I am personally really enjoying this digital design project. Even though Nvu is so new to me I love learning all of the new things like making links and new pages. It makes me feel like I am getting new insight to the world of the internet and the people who make the web pages. I also feel like it is very neat to have my own website on the internet and be able to show off my writings and editing to anyone who wants to read them. The only thing that I am really having troubles with is adding a picture. For some reason it takes me forever to figure out how to make it actually show up. I will get the hang of it with more practice so I am not worried though! I am very curious to see every one else’s when they are done and see how creative everyone could be with there portfolio’s.

I think the final project is going pretty well. I’ve worked with similar programs before, so I didn’t come at this one from a blind side. I decided to put everything into tables instead of just on the page, so it’s making it a little more difficult to line up and get exactly how I want it. The formatting is different from the other papers, and that’s very time consuming. I don’t like how we have to change the font and all that because its not laid out very well in Nvu to do so. In order to appeal to a different audience, it’s essential to add different mediums within the site.

The final project is something that is new to all of us. Nvu maybe a pretty simple html formatter but just something about it has been a struggle for me. I have written html code before which is very difficult and Nvu makes it simple. Sometimes it chooses to be difficult though and doesn’t allow you to change font sizes and stuff. This is very different from writing a normal paper but it is more practical. In the year 2009 everything is making a change to be digital, newspapers are going online and print sales have dropped off substantially. Changing my paper to be more appealing on the web is a different concept for me because I have written for a newspaper in the past and the same text that was published in the paper was also published online. Nothing needed to be changed to it. But I accept this challenge as a learning experience for myself.

I honestly was not expecting to be making a digital portfolio in this class. One would think that it would be more appropriate for a web design class or the like.  All I really have to say on the subject is the difficulty of working on it, what with the lack of reliability with the program we are working with and the disconnect from the server to see our work progress in smaller intervals.  Other than that, apart from my previous lack of experience with web design its just one more thing I must do in my writing class, just with less writing.

To be honest I was looking forward to writing a final essay to end 2009, however doing a digital portfolio is far more interesting despite the added stress. So far the creation process is going about 50/50 I am having a relatively easy time getting the essays onto the portfolio but the pictures I would like to include just do not want to show up. Its probably no big deal, I’ll just have to work through it as with anything else. What I do like about the portfolio assignment is that it is a more personal assignment where we can really make it our own and allows for more of an opportunity to show who we as writers are.

The digital project turned out to be harder than i thought. The only easy part about it is  finding pictures that relate to your page. The rest is really hard. The page does not seem to link to the other pages and the pictures never seem to load  or show up on the page. Everything is too complicated! I would rather do  it manually but I’m glad we are not writing another research paper! However, it is a good opportunity to learn how to use a different technology. It is different from writing a regular paper because it requires me to put more time into figuring out how to use the program correctly. It is, however, more fun and creative. It helps show your creative side, and how the paper relates to you as a person. It helps express your personality by the usage of color, and pictures . Even though this project is kind of  hard for me, I enjoy it  and learned from it.

Creating a digital portfolio was the last thing I expected to do in an English class, but, surprisingly, I have enjoyed working on the website.  In high school, I took a web design class so when we were assigned a website as our final project; I expected the project to be very fast and easy.  However, I did not anticipate learning a new program would be as time consuming as I have found it to be.  Additionally, the ‘drafting’ process for this project has been very different than that of the other projects I have completed in this class.  For other papers, I considered the sources I was sources I was using and length requirements.  For this project, I’m considering creativity and neatness.  However, I have found many similarities between this project and other regular papers.  Both assignments have required thought and insight to my  audience and consideration of the assignment’s requirements.

I believe the web is an wonderful opportunity for people of all ages, races and genders to express themselves while receiving both praise and criticism but building a website is not for me. One reason is that I am not that tech savvy, back when Myspace was still popular I hated editing and updating my profile because I didn’t know how. Eventually I just quit using the site and switched to Facebook which is easier, but doing this has not expanded my interest in designing a website and this project is all about that.  We have to edit all our previous works and make up new stories in order for the cite to seem remotely interesting and the usability of Nvu is terrible. When I first started out i tried making a decent background with a picture saved on my computer but the program would not let me publish the images online even if they were in the same folder. So I would have to say that I don’t enjoy this project at all.

I have to say that I am pretty happy this is the last journal. The digital portfolio is giving me some grief right now. While I like that the project is different from just another boring paper, the actual project is semi-difficult for me. I guess I am not as techonologically savy as I thought I was. I posted links to some of my older papers and the links do not seem to be working. To tell you the truth, I did not even think about the project over the break. So now I’m back in Tallahassee with a million things to do for English and all my other subjects. So the project is definitely giving me some extra stress, that I probably could have avoided very easily. I have a lot to get done in the short amount of time before the project is due. The website has so much more to be done to it that I just need to sit down and knock out, getting it out of the way. I do enjoy the idea of the project but the actual doing of the project, not so much.

To be completely honest I HATE this digital portfolio project! I do not understand, well, how to really do anything on it and it is so incredibly frustrating. I can say that the only thing I know how to do is change the fonts and colors (how pathetic)…I can’t even get it to save right. I understand the attempt of trying to make a final project less boring for students but posing a new type of software on people like me who are say not exactly tech-savy…freaks me out. So as stated before, things aren’t going so well with this project but I will figure a way to get it done. My composing process is different than writing a “regular” paper because I am no longer addressing the audience of a english teacher but rather the entire internet world. I am having to alter my work to make it appeal to all types of people. With this I am having to change fonts, insert pictures, and even add clips of either video or music. It certainly allows for me to become creative with this project for it is kinda like creating a blog but with our works throughout the year.