Creating a website allowed for my creativity to come out not only with the layout and design of the site, but with what topic I wanted to create a site about. The ultimate goal of this project was to not make a website filled with content, but being able to put the knowledge I gained from class and the HTML books we used. With this project, I was able to work on the site outside of class and be able to have my friends perform usability tests to see how effective my layout and information was.

My website isn't to fancy because I feel that distracts the reader from the useful information I provide. My idea was to create a website specifically designed for single fathers raising daughters. I wanted to appeal not only to the fathers, but to the daughters as well for they can gain some knowledge and insight of how difficult it is for a single father to raise a daughter. The information provided would be from my own personal experience which would be more beneficial than a psychologist's opinion on a situation they probably never experienced.

• find a better background picture - used a family-like background of father and daughter holding hands
  
• finish the "Awkward Situations" page - this was hard to write, but I was able to come through
  
• create a biographical page - originally it was to be short, but I couldn't stop talking about myself
  
• change the color of the headlines - changed from a bright, obnoxious pink to a blue
  
• clean up long paragraphs - used bullets to cut up the information
  
• and to appeal to both fathers and daughters - I hope so
  

This class has been incredibly helpful not only with my writing and communication skills, but with my technological skills as well. As I begin looking in the job market, I have noticed that there are many jobs in the writing field for technical writers that have experience with creating and rebuilding websites. This class has taught me many skills that would not only help me with technical writing, but with Public Relations writing as well.

I think that now I'm going into my last semester of college, I really take in what I have learned from my classes and reflect on them so I can see what I can take away and bring into the professional world.

The one skill I will walk away with from this class the most will be HTML. Not only was this fun because I was able to create my own site and appreciate and understand formats of websites, but this skill will help me get a job over someone who has no knowledge about HTML or websites.

Even though I disliked Interactive Fiction, this portion of the class was eye opening. IN PR, you are to write for the client and not for yourself. This is an example of that. With IF, you are to create an effective game. You need to predict what the player will do within your game, you want to make sure that you satisfy them by not giving them an incredibly easy game, but having a game that they will understand to the fullest without any lingering questions. With IF games comes usability testing. Like I stated earlier, you need to create an effective game and in order to make sure that the game is understandable, you need to incorporate usability testing.

Usability testing is where I learned a lot about HTML and writing for the internet. I was able to test users to see what was difficult to find on my site, what was confusing about my IF game, what they didn't like about only the layout of the overall site, but the colors, the fonts, and the way the text was organized. This skill will be used by me in the future. While writing a press release or anything, I want someone who knows nothing about the topic to read my writing and see what they didn't understand so that way I could build upon that and make it clearer. The basic idea of usability testing is to try to satisfy as many readers and users as possible.

Here is my progress of my Dads Raising Daughters website:
Beta Progress Report

My Final Rough Draft: Almost There

Sometimes, I am my own worst critic when it comes to my work

Term Project: My Initial Idea

Interaction with my classmates:

Comment on Andy's The Write Direction

Aja has background blues on her site Rebellion Run

EL236 Portfolio 4

I want to appeal to both the fathers and the daughters. Even though my sight is small and only 5 pages deep, I think I was able to include enough information.

I have some questions.

Does my site seem appealing to both audiences?

Is the background distracting? Colors?

Does anything seem unnecessary or wordy?

Is the overall format ineffective?

I hope everyone else is having a great time with this term project and if anyone has any questions or needs a tester, email me. Thanks.

BETA RELEASE

There are approximately 13.6 million single parents in the United States today, and those parents are responsible for raising 21.2 million children. Single parents face many challenges when raising a child alone. For a single dad, raising a daughter can feel like competing in a never-ending marathon with fifty-pound weights on your legs.

As a woman who grew up only with her father from the age of 2 till I went off to college, I looked towards my father for advice as both a father and a mother. Experiencing a father raising a daughter first hand, I was able to see how hard it was for him to play both the father and mother role. Having your parents divorced is already very difficult to handle, but having only one parent, especially a father, is an obstacle for both the parent and the daughter.

My website will include information on how to:

• Open lines of communication.
• Don't overprotect.
• Teach indenpendency.
• Don't do it alone.
• Being involved.
• And being up front and honest with awkward situations.

Krug explained to me that in a website, we need to eliminate the possibilites of questions, realize that the homepage is "waterfront property", usability testing is absolutely necessary in order to have a great site, and don't ask for unnecessary personal information from your users. Krug's book talked a lot about interaction and in our class we were able to use this knowledge and actually see it in action by creating our own usability tests and websites. As a user of the internet, I learned through this text about all aspects of the web like creating sites, usability testing and the do's and dont's of the internet. For the book being published 8 years ago, the ideas and tips are standard and universal as well as extremely helpful with Krug's short sentences, examples, and graphics.

This third portfolio displays my work and thoughts throughout these past couple weeks of the class. We learned about hypertext readings, interactive fiction games, learned about usability testing from Krug and we were able to create inform 7 games in groups and individually.

