Observing Reading Responses

I really enjoyed checking out what other students have been working on in the Winter sections of English 138. Everyone’s design aesthetics and familiarity with Dreamweaver differ, so it was interesting to see the array of work people have been publishing. When selecting my top three, I decided to choose webpages with different styles- to demonstrate that one style does not necessarily work better than others. I really liked Lauren Tsugawa’s layout. When you first enter her site, there are four different pictures that link to projects. On her response paper page, there are buttons on the left side that link to examples such as “creative commons,” “democracy at work,” and “grayish medium” The buttons work by highlighting the selection in a red-dashed line. In the center of the page is the bulk of the writing, and on the righthand side are pictures of the author and links to further reading. The simple dark blue background with light blue text, and red accents really work to keep the page simple and clean. The top header with a light blue picture and title also maintain a professional appearance. The text itself is engaging, and includes supportive examples from class readings.

I also thought that Nicolas Feigenbaum has an inspiring design style. Though using a template, it seems as though he is really able to put his own mark on the page-- it looks much more advanced than other work in the class. At the top of the page he has a picture of himself and title of the page, and in the center of his “home” are small pictures and a bit of text that introduce class projects. A black & white picture of a book, and the title “Internet Culture is Participation Culture: subhead, Reading Response” leads to that project page. There is an introduction page, that kind of serves like an introduction to a paper, on which there are links to his 6 other pages- which include titles like “resurgence of folk culture” and the “role of the remix.” The font of both heading and main text is clean, but not too plain- like Georgia Sans or Times New Roman. The 1.5” x 1.5” little image boxes in the top left of the text are a nice addition to the text, lending a visual lead into the explanations. Kate Bradley also uses a template, and I like the “blogger” look that it provides.

Another student’s work that I thought was really deserving of an A, was Kanwal Palla. Though her mainpage didn’t look as “clean” as Lauren or Nicolas’, I really liked her reading response page. I thought the text was very applicable to the class, and the layout of the page with the top buttons served really well. I thought her choices of subtitles worked well, and that including youtube videos made her text really interactive. I also thought she selected good movies to demonstrate her points. I also liked how she included references at the bottom of every page to show the sources that she used on that particular page, but I think that an additional subtitle button with references including a total list could help also.

-- Jamie S