March 31st
"Within the virtual space represented by these interfaces, and elsewhere within computer systems, the values of our culture -- ideological, political, economic, educational -- are mapped both implicitly and explicitly, constituting a complex set of material relations among culture, technology, and technology users" (Selfe 485).
My experience building a website with Microsoft Expressions was definitely shaped by the values of our culture. The content of my website was of course built upon our culture's thoughts of obesity. For example, American culture does not praise obesity whereas in other cultures having too much body fat is a sign of affluence. Here, we think of the negative side effects of obesity. As a result, my bias against obesity partially stems from the cultural norms that surround me, the pre-existing ideology that obesity is harmful and looked down upon.
Selfe makes the claim that issues of "racism, sexism, and colonialism" are reflected through different interfaces. While I believe this statement is true to an extent, it is difficult for viewers to see these issues. These issues may depend on what content is included and what is excluded in a particular interface. For instance, Reddit is based on upvotes and downvotes. Posts that receive the most upvotes are displayed on the first page, while those with more downvotes are not displayed on the first page. This allows popular posts to be more visible than less popular posts. Another example is when a web designer chooses to build a website, but includes only information he wants to include. Therefore, the viewers of this website are potentially exposed to the values of race, gender, and so on that the web designer has.
One way to address these issues that Selfe and Selfe point out is computer-supported writing environments that are more democratic. For instance, online discussion boards for students rather than face to face discussions eliminate regards for race, gender, age, and so on. These type of environments are known as "linguistic utopias" where indications of race, gender, and class are minimized.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Response to Jason's and Elliots's HTML Basic Blogs
March 25th
To Jason:
The responses you posted on your blog provide good examples. Many of your responses matched the responses I gave. For example, our response to the difference between carrots and brackets. Although you point out similarities between your code and the test.html code, you don't really point out differences. Yes, much of the code is the same. However, since your website is probably more complex and has a different structure, there would be more command tags that the test.html code is probably missing.
To Elliot:
Your answers to the professor's questions were short and vague. The questions were not answered in their entirety. For instance, you say "After the 2nd step it still does not look like a website it has more content but it needs styling and color etc in it." However, etc. is not clear. Of course the readers can make assumptions of what you are trying to say, but your readers should not have to make suppositions. For your last paragraph, you claim that your code is similar to the Dream Weaver code. How? And there are probably some differences in your code.
To Jason:
The responses you posted on your blog provide good examples. Many of your responses matched the responses I gave. For example, our response to the difference between carrots and brackets. Although you point out similarities between your code and the test.html code, you don't really point out differences. Yes, much of the code is the same. However, since your website is probably more complex and has a different structure, there would be more command tags that the test.html code is probably missing.
To Elliot:
Your answers to the professor's questions were short and vague. The questions were not answered in their entirety. For instance, you say "After the 2nd step it still does not look like a website it has more content but it needs styling and color etc in it." However, etc. is not clear. Of course the readers can make assumptions of what you are trying to say, but your readers should not have to make suppositions. For your last paragraph, you claim that your code is similar to the Dream Weaver code. How? And there are probably some differences in your code.
Monday, March 24, 2014
HTML Basics
March 24th
A Web Page:
This basic webpage resembles the code I've written because it contains two important structure foundations: a header and a body. The content that is visible is the text and the header division. However, the staggered structure of the sentence "I am testing a lot of formatting things out with it" that was visible in the code is not visible in the browser. Why? Because you need to separate each line of the broken up sentence with the marker <p> to indicate a new paragraph line.
A Better Webpage:
This page does look more like a web page to me. While it contains more content, it is missing colors, a structure, and a rhetorical situation. The structure is linear and travels up and down. It is not eye catching to the readers. In addition, the web page could use more assets obviously like images, videos, links, etc. Finally, what is the web page's message? What is the web page trying to convey? The content of the web page is disconnected.
Compare and Contrast:
A Web Page:
This basic webpage resembles the code I've written because it contains two important structure foundations: a header and a body. The content that is visible is the text and the header division. However, the staggered structure of the sentence "I am testing a lot of formatting things out with it" that was visible in the code is not visible in the browser. Why? Because you need to separate each line of the broken up sentence with the marker <p> to indicate a new paragraph line.
