Portfolio Keeping

          Looking back at all of the work that has been submitted in this class I realize that there was a lot of detail in the assignments. Each assignment whether it was a project or a response to a reading had various steps and parts that had to be completed. So, even though I understood all of the objectives it still took time and effort to turn everything in. I never thought an online class would be so interactive and involve so much interaction with other members in the class either.
          You were also given a lot of freedom to turn in the assignments. Though it was good because it provided me with more time, at the same time I think that I would wait to turn in things later than I would have had deadlines been more rigid. This class also left you to do things for yourself. Even though there were assignments in the assignment section and announcements to help keep everyone updated it was really the student's responsibility to look at the schedule and see if any extra work for that week had to be turned in.
          Judging by my grades so far and the comments I have received I think that I have completed all of the projects and have presented them in a clear and understandable manner. I have tried to make sure that I proofread everything that I turn in but I might have missed a few things and I am sure that there are grammar mistakes is my writing because it is something that I have always had trouble with.

Project 4 Independent Post 5

          The idea of having project four submitted in a timely manner did not happen like I had hoped. I really did not have any problems with the SocialGo site throughout this project period until I tried adding groups. I do not know if it is because my understanding of groups is completely wrong or I just over thought everything but I spent hours trying to add some groups to our site.
          The only place I really take part in groups is on Facebook. So, when reading about adding groups to our site I though it would be like Facebook where I could look over other members with related topics and link to them on SocialGo. I thought it would be easy and I would have at least five before 11pm. So not easy! First of all you cannot search other socialgo sites and searching for them on Google did not help either. When you add a group it says you are the owner and essentially opens up a blank page where you are responsible for the group's content.
          So, since I did not have any clue how to connect to other sites instead of making up groups I found groups and copied their link and picture and posted their About me sections. I did not have time however, to add content. I even connected through Facebook hoping I could link to groups that way but that did not work either. Maybe it is because we have a trial version, or maybe it is because SocialGo is not that popular but either way it was very hard to establish groups. I only hope that the information posted for each one will suffice for the purposes of this assignment.

Project 4 Independent Post 4

          Looking over more of the peer review I am glad to see that no one thought that our topic was to broad. At first I thought that our cause was not specific enough for what this project required. Then as I was forming my annotated bibliography I liked how I could easily find these great sources that covered various topics of sustainability. The variability that I encountered gave me a lot of flexibility with the information I could share. I could see that my group members were also benefiting from the different things that could be discussed. For example Courtney who is a member of my group was able to find many events relating to our cause. From beach cleanups to lectures about sustainability, because our topic is so broad she was able to add many cool related events.
          Though I am still not sure if choosing just sustainability will count against us on our grade I feel a lot better about our decision to do our site on it. I for one think I am enjoying it more than I would have if we had chosen a more specific topic. From the look of the reviews I think the rest of the class agrees with our choice and if anything, want us to take advantage of the different things we can touch upon and add more groups and forum topics about different aspects of our cause.

Project 4 Independent Post 3

          I just finished my peer reviews for the other groups. They are all off to a really great start and I was happy to read the reviews for our group saying that we're also off to a great start. 

          One of the things that they mentioned that needed improvement were more threads in the forum. This made me realize that I completely forgot to add one of my own! I added pictures, a blog post, even responded to one of the forum topics but I totally forgot to start a thread so I will make sure to have that fixed by the time Monday comes.
          Another thing that I noticed on another site was their welcome note. Group 1 had a great welcome note that explained the purpose and goal of their site and a little about it. We have something similar on our site but it is under the About Us tab. I'm thinking that it may be best to revise that a little and put it on our welcome page and out our mission statement under a separate tab instead.
          Lastly, we need to work on our outside content. There are so many websites out there about sustainability that I think we should add some of that either under our groups tab like the peer reviews suggested or create a separate page with links to some of these great sites and maybe a little explanation for each. Perhaps we can just add some things from our annotated bibliographies.

Project 4 Independent Post 2

          I went into a bathroom today and on the towel machine was one of those "Remember...These Come From Trees" Stickers. I've seen these pictures before and like them but soon forget about them because I am already mindful of how much I use. 

          However, when I saw this sticker today it made me think of our site about sustainability. This project is to make us develop and design a site speak for or promote a cause. I thought of sustainability because it is important and I think more people should think about it. Just because this site was only created as part of a grade does not mean I should not take it seriously. 

          I went home and looked up the site on this picture and it turns out it is actually a blog! It is a great example of what we are been taught to do for this project and in this class overall-to use technology to promote or spread an idea. I really want to buy a pack of stickers and put them around campus but I feel like I have to look into it a bit more. I want to make sure that if I put these up that they won't be taken down by the people who clean the bathrooms. 

