English 495, Fall 2008

For my final post, I would like to thank Dr. Walter, Kerri, Sammi, and Laura for a fun and interesting semester. I really appreciated the small class size which allowed a casual atmosphere. I believe this worked in our favor throughout the semester, as were able to share ideas with one another and undertake in-depth peer reviews. I also really enjoyed the freedom Dr. Walter provided us to essentially create our own course. He was always up to change the schedule or topic as we wished. Overall, definitely one the most interesting and fun courses I have taken while at Creighton.

I found our use of blogging in ENG 495 to be an excellent and enjoyable educational tool. Although I have often had trouble keeping up on my posting, overall it has been an enjoyable experience. I like the atmosphere that the blog creates within the class; one of professionalism, but still relaxed. I have felt free to discuss whatever subject related to ENG 495 I desired in my posts. This freedom has been much appreciated. At the same time, the posts have also been very educational. The different YouTube videos and other outside materials the other members of the class have posted have been very thought-provoking. Overall, I believe blogging is an aspect of this course that should remain intact whenever it is taught in the future.

I really enjoyed the Progymnasmata 2.0 project we spent this semester working on. I believe it achieved substantial educational goals in a creative and enjoyable way. Through the project, I learned to use Windows Movie Maker, design web sites, and work with various other computer programs. From the theoretical perspective, I learned about the influence of media on composition, how to perform media-specific analyses, the concepts of design, and how design acts as a rhetorical device. In the end this project increased my learning more than most courses have and did so in an enjoyable way.

Another work I have recently been reading for my Pop. Lit course that pertains to ENG 495 is Phillip K. Dick’s Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep?. This book is fascinating as it deals with themes of discrimination, human nature, religion, and slavery. The elements that I believe can be related to ENG 495 are the fictitious technologies in the work. One technology widely used in the work is a mood organ. One can hook oneself up to this device, dial a mood (i.e. 888: the desire to watch television no matter what’s on), and feel that way instantly. Could such interactive technologies come to exist in the future? The other interesting technology that I came across was the empathy box. By grasping the handles of the empathy box, one undergoes a full immersive religious experience. This reminded me in a way teleevangical ministers. Nevertheless, could such an engaging form of media come to exist in the future?

One of the novels I have recently been reading for my Popular Literature course is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. This work explores themes of censorship and defiance and the negative affects of mass media. The later of these seemed most pertinent to ENG 495. Books have been outlawed in the novel in favor of mass media, such as television and radio. Books were considered too controversial; society wanted to be “happy” or experience pleasure, so they created meaningless forms of entertainment that appeal to all. In this way the work made me consider the great screen culture that exists today. Are we too being turned into nonthinking conformists? I would recommend this book to all, but especially those who are skeptical of the pervasiveness of mass media in today’s culture.

One way I which ENG: 495/ Dr. Walter has opened my eyes is the use of open source programs. Before taking this course, I had never even heard of such programs. I knew one could download programs for free on various sites, but I thought it was almost exclusively illegal. This is clearly not the case; however, as Dr. Walter has provided us with a plethora of links to open source programs. The two open source programs or sites that I was most impressed with were Jing, a screen capturing program, and Portable Apps.com. Concerning Jing, I was previously unaware of the capabilities to take screen shots, let alone do it for free. Portable Apps.com is shocking in its providing of tons of open source programs that can be put on a portable device, such as a flash drive, and used on any Windows computer. I would highly recommend these programs/ sites to those who have not yet used them.

As I have mentioned in some of my other blog posts, my Progymnasmata 2.0 site was my first attempt at creating a web site. Overall, I would say the experience was a bit of a rollercoaster ride. I believe the hard work one must put in in the preparation stages could be seen as the first big hill one climbs on a ride. After the initial push, the rest of the work it is mostly, but not completely downhill. For example, in creating my site, I encountered many bumps and unexpected turns along the way. I had trouble getting links to work, saving my pages, adjusting color schemes, and many other unforeseen issues. At other times, the project was purely fun. Seeing a page you made function in a web browser is very rewarding. It was like discovering a new talent. In general, I truly enjoyed the project; it was difficult at times, but the end result was well worth it.

Taking a cue from Kerri’s post on C.R.A.P, I, happily believe my web site also qualifies for the ironic acronym. First, I examined my web site for contrast. I achieved this goal mainly through my color scheme. I used a light tan color for my large content box on which I placed dark brown text. I also contrasted my content box with my navigation bars by making them dark green with light tan text. Next, I looked at my use of repetition. My site definitely meets this requirement. As I stuck to the original template I made for each page, outside of content, they are all the same. Next, I looked for alignment. I was able to achieve this trait by using tables, as Dr. Walter suggested. My navigation bars are lined up with the left side and bottom of the screen, respectively. Finally, I judged my web site for proximity. I achieved this characteristic by carefully spacing the content of my pages. I made sure elements were close enough together that they would not be lost on the screen, but far enough apart so they weren’t crowded.

While finishing up my web site last night I encountered various problems with KompoZer. One of the most frustrating was lost data. From time to time, I would open a page I had already completed only to find it empty. I feel confident that I saved my work before exiting such pages. I’m not completely sure if this was a program or user error. Another issue I encountered was getting my template page to save as a new page after I made alterations to it. After some experimenting, I stumbled upon the “Save As and Change Source Encoding” link. This solved what had been a very frustrating problem. The last major issue I was forced to negotiate was the tendency of some of my links to malfunction. Clicking on the same links in a different order often gave different results. At times links would open and at others the “page not found” message appeared. Similar to the lost data problem I mentioned earlier, I had a difficult time figuring out if I was erring or the program was.

As Kerri discussed in one of her recent posts, I too found it much easier to complete my web pages if I created a storyboard initially. In the beginning, I created a general plan for the web site as a whole. I decided to use a splash page, including in it the title of the project, the title of my fable, a by line, a brief introduction to my project, and a navigation bar along the bottom of the page. For my specific web pages, I decided to use a title along the top which indicated the remediation and the specific aspect of the remediation being displayed (i.e. Multimedia: Write-up), a navigation bar on the left hand side for inter-remediation exploration, another navigation bar along the bottom linking to the different remediations, and a large open area in the middle of the page for text and images. By creating these storyboards ahead of time, I saved much time and effort. In my initial tinkerings with the program I did not employ a storyboard, and I found it difficult to keep my ideas organized. Overall, I believe prep work is a must for web site design.