A Better Webpage:
This page does look more like a web page to me. While it contains more content, it is missing colors, a structure, and a rhetorical situation. The structure is linear and travels up and down. It is not eye catching to the readers. In addition, the web page could use more assets obviously like images, videos, links, etc. Finally, what is the web page's message? What is the web page trying to convey? The content of the web page is disconnected.
A Pretty Page:
It is definitely a better looking page. The colors, the spacing, and the headers are more appealing to the readers. In regards to the HTML tags, I notice that the carrots all indicate a divide of some sort whether it is a header or a paragraph or a footer. Meanwhile, the brackets are used to indicate the aesthetic details of whatever content that is found between the tags such as the text alignment, font, and so on. The brackets and the carrots work hand-in-hand it seems. The declarations before the brackets are similar to the declarations inside the carrots. The code before the brackets and inside the carrots are labels for the different aspects of the page (header, footer, paragraph).
Compare and Contrast:
There are many similarities between the code behind my website and the code in my test.html and teststyle.css files. Both codes have mark ups for headers, the body of the page, footers, dividers, paragraph indicators, and line breaks. While both my website and the code in my test.html have many of the same declarations, my website contains a few different declarations that the test.html does not have. For instance, the below declarations are in my website code, but absent on the test.html:
1. <meta name> refers to the internet tab name of the website
2. <link rel> indicates format of the web page (I think)
3. <script src> indicates the location that the content can be found
4. <li><img src> links to an image
5. <ul> used for orbits?
Aside from declarations, the basic structure of my website and the test.html is derived from the same layout idea. There is a header, a main body, and a footer. That is the underlying structure for both my website and the test.html. The additional declarations in my website is for added assets that the test.html is currently lacking.
1. <meta name> refers to the internet tab name of the website
2. <link rel> indicates format of the web page (I think)
3. <script src> indicates the location that the content can be found
4. <li><img src> links to an image
5. <ul> used for orbits?
Aside from declarations, the basic structure of my website and the test.html is derived from the same layout idea. There is a header, a main body, and a footer. That is the underlying structure for both my website and the test.html. The additional declarations in my website is for added assets that the test.html is currently lacking.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Rhetorical Self-Evaluation of My Website
March 14th
My website focuses on the social illness of obesity. I chose this topic because obesity is a physical social illness that I see everyday. It is a global endemic, a continually growing problem (see what I did there?). For my website, I decided to include 5 different webpages under the following tabs: home, about obesity, health effects, data and statistics, and what you can do. Many of the websites I visited that were centered on obesity had similar tabs. Through the various rhetorical techniques, I attempted to send an important message to my audience: obesity is a prevalent problem that leads to negative health effects and we can take steps to prevent it from further spreading.
As a reader scrolls through my website, he or she notices that I utilize ethos, logos, and pathos to support my claims. For the webpages, I include many arguments that place obesity in a negative light. I list the potential health disadvantages associated with obesity. I state the high rates of obesity among men, women, and children. I point out that obesity may lead to poor self-body image. Nothing I say about obesity is positive. In order to support my arguments, I practice logos by providing my readers with facts that I received from reliable resources like PubMed and Center for Disease Control. In addition, I refer to data, statistics, and definitions in order to clarify a concept to my readers or to back up a particular statement. By practicing these strategies, I am giving myself credibility as a source because I am finding evidence that supports the ethos of my website. To further persuade my targeted audience, I insert image assets to elicit feelings of concern, hope, and motivation from my audience.
I chose certain images to align with the content of a section of my website. For instance, I embedded the image below at the top of my health effects webpage:
This picture from faudzil.blogspot.com not only illustrates the topic of my webpage, it demonstrates what obesity looks like both externally and internally. It conveys a clear message that victims of obesity can suffer from a number of serious health risks. The image speaks the message. Another asset I picked was a picture of a smiling family from upc.ardenthealth.net on my what you can do page:
From this asset, readers may respond by thinking about their own families and feeling affection. Underneath the image is a short paragraph explaining how individuals can help their families maintain or reach a healthy weight. By inserting this image, I show my readers that obesity can affect their loved ones --this may add a motivational factor to my website and may convince a reader to take action.
