Please reflect on the persuasive speeches for this week. What presentations stood out to you, and why? Were there aspects of presentations where you had the most interest? For those who haven't yet presented, what are you doing to prepare for this presentation?
One thing I would like to note is that we've had some very active Q&A sessions. Several of our speakers were challenged, but everyone was up to the task and handled themselves well. I think we're off to a great start.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Persuasion Activity
Great job, everyone, on our persuasion activity yesterday. Across the board, everyone did such a good job of presenting well-balanced points...and everyone got to speak for nearly equal amounts of time. We have such a productive and active class.
Looking forward to the presentations this week!
Looking forward to the presentations this week!
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Discussion for Week 10: Extra/Free Post
Hi everyone,
This week's discussion is a bonus. Feel free to use this space as a general place for reflection about any discussions we've had in class so far or any relevant issues. Continuing our thoughts about persuasion is another idea you may want to continue developing. Sharing relevant links, resources, or interesting articles might be nice as well.
This week's discussion is a bonus. Feel free to use this space as a general place for reflection about any discussions we've had in class so far or any relevant issues. Continuing our thoughts about persuasion is another idea you may want to continue developing. Sharing relevant links, resources, or interesting articles might be nice as well.
Brett Favre Persuasive Speech
For my speech i would like to gather some initial information from the class about your feelings on Brett Favre. I will not use your name nor take what you say to offense in anyway. I am just looking for a sentence or two that i can kind of base my speech around. Remember i am giving my speech that Brett Favre is not a traitor to the Green Bay Packers. My speech has nothing to do with his choice in continuing to play football, or any other career choices he has made. Just strictly towards the Green Bay Packers. If you guys could respond by wednesday that would be great. If you don't feel comfortable commenting on the blog you can write it on paper and leave it at the the table in the front of the class if you want.
Thanks,
Allie
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Discussion for Week 9
Let's talk about persuasion this week. Why do we have to rethink our outline structures for persuasion? What choices did you make for your speech topic in persuasion that you did not make for your informative speeches? Are there audience factors that have shaped your choices in any way?
Several of you mentioned wanting to use the blog to gather opinions and responses from the rest of the class for your persuasive topics, so please feel free to use that as your discussion post for the week.
Several of you mentioned wanting to use the blog to gather opinions and responses from the rest of the class for your persuasive topics, so please feel free to use that as your discussion post for the week.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Persuasive Speech Topic
Hey guys,
Just to feel this topic out, how do you all feel about Indiana's Sunday Prohibition Law?? I'm on the side of thinking it is a very old and out-dated law that needs at least to be amended... to what though I'm not certain. I know that there was a proposal to change it so that microbreweries and I believe wine produced iun Indiana would be available for purchase on Sundays. I never heard what the outcome was, but I am very interested in this topic. Let me know what you think!!
Thanks,
Joe Harrison
Just to feel this topic out, how do you all feel about Indiana's Sunday Prohibition Law?? I'm on the side of thinking it is a very old and out-dated law that needs at least to be amended... to what though I'm not certain. I know that there was a proposal to change it so that microbreweries and I believe wine produced iun Indiana would be available for purchase on Sundays. I never heard what the outcome was, but I am very interested in this topic. Let me know what you think!!
Thanks,
Joe Harrison
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Even More Web Design Sites
There's a myriad of sites about web design, and like everything, it takes time to find out which sites consistently provide quality material and which ones don't. Since I've done a bit of looking around myself, I'm going to join the information sharing cause and point you to a few of the gems I've found. After all, n + 1 heads are better than n!
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A List Apart
Target Skill Level: Advanced
A List Apart is a monthly blog with some quality articles from industry professionals. It covers a wide range of topics, from interface design to client relations, CSS, jQuery, and psychology, among others. One of the current articles actually discusses public speaking and technology, so I'd recommend that article for anyone in the class.
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Nettuts+
Target Skill Level: Medium - Advanced
Nettuts+ is a user-supported tutorial blog that is the Web Design portion of the larger Tuts+ Network. Since the tutorials there are user-submitted, they range in quality and difficulty. The average tutorial explains a certain concept pretty well, but that concept is generally dealing with a non-HTML language or an advanced HTML concept. However, there recently was a roundup of great tutorials for breaking into web design, and I have the link: http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/10-hand-picked-tutorials-for-beginning-web-designers/
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Abduzeedo
Target Skill Level: All
Abduzeedo is a design blog that covers multiple fields. The main area that they deliver on is inspiration, and that can go a long way. From their daily selection, Daily Inspiration, to their Friday Fresh Free Fonts, Sites of the Week, and Best of the Week, Abduzeedo is chock-full of inspiration and cool work from all areas of the design sphere.
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These are some of my favorite sites to frequent for web advice and inspiration. I hope you get as much out of them as I have!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Discussion for Week 8
This week, we spent some time thinking about web design considering foundational aspects and the basic, necessary elements to creating a web site. Through lecture and our class discussions, we discussed different available tools for building web sites, as well as the basic overview for the portfolio assignment in class.