Coverage: Entries that include a direct quote from the assigned reading, that identify the source of the quote, and that links back to the course web page devoted to that reading.

My hatred of IF games

Krug, Introduction to Chapter 3

Krug and there's no place like home

Krug's Waterfront Property

My experience with the IF game Slouching Towards Bedlam

Usability testing with Krug

Wikipedia, an academic resource?

My contributions to Wikipedia

Timeliness: Entries that were posted on time (24 hours before class).

Wikipedia Edits

Wikipedia Articles (Softball, SHU and  SVC)

The policies and pillars of Wikipedia

Moral responsibility and Wiki?

Krug, Introduction to Chapter 3

I'm allowed to lie on the web

Interaction: Entries that demonstrate my ability to interact with peers.

IF games, Jackie and I

Getting our feet wet. Comment on Jackie's blog.

Wikipedia Comparisons with Shellie

Depth: Links to an entry on my blog that shows my ability to write in depth.

No place like home

Wikipedia Edits

I don't want to have questions

IF games and my true feelings

Discussion: Links to a page on a classmate's blog where I left a significant comment that was part of a fruitful discussion.

My interactive fiction blog received some love.

Anne and Krug's Last Stand

On the Pennsbury page, I added a little section about the softball team. I was apart of the 2005 PIAA AAAA State Championship team. This athletic program has won more state titles than any other sport at the school. I then added more information about the district area. I added very detailed information. Within an hour, Alphageekpa, another contributor to this Wikipedia entry deleted my contribution:

Pennsbury is located in the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, along the great bend of the Delaware River, lies Bucks County. In the extreme southeastern corner of Bucks County lie the four political subdivisions whose jointure for school purposes led to the formation of the Pennsbury School District. Yardley Borough is a typical small Bucks County municipality that has retained much of its early American charm and beauty. Lower Makefield Township is a predominately suburban residential area. The site of the major early expansion in the district was Falls Township. The Keystone Industrial Port Complex, all of the homes in Fairless Hills, and some of the homes in Levittown are in this township. The last of the four sections that make up the district is Tullytown Borough. This small borough was part of the Penn Manor Tract in the early 1700's.

I thought that this information was helpful to those about what boroughs and townships attend this high school; however, Alphageekpa didn't delete my information about softball. (I put this information back up on the page just to see if Alphageekpa would undo it again.)

My second Wikipedia edit was on my family's hometown in Italy, Ercolano. On this page, I added more geographical information about the town that my father and aunt helped me with.

It lies at the western foot of Mount Vesuvius, on the Gulf of Naples, just southeast of the city of Naples. The medieval town of Resina was built on the lava stream left by the eruption of Vesuvius (ad 79) that destroyed the ancient city of Herculaneum, from which the present name is derived. Ercolano is a resort and the starting point for excursions to the excavations of Herculaneum and for the ascent of Vesuvius by bus. The town also manufactures leather goods, buttons, glass, and the wine known as Lacrima Christi (Tears of Christ).

So far, no one has decided to undo my contribution. If someone decides that what I added isn't important or relevant and deletes it, I will let you know. 

I think professors and high school teachers shouldn't try avoiding Wikipedia. If anything doing an activity like this will prove to the students and their teachers how easy it is to change and edit information on Wikipedia. An activitiy like this will help emphasize the difference between what is a reliable source and what is an unreliable source. I am not saying that Wikipedia is completey unreliable, I am just saying that it is easy to change the information given. 

One of my previous articles about Wikipedia really emphasizes my feelings and views of this encyclopeida.

SOFTBALL ARTICLE

Caution: You are not currently logged in. Editing this way will cause your IP address to be recorded publicly in this page's edit history. If you create an account, you can conceal your IP address and be provided with many other benefits. Messages sent to your IP can be viewed on your talk page.

What is better? Creating an account or editing without an account and have then record my IP address?

The page informed me that the page is 54 kilobytes long. Scrolling a little further down, I see a large text box that includes source codes, text and CSS codes that we were introduced to earlier in the semester.

I clicked on the discussion tab and was shown that "Softball was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake."

In the good article criteria, it explains that it must be well-written, factually accurate and verifiable, broad, neutral, stable, and illustrated. (A softball is not white but lime-green.) So this article is satisfactory.

The history tab showed me the most recent edits to this particular article. The last one was October 29, 2008 at 6:58. This page describes the edit the user did to the article at the time. Quite interesting.

When comparing the Wikipedia entries for SHU and SVC, I noticed that SVC had more information than SHU. SVC included history and traditions while SHU had the basic information. Both entries were richly-linked to information that a person wouldn't know if they didn't attend the institution. Seton Hill's article talks a little about the athletic programs while Saint Vincent has no reference to their athletics at all. Saint Vincent's entry also includes tuition costs, number of undergraduates and graduates, and faculty. Seton Hill's entry doesn't include any of that information.