The pathos of my website, I believe, creates kairos and prompts metanoia depending on the readers. If a reader suffers from obesity and cares about their health, this may convince the reader to take action to fight against obesity. However, if a reader falls within the normal weight range for their height, then the website will not have as great as a kairos or metanoia effect on him or her. By offering a wide range of facts about obesity and complementing the facts with images, the readers may self-reflect about their own health and may or may not decide to make a lifestyle change. While I would like to think that my website has the capacity to motivate a reader to practice a healthier lifestyle, I don't think my website is quite on that level rhetorically. In order to do that, I would need to play around with pathos more and add more content.
I believe that my site could've been more rhetorically powerful if I had employed more types of media. For example, I could've created an entire webpage that was devoted to childhood obesity and inserted a video or an article on childhood obesity. Instead, I solely relied on images for the rhetorical situation. While the idea of adding videos and articles to my site did pop into my head, I do not know how to on Microsoft Expressions. Also, I was frightened of trying to embed videos or articles for the fear that it would ruin the webpage layout I wanted to retain since a simple deletion of a divider can mess up the entire structure.
While my use of diverse media types is lacking, I did strategically set up my webpages to place an emphasis on the image assets. By deliberately using two simple colors (white for the background and navy for the tabs), the reader's attention is immediately drawn to the colorful images on the pages. Also, I usually sized the images to be larger to direct the readers' focus to them. For my what you can do page, I used an orbit of three images to grab my audience's interest and to make my page more aesthetically pleasing. The spacial dimensions of the website helped emphasize the images as well. I placed images at different locations on some of the webpages (like the what you can do page and the what is obesity page). The position of the images differentiates between the separate sections on the webpages and guides the readers to these sections of text. The layouts of the webpages also all differed spatially. Some pages have a single large image at the top of the page. Some have smaller images dispersed throughout the page. Others have surrounding text boxes around the centered images.
Along with the assets, the ethos of my website is heavily dependent on the content and the linguistic modes. The readers notice immediately that the text is in English; therefore, the website is geared towards English speaking readers. The language is more formal and factual rather than conversational on most of the pages with an exception to my home page and my what you can do page. My home page asks rhetorical questions and is directly addressing the readers. The language on my home page also contains more emotional appeal because it provides an example of an obese child being taken away from their parents by child protective services. In my conclusion, I add informality to my page by referring to the readers and myself in the 2nd person "We." My what you can do page also refers to the readers in the 2nd person. In contrast, my other pages are told from the third person and act to educate the readers rather than address them.
My website falls under the genres of propaganda and public service announcements. I don't know what other genre it would be considered. However, with a few adjustments, the website could easily be transformed into an informational source on a government sponsored website or on a medical website (like PubMed). It could be used to explain the goals of an organization that is taking preventative measures to slow down obesity.
With my limited skills of web design, I would say that I did alright producing the rhetoric of my website. Although I consider my website rudimentary, with the short amount of time we had as a class and with my lack of experience, I think my website employs space, images, and text well to convey a message to my readers. And I definitely believe that my website contains a lot of ethos, pathos, and logos to strongly present the rhetorical situation at hand.
My website focuses on the social illness of obesity. I chose this topic because obesity is a physical social illness that I see everyday. It is a global endemic, a continually growing problem (see what I did there?). For my website, I decided to include 5 different webpages under the following tabs: home, about obesity, health effects, data and statistics, and what you can do. Many of the websites I visited that were centered on obesity had similar tabs. Through the various rhetorical techniques, I attempted to send an important message to my audience: obesity is a prevalent problem that leads to negative health effects and we can take steps to prevent it from further spreading.
As a reader scrolls through my website, he or she notices that I utilize ethos, logos, and pathos to support my claims. For the webpages, I include many arguments that place obesity in a negative light. I list the potential health disadvantages associated with obesity. I state the high rates of obesity among men, women, and children. I point out that obesity may lead to poor self-body image. Nothing I say about obesity is positive. In order to support my arguments, I practice logos by providing my readers with facts that I received from reliable resources like PubMed and Center for Disease Control. In addition, I refer to data, statistics, and definitions in order to clarify a concept to my readers or to back up a particular statement. By practicing these strategies, I am giving myself credibility as a source because I am finding evidence that supports the ethos of my website. To further persuade my targeted audience, I insert image assets to elicit feelings of concern, hope, and motivation from my audience.