Today, we spent some time continuing this conversation and critically discussed blogs. Let's continue these thoughts with a few possible questions for discussion. One question that we didn't spend much time on asked the following: what blogs do you follow, and why? Continuing this line of thought, what makes these blogs credible to you-- or perhaps not? Why are these ideas necessary for us to consider, considering that we are all coming from different backgrounds and moving our careers in unique ways?
Please feel free to respond in the comments or start your own post. As always, you are welcome to discuss something else entirely if you have another idea that you'd like to talk about. You don't necessarily need to respond to this post, although you can if you'd like. Looking forward to some thoughts!
Today, we spent some time continuing this conversation and critically discussed blogs. Let's continue these thoughts with a few possible questions for discussion. One question that we didn't spend much time on asked the following: what blogs do you follow, and why? Continuing this line of thought, what makes these blogs credible to you-- or perhaps not? Why are these ideas necessary for us to consider, considering that we are all coming from different backgrounds and moving our careers in unique ways?
Please feel free to respond in the comments or start your own post. As always, you are welcome to discuss something else entirely if you have another idea that you'd like to talk about. You don't necessarily need to respond to this post, although you can if you'd like. Looking forward to some thoughts!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Web Site Structures
I would like to take a moment to say that I am very impressed with the wireframes I received from most everyone in the class. There is such a nice variety in terms of what you all want to do with your web sites. I am excited to see how our projects will all come together in the end.
A couple of folks have asked if they can change their structure once they start building their site. The answer to that is that of course you can. Granted, you'll want to keep the overall theme in line with the assignment guidelines, but if you see some sections going in another direction as you progress, that is great.
Please continue to post useful links, etc. within this blog. These have been helpful and I'm glad to see such great activity on this site.
Looking forward to tomorrow's discussion/workshop!
A couple of folks have asked if they can change their structure once they start building their site. The answer to that is that of course you can. Granted, you'll want to keep the overall theme in line with the assignment guidelines, but if you see some sections going in another direction as you progress, that is great.
Please continue to post useful links, etc. within this blog. These have been helpful and I'm glad to see such great activity on this site.
Looking forward to tomorrow's discussion/workshop!
Web Design Tips
Here are some miscellaneous tips for building better Web sites.
(1) Validate your code. If improper syntax is used (i.e., if you make a mistake in writing out the code), your site may not work properly in one or more browsers. Using the W3C Validator makes checking the code easy. Just enter the site's address in the box (or choose a different tab in order to upload a file from your hard drive or just copy/paste text), and click "Check". If there are any errors in your HTML page file, they'll all be listed in detail, so that you can figure out where you went wrong in your code. If you've specified a form of XHTML (a stricter form of HTML) for the page, the validator will use correspondingly stricter criteria. IMPORTANT NOTE: Often the validator may list a great many errors as a result of one small mistake (such as forgetting a single closing tag). ALWAYS TRY TO FIX THE FIRST LISTED ERROR FIRST. Often just fixing the first one makes all the others go away too.
(2) Try different browsers. This may not be as necessary with editor-generated sites (e.g., sites made with Dreamweaver) as it is with hand-coded sites, but it likely deserves a mention all the same. Although Internet browsers nowadays tend to be mostly compliant with universal standards (unlike many ancient browsers which did things very differently from one another), not all browsers render pages identically. There may occasionally be noticeable differences between how, for instance, Internet Explorer and Firefox display certain pages. Therefore it is a good idea to test your pages in different browsers, in order to make sure there are no differences which actually matter in the case of your site. Common browsers currently used include Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Mozilla Firefox 3, Google Chrome, Opera, and Apple Safari.
(3) Test using different resolutions and window sizes. How much of your page is displayed on the screen at a time can be CRITICALLY important to how your page looks to your viewer. If you're not careful, your page may appear cluttered or have elements moved around into undesirable positions if it is viewed at a small screen resolution or in a smaller window. Also, a page may look slightly awkward when viewed with a particularly large or wide resolution. Screen resolution, which is the measure of how many pixels (basic visual units of color that make up the whole picture on the monitor) wide and high the screen is, usually is set at 1024 x 768 pixels or more on today's computers, although some people do still have smaller resolutions such as 800 x 600. Mobile devices, of course, also tend to have quite small resolutions. In view of all this, it is important for you to repeatedly test your pages in different window sizes or at different screen resolutions (you can often change your resolution through your computer's control panel). Make sure the page content looks OK in these different views, and if it does not, alter the page layout. Use of floating elements and CSS positioning may help a great deal in solving these types of problems.
(4) Think about download quantity/speed. Try not to put too many large files on a page. Some people who have slower Internet may become impatient if they try to view a page with an unneeded quantity of multimedia on it. This means you should try not to put too many images on a given page; that you should always try to avoid putting images with unnecessarily large filesizes on a page; and that you should avoid putting large, auto-loading file embeds (such as audio files*) in a page. Not only can they be time-consuming to download, but they may also consume valuable bandwidth.
*NOTE: It is not a good idea in general, for most purposes at least, to auto-play audio on a page. It may be jarring to viewers who do not expect it, it often takes up a lot of space and bandwidth, it may slow things down, and it usually does not contribute anything essential to the page's content.