Both entries were last edited in 2007.With this information, it is understandable why SHU's entry lacks some needed information.

By Andrew Orlowski

"So we come to the question of responsibility. We've promised to deal with the ethics of Wikipedia before, and it's no longer possible to ignore the elephant in the room, so we must."

Wikipedia is a phenomenal source of pop culture trivia it seems like with the amount of "trolls" lurking among the articles and biographies. "The blame goes here, the blame goes there- the blame goes anywhere, except Wikipedia itself."

I'm not trying to side with Wiki, but the blame should go to the ignorant people in the world who have nothing else to do with their lives but destroy others. Maybe instead of destroying other peoples lives, you should build your own damn life.

By Lisa Spiro

"Just because more researchers-including some prominent ones-are citing Wikipedia does not mean it's necessarily a valid source for academic papers. However, you can begin to see academic norms shifting as more scholars find useful information in Wikipedia and begin to cite it" (Spiro).

Scholary documents achieve trustworthiness through a social process to assure readers that the source they cited in their paper or journal satisfies the quality norms of the field. This is a sign that the academic norms are changing in some disciplines and are turning to Wikipedia for useful and trustworthy information.

In my personal experience, many of my professors have told my classes to stay away from Wikipedia because it is to unreliable. Spiro examines these four criticisms of Wikipedia.

They are:

1) Research papers and projects should'nt rely on encyclopedias. This is not the kind of thing you want to reference in an academic paper. Many enccylopedias are constantly changing so the information provided could either be old or invalid.

2) Wikipedia is constantly going through revisions. This is similar to the first one. Wiki is too unstable to cite. What you read today may be gone tomorrow or even in a few minutes.

3) You can't trust Wiki because anyone is able to contribute.

4) These entries lack authority because of the lack of peer review.

Wikipedia can be appropriate in an academic source depending on what is being cited and for what purpose. Wikipedia is instructive for its readers because of its openness. Spiro explains that "Wikipedia can be a legitamate source for student research papers- and furnish a way to teach research skills." If readers use critical judgment in analyzing its reliability and appropriateness for citation, then there should be no shame in citing it.

I know I have turned to Wikipedia to look up helpful information on the subject I am writing about. I won't necessarily cite the information gained from Wiki, but I will use it in a way that I am helping my scholarly research. If you know what I mean.

When we ask people to test our websites, we should be aware that some problems that might find and have with the site may be harder to fix than we think. Let's say person X says that the page on subject Y doesn't make sense it is harder to navigate through and read. Well Y maybe connected to Z and to change Y would mean that we would have to redesign both pages.

"Whenever you're making changes, think carefully about what else is going to be affected. In particular, when you're making something more prominent than it was, consider what else might end up being de-emphasized as a result" (Krug 158).

When we decide to make changes in our papers, our IF games, our blog entries, our life, we consider what else may be affected as well. We must do this with our websites and especially with our writing for the web.

In order to have a great site, we have to test. Krug explains that usability testing is like have friends visiting from out of town. You make the tourist rounds with them, you see things about your home town that you usually don't notice because you're so used to them. You realizee that a lot of things that you take for granted aren't obvious to everybody.

No matter how many people you test, if they are the targeted audience or not, this user will always point out things you can do to improve your site because as the designer, you will oversee a link, a color, a font, a picture, etc that should either have more emphasis or be removed.

TEST, TEST, TEST!

In the beginning of Slouching Towards Bedlam the gamer is given a variety of choices. The gamer can chose to examine a desk blotter, a sandlewood box, a desk drawer, a phonograph with the sounds of a man, or a black box on wheels. It seems that there is a particular procedure that one must follow in the game. You have to "get your bearings". Then one has to investigate the situation and the surroundings and then you must act upon the situation at hand. 

When I came upon the phonograph, I pictured the tin cylinders as storage rather than "games". I didn't get that far into the game even though I played it for about an hour. I was able to examine the office, the lobby, some archives and rooms from the Panopticon.

In Cleve's archives, it explains that he has small burns on palms and inner forearms that should heal quickly. He is 23 and earlier in the game is suspected that he was a little crazy. Apparently, he was arrested for disturbing the peace. The doctors diagnosed him with disassociative disorder, acute schizophrenia with paranoid tendencies yet didn't seem harmful to himself or others.

That is as far as I could get in an hour. It took me forever to find out information about Cleve. I'm assuming that he will refuse to talk for the rest of his life. From what I understood from the game, Cleve is paranoid about something. Maybe he is paranoid about the future and time and how he is stuck in time. I don't know. I wish I could've gotten further in the game then what I did.

To go along with what Jackie wrote, the creator/author of this game did a wonderful job blending suspense, literature, time travel, and science-fiction into a game. I personally didn't enjoy this game as much as I thought I was because everyone in class said they enjoyed it; however, I don't really like IF games to begin with so I think I dislike every game I play.