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Previous Home-Page ItemsSpring 2002This evening, we'll try out the Java Script demonstration to get a taste of these tools. Complete directions for using Dreamweaver's Java Script capabilities can be found in Tower starting on page 405. You can read specifically about rollovers and image swaps on page 426. (5/1/02) In answer to our inquiries about the problems some of you had with making your forms work last week, Andy Manteuffel, the campus CGI programmer, wrote the following:
This evening, we'll workshop the Client Projects using the Visiting Day format we used for the last project. (4/24/02) Tonight, we'll continue work on the last two assignments:
By Monday, April 29, by 6 p.m., please post a BETA version of your Client Project to your "www" folder and post the URL to the discussion area of the Discussion Board titled, "URLs of Client Projects." Then, on Wednesday, May 1, we'll workshop the Client Projects using the Visiting Day format we used for the last project. (4/24/02) This evening, we'll be learning about creating forms in Dreamweaver. Here are some items we'll use:
Journal Entry #13. Audiences for your client's site. First, take a look at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Web site. How many different audiences are being addressed and appealed to on the front page, and with the various links and pages? In your journal, list the some audiences you might expect at your client's site, and the scenarios by which these audiences might find their ways to the site. What are their different values, tastes, needs and purposes? From your analysis of these audiences, begin to think about site design: map the pages and links of your client project. What verbal labels for the links would appeal to these audiences and be understandable to them? Think about page design: what are some recurring elements, designs, layouts, images, words you'll use throughout to unify the pages? Journal Entry # 12.
Journal Entry # 13 Kroker and Weinstein questions.
Look at your Glocalization Project and answer the following questions. On your sheet of paper, just list the numbers rather than rewriting the quesitons. Consider this a "freewriting" (thinking or exploration on paper) rather than a formal self justification or defense:
This evening, we'll be providing one another feedback and discussing the the BETA versions of our Glocalization Projects. Please see the format for this "Visiting Day" style of workshop. The URLs for the projects can be found on the discussion board or at the Glocalization URL page (4/10/02) Please read the directions for how we'll workshop our Glocalization Projects next Wednesday, April 10. You should post a BETA version (functioning draft) of your project to your "www" folder and then e-mail the class the URL by Monday, April 8 at 6 p.m. As the directions explain, you will be responsible for responding to half of the projects in the class between Monday and Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. This evening, we'll also attempt to log into our Discussion Board for the first time to have an online discussion about Sherry Turkle's essay "Who Am We?" Take a look at the commentary on Peter Elbow's ideas of the Believing and Doubting Games from the Ideas site. Then we can apply Elbow's techniques to Sherry Turkle's article:
Here are the locations of the New Media Writing Projects. Please double-check your URL to make sure it is correct and functioning and e-mail me with any corrections or updates. This evening, we'll be focusing on the Glocalization Project and on the concept of the "'scape." Each of your Glocalization projects should associate a local landscape with a deterritorialized 'scape, and appeal to a sense of identity beyond our locale. Questions we'll be asking ourselves about some sample sites and our own project ideas:
Search engine: google.com (3/27/02) Be thinking about the Student Web Contest as you work on your projects, particularly the Client Project at the end. The Web site you'll find at the link above concerns last year's contest, but there will be a new one for 2002-2003. This year, our own Mark Paschke won one of the awards for his site for Map Design and Graphic Methods. Contratulations, Mark! Your New Media Writing Project Web-sites are now due to be posted by Thursday (3/14) at midnight. Send me the URL by e-mail when the site is up and functioning. You will also need to get to me the print materials by Friday (3/15) at noon: the hard copy of your original paper with my markings/comments, and your self commentary. Please do not e-mail me these materials electronically. I would like them in a hard copy, stapled together with the commentary on top. You can drop these print materials in my office mailbox in Humanities 420 (office hours, 7 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.) anytime before the deadlines on Friday, or hand them in at the beginning of class on Wednesday evening. Introducing the Glocalization Project. Journal Entry #9: Thinking about the Glocalization Project Idea. Choose one of the examples on the Glocalization project assignment page and visit it. Consider the following questions in a long, informal paragraph:
