Student Government Blog

The appearance of the Student Government Blog is attractive. One of the first things I noticed on this website was that there are several ways to contact people with the Student Government on Twitter. This is very helpful. There are also different tabs that lead into the different branches of government which makes the website really organized. I did notice that it does not look like it has been very active. There are only three posts. I feel like this website would be very good for the Student Government to keep in touch though and also for the student body to kind of see what is going on with the Student Government.

Upward Bound

The first thing to capture your attention on this website are the changing photos in the banner. They made a good choice in choosing the photos because the photos tell stories of excitement, fun, and success. The site is plain with a similar structure to the UNC site. However, this fits the purpose of this site. The site is there to give information and provide the possible ways to communicate and also see how others felt about the program. The website may need more color and possibly a better design to attract more people and encourage others to join the program.

"Computers and Society"

The website I chose is "Computer and Society". When I first looked at this website, I thought this website was going to be about information on computers. Then I realized this was a website for a course. It provides all kinds of information about the course including policies, schedules, contacts, and assignments. The website is nicely organized by tabs and sub-tabs. It's clear the website is to inform and is not opened to comments. However, I am not sure what picture that is on the site and whether it is relevant to the course or not. Also, although the website is well informed, I think it is dull. The format of the words bothers me because first words of titles are not capitalized; however, they are constant. This website seems to serve the same purpose as blackboard. Maybe a suggestion from me would be to add more resources and help for students in the course to make the website more entertaining and helpful.

Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Outreach

This UNC website used a simple theme and seemed very welcoming. The home page had an animation advertising different events and the tabs at the top of the screen were very useful for navigating through the website. The tabs work very well because it is a great way of organizing information in addition to making the website easy to navigate. The website gives visitors the opportunity to post comments on every page, but I'm not sure if that's because they want you to comment or if they forgot to take that option off. I'm not so sure I like the whole idea of posting comments on a website, I would prefer if they gave an email so you can send questions and comments to. Overall, the website seems new because some of the pages are not fully updated, but it has enough information to be of some use. I really like the simple layout and I'm thinking about switching my layout back to the default UNC layout because it looks more professional.

Assistive Technology Projects Blog- Anders Orn

This website is, first of all, very interesting! Personally, if nothing else, the most important thing about a website is the actual content of it. Yes, layout, organization, and color scheme make the site look good, but I don't think it would be that great if someone was trying to make total crap look good.

With that said, although the content was cool, I'm not a huge fan of how the author of this website organized his/her links and thoughts. The links at the top (which there are a ton of them, by the way) are simply too many. It is confusing and I find it difficult to quickly spot what I am looking for within the site. I think a better method would have been to make a base links and then to have daughter links coming from those. Also, the color scheme seems very basic to me. The colors are black, white, and navy. That's it. Now if those colors were in a more intricate pattern, I think that would be okay. I realize that simplicity is good most of the time, but this looks almost too basic. The two menus on the right are great I think because they help to separate things out, something the top links don't do.

This website blog is overall a good site, but I think it needs work in the creativity factor and the layout/organization factor. It's effective if you are looking for the site and you are familiar with it already.

The Website "Food Cultures"

The Website titled “Food Cultures a New Interdisciplinary Cluster” was extremely organized, well put together and aesthetically pleasing. The first piece of the website that caught my eye was the creative presentation of the title, with a fork and a pair of chopsticks incorporated into the letters. After that I noticed all the different areas of the website that could be explored. I glanced at the twits on the right panel to get a feel for the subject matter and then decided to read further. The tabs along the top of the website clearly label what the page will hold. The tabs are well organized and make sense; they are nice because it prevents the viewer from having to read through all of the information to find what they are looking for. The website is very inclusive and covers a variety of aspects of the culture of food. The website appears to be new still and therefore does not have a lot of posts or activity which is the only thing it needs improvement on. Overall the website is visually appealing but still professional and reaches its goal of being a place for intellectual discussion of Food Cultures.

Upward Bound Program Website

The site I chose to look at was that of the Upward Bound Program. Overall, I was very impressed with all the aspects that the website had to offer. I really appreciated the organization of the website. The first thing that came to my attention when first viewing the page was that, no matter what sub-section I looked at, the contact information always available on the side. On the homepage were links that explained what the upward bound program was and what there purpose was. From there, I could look at how to apply, resources and programs they had to offer, past and upcoming events, and alumni information. The categories were simple making it easy for someone, who was looking for something in particular, to quickly find what they needed. The site background was simple but also appealing. They used pictures from the Upward Bound Program to personalize it but the site still looked official. They also had some videos that showed what the people involved in the program thought about it. I think the creator of this website did an excellent job on organizing this website. It is very easy to browse around and simple to find particular things. It also does an excellent job on covering all the things one would need to know about this program. I will definitely be using this as an example for making my own website.