          They even sell in bulk for institutions and I think I'm going to run the idea of trying to get URI to buy a pack by the Student Action for Sustainability club. I of course am going to the post the link for the blog and the picture on our site for this project also.

Project 4 Independent Post 1

          Less then ten days until classes are over! This realization that school is coming to an end has made it very difficult to stay focused on school. I know I'm not the only one though. Before this project began I had toyed with some ideas. Like the previous project I knew I couldn't jump right into things without first seeing what my group member thought. My ideas were:
1.) Sustainability issues such as wind power or sustainable fishing practices.
2.) Fair Trade
3.) Poverty in third world countries or specific problems that they face because of the poor conditions they live in such as diseases.

          What we decided on was sustainability in general. Though it does give us plenty of things to write about and share on our site I am a little worried that our subject may be too broad for the purposes of this assignment. I guess we will simply have to wait for the results of our peer reviews to know for sure.

Response to social networking articles

          The articles assigned were both very interesting. They both had to do with social networking and how it effects the willingness of people involve themselves in civic engagement. The article by Bennett supported the idea that social networking and technology provides new opportunities and ways for people to get involved in social and political action. The article by Boyd supported a different idea that the people who use these sites and new technology are actually participating less in social or political causes.

          Both articles agreed that these websites allow people to reach and share information faster than ever before. The structure of these technologies allow people to communicate with each other anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, both articles shared the idea that participation has changed over the years. Today, people participate in civic affairs out of interest rather than a sense of obligation to do so.

          Bennett's article explains that change in involvement is not bad, but merely portrays that changing views and patterns that are occurring in today's society. The article claims that people should try less to force the use of old approaches of civics such as newspapers and other one-way communication methods and embrace this new digital age that uses interacting informational technologies. As Bennett says, people today have a "higher sense of individual purpose" and therefore participate by forming peer-learning communities to engage and share information about issues that interest them the most.

          Boyd had a very different view of how new generations are participating in learning about the issues. She claims that they are not. Boyd writes "Technologies are shaped by society and reflect society’s values back at us...". Today, generations are more involved in their individual interests and are more interested in sharing these interests with their friends or people they know who also share the similar interests. If people agree with the message shared then it is spread, if not then it will only reach a few number of people before it is swept away by more popular ideas. Boyd claims that these more popular ideas are about less serious matters rather than social and political ideas. This is due to the fact that people have less motivation to learn about these topics and instead, put more effort into looking for things that will entertain rather than inform.

Project 3 Independent Post 5

          Project three is over and I just realized that I forgot to include what I learned in my Postwrite! Like all of the other assignments in this class this was my first time redesigning a website and it was harder than the other assignments that we had to do. One of the reasons it was harder was because you could not rely on a set of rules or guidelines to guide you through the redesign process. Sure, there were the readings which helped a lot but there are so many different ways that you can create and design a website that you could be more creative than in the other assignments and therefore you had to think for yourself more. There were no templates and no manual of style for this project and I relied a great deal on the input from my group members. In the end not only did I learn about the basic principles that make a good website, I also learned how to apply them and fix design errors in a website to make it better.

Project 3 Independent Post 4

          Today I read the peer evaluations for our group. Luckily, each one touched on a different aspect so I was not just reading the same "What works" and "What needs work" points over and over. The main points they touched on were the way we presented our project, the way we chose to redesign the website, and suggestions on how to further reduce the information that we have.

          For the most part it looks like using PowerPoint was a good program to use for this project. Not only was it easier on us because we were all familiar with the program, but it provided us with both a work site and a presentation site. From what the peer reviews said, it was easy to open up our file and see everything that we did. It looked organized and had a nice flow and allowed them to see the whole project instead of having to click through different windows. 

          At first, I did not really want to put everything in the center as the alignment but by the end I saw that it was much better because it allowed us to maximize the space we had which was important due to the amount of information that out website had. Overall, it seems like that it was acceptable and by keeping it consistent our project looked neat, organized and it looked like it all belonged to the same site unlike the original formatting. Even though we omitted a lot of links and pictures, some pages still do look a little cluttered and one of the suggestions was to either decide to use logos, or to use text so that everything will look more uniform.

          It seems that the biggest problem or the area that requires the most work was our site maps. When our draft was first turned in I had noticed that some of the maps had information that went off the PowerPoint. I tried re-sizing some of the boxes to try to make it all fit and then posted this to the forum in case they encountered the same problem but it might not have worked since they both said they could not see the some of the stuff off to the side. The content of our maps also confused them a bit so we might have to go back and label things more specifically so that they are understood better.