Question for debate: Herbert Schiller (Trend 159) sees the political influence of the Internet as a tool in the struggle between national governments (particularly the US) and transnational corporations, with the national government declining in power. Mark Poster (Trend 259), on the other hand, sees the Internet as a space where a new political system (a "cyberdemocracy") might emerge in that new "public sphere." Is the Internet best understood as a tool or a space? Who do you think is right? "Subjectivity" (definition)
This evening we are going to design a flow chart and write a set of navigation labels for a Web site called the Completely Unofficial Guide to Your First Year at UMD, which will be created by an independent organization called Students for Students. See the Labeling and Granularity Exercise page for more detail. Notes: A good labeling system for navigation:
Pine and Gilmore's book The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage. The 3-5 page paper version of your New Media Writing Project will be due Wednesday, February 27. Journal Entry # 5: What does the "information economy" that Manuel Castells talks about have to do with you? your future profession? your professional life to come? How will your work be different from your predessors as a result of not just of surfing the Web, but the structural transformations in the economy that Castells describes? (See also Journal Entry list) Here are some links to use in our class meeting on Wednesday evening, February 20:
Sample Web pages for site-design analysis (2/20, from the Internet Scout Report):
Please check the list of home page locations to make sure your URL has been received, and that the link is working. If you don't see a working link by your name, please e-mail me the URL. This evening we'll introduce the New Media Writing Project. Invention activity: clustering (Journal entry #3)On a blank sheet of paper, scatter a word or two indicating the following topics that are familiar or significant to you
Draw a little circle around each word or phrase to bubble them. Then make links and bubbles for more words, ideas and associations that you can connect to these bubbles to make a sprawling cluster. When you're done, write down at the bottom of the page (or on the back) one or two statements that might make topics for the New Media Writing Project "...Representation lives between imagination and reality, serving as a conductor, amplified, clarifier and motivator." (Brenda Laurel in Trend 112) A professor of Victorian literature and art history at Brown University George Landow runs the Victorian Web project. Journal entry #4: Look at Landow's Victorian Web and his article in Trend (98). What's so great about hypertext, according to Landow? How does the Victorian Web realize (make real) that ideal? What's insufficient about written, printed text? Are there places where you think Landow's being too optimistic about hypertext (considering how the Web is actually used)? By next class meeting, please purchase somekind of inexpensive, flat binder (not the big three-ring ones!) to organize and keep your in-class writings. We'll call this your "Journal," though you won't be expected to write anything personal in it. I will give you a journal-entry number for each writing we do when I assign it. If you put any of your own notes or reflections in it (having to do with the class), please label them A-Z. Before Monday, when your page is due to be posted to the Web, you'll want to look at my directions for using Dreamweaver or WS-FTP (a free, downloadable program) to transfer your files from your disk to your folder on the Web server. This evening, we'll be looking at a summary of your proposed criteria to revise and select the 12 most useful and important. Toward this end:
Let me also put on the table my own list of criteria that I've used to evaluate a similar assignment in the past. You can quickly reduce GIF or JPG images using the free online "Crunchers" from Spinwave. See my Internet Resources page for more such links. By next Wednesday, February 6 at noon, please e-mail to the class alias a message that contains the following:
These are the sample personal Web pages you collected and that we used on the evening of January 30. Stelarc is an Australian performance artist whose work explores the interaction of the human body and machines, including information technologies. We're going to use Heim and Nielsen--especially the tension between their different ideas of the Web--to create a list of criteria for judging the effectiveness of a personal home page and of the personal home page that we'll create for the first assignment. On a piece of paper, make two half-page entries (free writing, thinking on paper):
This page will be the central point of arrival and departure for the class each day. I will continually replace the content here with the most current news and reminders. Older "Today's Special" items from throughout the semester will be archived at a page available from the link below. Please read the syllabus and take a look at the schedule for January, particularly the first assignment, Personal Home Page. To get a sense of the issues raised by Web design, compare the following:
Compare these five terms
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