Blog: Nations Borders Identities Conflict

Visually, the blog concerning Nations Border Identity Conflict is very appealing. The pictures are eye-catching and strongly presented. The layout of the website continues the theme of worldliness and geography. Although the tabs are concise and useful, they are not used to their full potential. The various paragraphs and bulletin points found below the array of pictures could be assorted into corresponding tabs and organized better. In addition to this, although the pictures displayed once entering the website are very useful, it could serve the website better to have more of a homepage displayed and a description of the website and have the photos either supporting this on the side or in a separate tab on their own. This would help the functionality of the website.

Food Cultures Website

After looking at the Food Cultures website I am very impressed.
Overall it was neatly organized and very easy to maneuver. I'll start off with
first impressions, which I consider to be very important when browsing a
website. The title was genious! I loved how they incorporated cutlery into the
title. At fisrt glance, I feel that everything is neatly displayed. There are four
main tabs, Home, For Sharing, News, and Opportinites; none of them have
'sub-tabs.' The center block is occupied with current news stories while the
right side tab posts twitter updates and the left side tab displays affiliated
organizations. All together this is the home page.

The news page displays the latest news events, with the most recent at the
top of the page. Both the Opportunites page and the For Sharing page display
blogs. I like how they say who wrote them and on what day at what time.
Addtionally, the Food Cultures title remains with each page, which is
very clever because it reminds you what you are reading about.

Well done Food Cultures!

Running Away?

The website I checked out was http://chuhengding.web.unc.edu/about/ the website of an English student originally from Nanjing, China. The website immediately caught my attention because of its name RUNNING AWAY, the use of all caps easily distinguished it for the other rather mundane titles. Visually the page is less than stellar and while that may seem like a bad thing I actually appreciate it. A lot of the blogs I skimmed, prior to choosing, seemed to be bogged down with too many visuals, which ended up feeling a tad overwhelming (kind of like going into the store Forever 21). The site had a cool graphic at the top from a popular PS3 game --I couldn't find the title, unfortunately, but I remember playing the demo when it first came out-- and the graphic matched the theme of the page, which I appreciated. The background is a soft shade of pink, very closely related to pastel pink; which, by itself, is an amazing color, however, when combined the with the loud title and graphic it came off feeling, lackluster and a bit confusing, because of the sharp contrast between it and the graphic. If she intended to go with a softer color I think a silver would have looked nice, and retained it's professional appearance, but the choice of the pastel pink was a little off-setting.

The content varied, while her English ability isn't amazing (she often forgets particles) keeping the writing from gaining any fluidity, her writing was interesting. The highlight for me was her "About Me!" was is strange because typically the about me section is a bit bland and gives little insight to the creator of the blog. This about me displays the author's personality and even tells a bit of her story, which I found very interesting, though it was in broken English. It allowed me to understand how difficult it is for people who move to America from foreign countries, in her case China. Overall I enjoyed checking it out and it will definitely help me to create an effective website of my own.

Website: Nick Andersen

http://nicktheandersen.com/

As Arts Editor of the DTH, Andersen's personal website displays some of his journalistic work, his resume, and different odds and ends that are unique to him.  

On the home page, he introduces his viewer by referring to himself in the third person and welcomes the viewer to explore the rest of the website.  On the right is a picture of himself and on the left is a quote; four of the pages on the website have different quotes that describe him somehow.  The quotes, while respectable, are not very professional and they detract from the rest of the text about him.  The various headers at the top include: my resume, my writing, my exploration, about this site, and contact me.  The resume page talks more about Andersen (this time in the first person) and includes a link to a pdf of his resume.  The writing page includes various samples of articles he wrote for the DTH and the exploration page introduces the viewer to a blog he created while studying abroad.

From the website it is very clear that he is interested in journalism and very skilled with digital media as he also includes a link to his twitter and the "about this site" page describes the different media he used to create the site.

I think that this website is well organized, focused, and and personal without being un-professional.  

