thursday

Overall, I am happy with how our Powerpoint came together. I learned how to do screenshots last semester so had to remember how to do those for our presentation, and that is something I think will be useful to me often in the professional/college scene. We kind of rushed to get our finished product together since some of our group members didn't have working internet, but I am still happy with it. Presenting in front of a class makes me nervous but I hope I did alright. That is something that I will have to work on becoming more comfortable with. I also liked seeing everyone's presentations because they opened my eyes to websites beyond what I visit daily and will probably look at them now.

tuesday!

Our shortened class period made me realize how lost we all are without the internet. Granted, WRA 210 is a computer based class so there is not much we can do when the MSU server is down, but it is strange to realize how dependent I am on the internet. Even at my house on campus when our internet isn't working (which happens about 5 times a week and leads to us spending hours on the phone with Comcast) we all panic. I guess this is expected from a generation that grew up with the internet at our fingertips.

Our group was still able to complete most of what we needed to (with the exception of screenshots from the Viva Pw website) since we had our powerpoint saved on a group member's laptop. Once we add the pictures and divide up the slides, we will be ready to present on Thursday. Well, I need to start some homework and laundry and I suppose this is the ideal time because all of my roommates are out and about which is rare.

monday monday

I skimmed the many articles about creating effective powerpoint presentations. There were a few tips I was able to gather, including the importance of fonts that make one look professional. Also, I think I tend to want to put too much information on each slide and need to realize that bulleted lists are more effective in getting your point across without creating a cluttered presentation. I also liked in "Ten Tips for a Killer Presentation" how it encouraged presenters to be honest and not just tell the audience what they want to hear. I think these articles will help when we get into organizing our powerpoint, since on Thursday we focused more on getting most of the information inputed into the slide. Back to class!

goodbye weekend

I guess the weekend is over and it's time to start my schoolwork and I have been dreading it basically since Friday. Our group is working on our powerpoint and seems to be doing pretty well with it so I think it will come together nicely. I just finished reading "Have A Little Faith" by Mitch Albom and really enjoyed it. I wouldn't think that I'd be into such a religious book but I always have appreciated his style of writing and this was another one of his books that didn't let me down. I highly recommend it; I figure the beginning of the semester is really the only time that I have enough free time to read for fun.

progress

My group has just started our web analysis project and are planning to look at the Viva PW website. This will be interesting because my group is made up of a professional writing major (myself), a member who is half majoring in professional writing, and one who is majoring in journalism. That way we will have to perspective of many different affiliates of the professional writing program. I am looking forward to taking an in depth look at the website because I think it's a very interesting website considering it was created by students for students.

I am also working on the tech terms list and have found a lot of them to be similar and confusing.

Week 2 readings

Writing for a Web Audience: I found this information to be very interesting and true. I am always scanning articles like they suggested and found that I don't tend to pay much attention to graphics and am usually more concerned with interesting headlines. After reading that, I scrolled back up to see if I had even looked at the graphics on their website and realized I didn't notice them at all. I thought it was interesting how they created their website. Since it offers advice and studies about how to maintain the interest of web audiences, they would have to create their site in a way that keeps the viewer's interest so that they are not contradicting all that they write about. The website was easy to read, not distracting, and I didn't find myself skimming it much, which is surprising for me. I think the large font and attractive colors also helped because when websites are just white backgrounds with tiny black text, I give up much easier. I also thought it was important when they pointed out how you must build up trust with your users by being grammatically correct at all times. I completely agree with this because if I were to ever come across a professional website with misspellings, I would not be trusting of them at all. The inverted pyramid concept that they brought up was important and something that I learned in a journalism class in high school. I thought this was important because it ensures that websites and articles are catered to the busy reader.

Self Publishing is the New Blogging: This article was interesting to me because I studied the concept of self publishing a lot last semester in WRA 202. Self publishing is on the rise and doesn't require editors, distributing, marketing or much experience. Since this was written from a web design information blog, that has been around since 1995, it proves its point that anyone who chooses to publish to the web becomes an author. Also, the use of tags at the bottom of the article show how easy it is to access this post from other posts written about similar topics.

Understanding Your Web Audience: This article showed me how important it is to develop a target audience and write for them. These are the people that will use this information and spread it to their world. It is important to understand the demographics of your audience and what characteristics make up a group like that. By doing so, you can explore your audience's environment and cater your webpage to their browsers, experience level, and comfort with the web.

analyzing the ombudsman website

Target Audience: Students and faculty members at MSU who develop problems and grievances with the University.

Most Common Tasks: Resolves conflicts and disputes and helps faculty sort through legal terms and matters. Students can use the website to request a hearing with the Ombudsman and read questions and answers that others have posed

Tasks to Specific Users: Tells students how to file grievances and directs them to links such as The Academic Freedom Report and other MSU documents which outline student rights.
For everyone, there are university policies, swine flu facts and important dates.

User Navigation: It does not seem easy for users to navigate since one would have to know exactly what they were looking for and be familiar with the Ombudsman site for it to be useful.

Navigation Structure: This website is not easy to navigate. It is broken up into way too many pages and is stressful and cluttered. There are too many steps to go through and could be condensed into a much more visually appealing website that is user friendly.

Branding/Logo: The logo is simple, but effective. It is symbolic of communication and the Beaumont Tower shows MSU pride. When I was on other pages, I clicked on the logo expected it to take me back to the homepage but they were not linked.

Color Schemes: The color schemes are boring and the Comic Sans font is somewhat unprofessional. The green and white is standard for MSU websites but it is more of a grey and green which don't look very attractive together. The flashing “new” buttons are distracting.

Layout Presentation: The homepage is very cluttered considering there are buttons everywhere and they are not grouped in any particular order.

Summary: This website is not updated and would confuse me if I needed to use it. If it were updated, it could be very helpful to users. However, I see it as overwhelming and not something that I would want to ever use and would probably end up trying to call their office instead of using the website.

First Post

I haven't kept an online journal since they were popular when I was in middle school so it is strange to be writing in one again. It took me a little while to figure out but was not very difficult to set up. Blogs seem to be very user friendly and easy for those of all ages to utilize.

I read the article about the findings from the "A List Apart" and found that some of the terminology was familiar from the CSE 101 class that I took here at MSU. I recognized the phrase "advanced CCS". The age, gender and race of those who visit the website were not very surprising. When it came down to it, most of the information was pretty expected and reflected use by the demographic who have access to a computer often.

The Pew Internet Survey showed the experience that web users gain. I found it interesting to read that web use hasn't really increased much since 2002, considering the creations of popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Flickr. However, I was not surprised to learn how popular email is, as opposed to all the other things one could explore on the web. I also thought it was interesting that older people mainly use the web to look up health and medicinal issues. This is probably irritating to doctors because patients come in once they have already self-diagnosed themselves and want a specific medicine.