I chose certain images to align with the content of a section of my website. For instance, I embedded the image below at the top of my health effects webpage:
This picture from faudzil.blogspot.com not only illustrates the topic of my webpage, it demonstrates what obesity looks like both externally and internally. It conveys a clear message that victims of obesity can suffer from a number of serious health risks. The image speaks the message. Another asset I picked was a picture of a smiling family from upc.ardenthealth.net on my what you can do page:
From this asset, readers may respond by thinking about their own families and feeling affection. Underneath the image is a short paragraph explaining how individuals can help their families maintain or reach a healthy weight. By inserting this image, I show my readers that obesity can affect their loved ones --this may add a motivational factor to my website and may convince a reader to take action.
The pathos of my website, I believe, creates kairos and prompts metanoia depending on the readers. If a reader suffers from obesity and cares about their health, this may convince the reader to take action to fight against obesity. However, if a reader falls within the normal weight range for their height, then the website will not have as great as a kairos or metanoia effect on him or her. By offering a wide range of facts about obesity and complementing the facts with images, the readers may self-reflect about their own health and may or may not decide to make a lifestyle change. While I would like to think that my website has the capacity to motivate a reader to practice a healthier lifestyle, I don't think my website is quite on that level rhetorically. In order to do that, I would need to play around with pathos more and add more content.
I believe that my site could've been more rhetorically powerful if I had employed more types of media. For example, I could've created an entire webpage that was devoted to childhood obesity and inserted a video or an article on childhood obesity. Instead, I solely relied on images for the rhetorical situation. While the idea of adding videos and articles to my site did pop into my head, I do not know how to on Microsoft Expressions. Also, I was frightened of trying to embed videos or articles for the fear that it would ruin the webpage layout I wanted to retain since a simple deletion of a divider can mess up the entire structure.
While my use of diverse media types is lacking, I did strategically set up my webpages to place an emphasis on the image assets. By deliberately using two simple colors (white for the background and navy for the tabs), the reader's attention is immediately drawn to the colorful images on the pages. Also, I usually sized the images to be larger to direct the readers' focus to them. For my what you can do page, I used an orbit of three images to grab my audience's interest and to make my page more aesthetically pleasing. The spacial dimensions of the website helped emphasize the images as well. I placed images at different locations on some of the webpages (like the what you can do page and the what is obesity page). The position of the images differentiates between the separate sections on the webpages and guides the readers to these sections of text. The layouts of the webpages also all differed spatially. Some pages have a single large image at the top of the page. Some have smaller images dispersed throughout the page. Others have surrounding text boxes around the centered images.
Along with the assets, the ethos of my website is heavily dependent on the content and the linguistic modes. The readers notice immediately that the text is in English; therefore, the website is geared towards English speaking readers. The language is more formal and factual rather than conversational on most of the pages with an exception to my home page and my what you can do page. My home page asks rhetorical questions and is directly addressing the readers. The language on my home page also contains more emotional appeal because it provides an example of an obese child being taken away from their parents by child protective services. In my conclusion, I add informality to my page by referring to the readers and myself in the 2nd person "We." My what you can do page also refers to the readers in the 2nd person. In contrast, my other pages are told from the third person and act to educate the readers rather than address them.
My website falls under the genres of propaganda and public service announcements. I don't know what other genre it would be considered. However, with a few adjustments, the website could easily be transformed into an informational source on a government sponsored website or on a medical website (like PubMed). It could be used to explain the goals of an organization that is taking preventative measures to slow down obesity.
With my limited skills of web design, I would say that I did alright producing the rhetoric of my website. Although I consider my website rudimentary, with the short amount of time we had as a class and with my lack of experience, I think my website employs space, images, and text well to convey a message to my readers. And I definitely believe that my website contains a lot of ethos, pathos, and logos to strongly present the rhetorical situation at hand.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Peer Review of Website
March 12th
What do you think of my site? All of my website pages are under the folder labeled "Tan" and then a folder labeled "English 355."
