down menus.

Once I created drop down menus on word press, it became really fun. Word press is a great tool that anyone can use for free.

Learning how to post on Wikitravel

This project of editing a page on Wikitravel is awesome. I have a voice, and someone might take my advice on a particular destination. I am going to do my Wikitravel project on Old Orchard Beach, Maine. It is a wonderful place for families, great food and has an old timey feel to it.

I was surprised from all the readings on Wikipedia how they have their own style and the way they talk about destinations. They strongly advise you not to advertise or write like a brochure for someplace. This is not a cheesy commercial, but giving plain facts to travelers. It's an insider experience and that experience enables me to dish out pertinent information. For someone whose been to OOB many many times, I believe I have the authority to guide people to find good, decent sleeping arrangements and awesome food, considering OOB is on the coast of Maine. Hello Lobster!

Getting Comfortable with Blogging

I am really getting into blogging. I love the design aspect of creating your own background. My background is for now anyways, a movie theatre curtain because my blog is about old Hollywood movie stars. I would like to create a collage of pictures and movie posters for a background, have the Hollywood sign in black and white or possibly Grauman's Chinese Theatre which is now sadly being called the TCL Chinese theatre.

I like having a place to express my opinions about a topic of interest to me. Even if sadly, they may not be viewed by anyone. However, my blog will forever be out in the open void and someday, somewhere, somehow they might be read.

Learning to Blog

Blogging has been an experience. For my age and the importance of social media, I should be an expert.

Everything looks foreign to me. I don't know the lingo, I'm worried about identity theft and not having an appealing enough blog.

I will soon be learning everything their is to know about blogging from lynda.com. They have great tutorials and far more details than blogger provides(Sorry, but it's true.)

I guess I can only improve from here(Right?)

Wurman's The Business of Understanding

Richard S. Wurman's article The Business of Understanding spoke to me as it must have to everyone. I thought Wurman's ideas were relatable to students and teachers. As a college student, I've been able to reflect on my high school education and I can now admit to being guilty of not asking questions. I flew under the radar and never asked for clarification and denied myself the opportunity to learn and grow.

I agreed with many of Wurman's views, but could also find areas to argue and disagree with. My first disagreement with Wurman is where he wrote about being unpopular at meetings, "because an admission of ignorance wasn't the behavior that was rewarded in our society." This is where I differ in opinion, I cannot fathom a society that would reject questions where education has been the cornerstone of American progression. Maybe it's a generational difference, but I've noticed that my professors ask and encourage questions and or comments.

We live in a knowledge and information based society were asking and acquiring new information is helpful, but expected. This semester I am taking COM 351 Business Communication, and now more than ever an effective communicator is in high demand. "Data and information, although words used interchangeably in our language and our culture, are not the same. Not only does information have more value, it takes more work to create and communicate. For all the talk of this being the Information Age, it would be more accurate to call it, instead, the Age of Data." From this quote from Wurman's article I have deducted that most people would rather have you explain the data instead of interpreting it yourself. Further adding more weight to my claim that communicating effectively trumps out data.