Marcia Blackstock Website Review

http://mblackstock.web.unc.edu/

Marcia Blackstock's webpage is simple but well put together. The descriptions are to the point, concise, but effective. I wish she had completed her professional page, because the personal page gave me a good look at how important sports and community service are to her. The pictures are appropriate but give a good sense of who she is and what she does.The resume page features a full link at the bottom of a one-page sample.
Unfortunately, there are still some elements of a blog in the site that have not been removed and these are a little distracting and unprofessional. Other than this minor detail though, the website is organized and presented well.

Personal Website Critique

http://samh.web.unc.edu/professional/

I randomly chose to critique the personal website in the link above. This website belongs to a student, and from its appearance, seems to have been created for another section of English 102. What I like most about this website is its simplicity. The entire layout is extremely clean and organized.

The one thing I noticed right off the bat was the description under the name in the header. The student simply wrote her name again for this, except she included her nickname (Sam) instead of her full first name (Samantha). It seems a little pointless to me, and though it's a simple detail, I think it takes away slightly from the professional aspect of the page.

I think the content included in the "Home" and "Personal" pages is very appropriate. It's professional yet interesting. It allows readers to get a sense for who the student is without getting too personal. Also, though the links to the different pages are included in a sidebar on the right instead of at the top of the page, the student explained on the home page what kind of information she has included on her website and where this information can be found.

I'm not sure what information the "Professional" page should include (other than the resume under the "Resume" child page, of course). However, I certainly think that it should include more than "This is my professional page", which the student currently has written on it. As I said before though, this page looks as though it has been made for an English 102 class, so it could simply be that, like our class, she is still in the process of updating her website.

WEBSITE!

Hello everyone:

After browsing through the websites available on web.unc.edu, I find this website created by Stanislav Khrapov, an economics PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill. You can access his webpage here.

At the first class, the website is well laid out with his personal pages and professional pages. On the homepage, he gives the reader a short introduction of himself and included a photograph of him that helps convey his professionalism. For the personal pages, he had a blog containing some interesting episodes of his personal life as well updates on some projects he had done.

For his professional pages, he divides them into three parts: CV, Research, and Teaching. The CV page displays his resume in an easily accessible way in PDF format. The research page includes the papers he had written and a short abstract of them. Finally, his teaching page listed the teaching assistant positions had hold in reverse chronological order. And for each position he has a nice link to the syllabus, course website, and course homework.

I think this is a well organized website and a good model for my unit 1 final project.

Happy editing your website!

Website: Rachel Olsen

I went to the web.unc.edu website to look around and get ideas from other people's website. Some of them weren't done or have been started, but one I ran across was Rachel Olsen. I thought the website was very clear and basic. She had a simple light pink background with a picture at the top (black and white picture of a building). One thing that I think she could maybe change is her about me section. It is off to the side and I think that maybe it should be more centered for people to notice it. The font is small, so not many people might think to go over to the side and read it. Her opening page was nice and had a nice opening paragraph. What works about her website is that it is very organized so someone looking at it would be able to find things very easily. I thought her other pages were also well organized as well. She picked a good font that was clear and easy for people to read. The only thing I can really think of that I would change is her about me section and her picture. I would have my own page for that or not make it so small and off to the side. Other than that I liked how easy it was to navigate through her page.

Professor J. Peacock

My anthropology teacher this semester is the renowned Anthropologist J. Peacock. When I Googled him, I found a plethora of websites that mentioned his research, articles and books. I also came across a "profile" of sorts that he has put together.

First of all, I noted his black and white picture. He is an older man and I like that he has put up a younger picture of himself. I think that it is distinguished and shows his 'status' per se. This profile, however, is every extensive. It has a list of EVERYTHING that he's written and contributed to. This is good, yet the asthetics of it are harsh. As an anthropologist, one would want to have a page like this listing absolutely everything, chronologically and sysematically. Though, in this day in age, a page like this looks very outdated. His menu bar down the left hand side isn't "floating." Instead, when you scroll down, it repeats again and again. This is a little confusing. Also the only colors are the grey background and the yellow lists. I would suggest he put a photo album up, and reorganize his menu onto the front page.

I realize, after looking at this profile that for mine I'm going to want something that represents my age and modernity appropriately. I know that people like pictures, so perhaps I will include relevant album of my travels and experiences abroad. Also I think I will add an appeasing color scheme. I look forward to creating my own site!