What do you think of my site? All of my website pages are under the folder labeled "Tan" and then a folder labeled "English 355."
Friday, March 7, 2014
Self-Evaluation of Website
March 7th
Looking through my website pages, I believe that the message I am trying to present to my audience is clear. With the evidence and assets I include, the readers understand what I am trying to convey to them: that obesity is a prevalent problem in the U.S. and globally. While I think I have some great sources and information, the structure of my website may not be the most aesthetically pleasing and purposeful (this is due to my lack of computer software skills). I am struggling with some of the code behind the website design layouts. For instance, for my "What You Can Do" page, the three images at the top of the website were supposed to act as a slide show and not just stack on top of each other on the page. So, honestly, it just looks stupid and amateurish. Also, there seems to be a lot of blank space on some of the pages that I want to fill, but don't know how to. So what's really holding me back is my lack of experience with web design and my technological illiteracy. But I must give props to myself for trying to experiment with different Foundation design templates for my webpages. And hey, this is a learning process for all of us.
Looking through my website pages, I believe that the message I am trying to present to my audience is clear. With the evidence and assets I include, the readers understand what I am trying to convey to them: that obesity is a prevalent problem in the U.S. and globally. While I think I have some great sources and information, the structure of my website may not be the most aesthetically pleasing and purposeful (this is due to my lack of computer software skills). I am struggling with some of the code behind the website design layouts. For instance, for my "What You Can Do" page, the three images at the top of the website were supposed to act as a slide show and not just stack on top of each other on the page. So, honestly, it just looks stupid and amateurish. Also, there seems to be a lot of blank space on some of the pages that I want to fill, but don't know how to. So what's really holding me back is my lack of experience with web design and my technological illiteracy. But I must give props to myself for trying to experiment with different Foundation design templates for my webpages. And hey, this is a learning process for all of us.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Rate Yourself
Rating Scores:
0: I haven't thought about this at all.
1: I've done some planning, but nothing started.
2: I've started this stage, but it's not 100% complete.
3: 100% done with this.
I would rate myself a 2. I have most of my content. However, I still need content for my data and statistics page. I also need to edit some things for my website, especially the layout and sizing of my assets. I have been editing things through the code on Microsoft Expressions, but when I open some of my pages with Dreamweaver, things do not always work out the way they do in Expressions.
In regards to making my argument, I noticed that try to present my arguments with facts that align with my argument. I don't really delve into the arguments of an opposing side. This is probably due to time constraints.
I have planned the layout of my website to have the links at the top of the page direct to my other pages. That layout aspect is consistent with all of my pages. Some pages have more assets than others in order to support a particular section of the page. I have limited the colors of the page layouts. Due to the colors of my assets, I do not want the colors of my pages to clash with the colors of my images. Also, the lack of colors of my pages bring more attention to the images, which is what I want.
In regards to making my argument, I noticed that try to present my arguments with facts that align with my argument. I don't really delve into the arguments of an opposing side. This is probably due to time constraints.
I have planned the layout of my website to have the links at the top of the page direct to my other pages. That layout aspect is consistent with all of my pages. Some pages have more assets than others in order to support a particular section of the page. I have limited the colors of the page layouts. Due to the colors of my assets, I do not want the colors of my pages to clash with the colors of my images. Also, the lack of colors of my pages bring more attention to the images, which is what I want.
Website Homepage
March 5th
Here is my homepage so far...
The ethos I am presenting in this page and my other pages is that obesity is a problem that is continually expanding globally. I explain the pervasion of obesity with statistics and discuss the negative health effects of obesity.
While I have some great data, what's really limiting me in presenting a more effective argument is my inability to change the structure of the website layout easily. For instance, I am not sure how to embed video links or links to articles into my website, which would really help my argument.
The ethos I am presenting in this page and my other pages is that obesity is a problem that is continually expanding globally. I explain the pervasion of obesity with statistics and discuss the negative health effects of obesity.
While I have some great data, what's really limiting me in presenting a more effective argument is my inability to change the structure of the website layout easily. For instance, I am not sure how to embed video links or links to articles into my website, which would really help my argument.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)