(5) Avoid all these things:
(a) Clashing or mismatched color schemes. These can hurt the eyes and look like garbage.
(b) Overcrowding of material on a page. Make the separate elements easy to distinguish and understand through judicious use of "white space" (empty space on the page).
(c) Using too much "white space". Too many blank areas can make the page look unbalanced and poorly constructed.
(d) Poor page balance. Too many items on side of the page relative to the other, for example, will be distracting and look annoying.
(e) Poor alignment. Make text, images, and other elements line up when they look like they should. If elements close to each other fail to logically line up, an impression of sloppiness will be created. Using HTML tables as frameworks for page layout can be extremely helpful with regard to keeping elements aligned, although the use of CSS positioning is now preferred, due to changes in standards.
(f) Inconsistent sizing of similar elements. For example, having buttons on a sidebar be differently sized when they are meant to all look like each other can be very off-putting to the viewer. The same principle applies to text which accidentally varies slightly in font size when it is meant to stay the same size.
Once again, feel free to ask if you have any questions.
(1) Validate your code. If improper syntax is used (i.e., if you make a mistake in writing out the code), your site may not work properly in one or more browsers. Using the W3C Validator makes checking the code easy. Just enter the site's address in the box (or choose a different tab in order to upload a file from your hard drive or just copy/paste text), and click "Check". If there are any errors in your HTML page file, they'll all be listed in detail, so that you can figure out where you went wrong in your code. If you've specified a form of XHTML (a stricter form of HTML) for the page, the validator will use correspondingly stricter criteria. IMPORTANT NOTE: Often the validator may list a great many errors as a result of one small mistake (such as forgetting a single closing tag). ALWAYS TRY TO FIX THE FIRST LISTED ERROR FIRST. Often just fixing the first one makes all the others go away too.
(2) Try different browsers. This may not be as necessary with editor-generated sites (e.g., sites made with Dreamweaver) as it is with hand-coded sites, but it likely deserves a mention all the same. Although Internet browsers nowadays tend to be mostly compliant with universal standards (unlike many ancient browsers which did things very differently from one another), not all browsers render pages identically. There may occasionally be noticeable differences between how, for instance, Internet Explorer and Firefox display certain pages. Therefore it is a good idea to test your pages in different browsers, in order to make sure there are no differences which actually matter in the case of your site. Common browsers currently used include Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Mozilla Firefox 3, Google Chrome, Opera, and Apple Safari.
(3) Test using different resolutions and window sizes. How much of your page is displayed on the screen at a time can be CRITICALLY important to how your page looks to your viewer. If you're not careful, your page may appear cluttered or have elements moved around into undesirable positions if it is viewed at a small screen resolution or in a smaller window. Also, a page may look slightly awkward when viewed with a particularly large or wide resolution. Screen resolution, which is the measure of how many pixels (basic visual units of color that make up the whole picture on the monitor) wide and high the screen is, usually is set at 1024 x 768 pixels or more on today's computers, although some people do still have smaller resolutions such as 800 x 600. Mobile devices, of course, also tend to have quite small resolutions. In view of all this, it is important for you to repeatedly test your pages in different window sizes or at different screen resolutions (you can often change your resolution through your computer's control panel). Make sure the page content looks OK in these different views, and if it does not, alter the page layout. Use of floating elements and CSS positioning may help a great deal in solving these types of problems.
(4) Think about download quantity/speed. Try not to put too many large files on a page. Some people who have slower Internet may become impatient if they try to view a page with an unneeded quantity of multimedia on it. This means you should try not to put too many images on a given page; that you should always try to avoid putting images with unnecessarily large filesizes on a page; and that you should avoid putting large, auto-loading file embeds (such as audio files*) in a page. Not only can they be time-consuming to download, but they may also consume valuable bandwidth.
*NOTE: It is not a good idea in general, for most purposes at least, to auto-play audio on a page. It may be jarring to viewers who do not expect it, it often takes up a lot of space and bandwidth, it may slow things down, and it usually does not contribute anything essential to the page's content.
(5) Avoid all these things:
(a) Clashing or mismatched color schemes. These can hurt the eyes and look like garbage.
(b) Overcrowding of material on a page. Make the separate elements easy to distinguish and understand through judicious use of "white space" (empty space on the page).
(c) Using too much "white space". Too many blank areas can make the page look unbalanced and poorly constructed.
(d) Poor page balance. Too many items on side of the page relative to the other, for example, will be distracting and look annoying.
(e) Poor alignment. Make text, images, and other elements line up when they look like they should. If elements close to each other fail to logically line up, an impression of sloppiness will be created. Using HTML tables as frameworks for page layout can be extremely helpful with regard to keeping elements aligned, although the use of CSS positioning is now preferred, due to changes in standards.
(f) Inconsistent sizing of similar elements. For example, having buttons on a sidebar be differently sized when they are meant to all look like each other can be very off-putting to the viewer. The same principle applies to text which accidentally varies slightly in font size when it is meant to stay the same size.
Once again, feel free to ask if you have any questions.
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