Critical Literacy Presentation Reflection

I don't know whether we're supposed to do a reflection for our critical literacy presentations, but it felt only right that I should do one, albeit a little late.  It seems especially important as well since I plan on including the presentation in my final portfolio.

The critical literacy presentation is the one project where I didn't feel completely unsure of what to expect in the beginning.  I've worked with PowerPoint many times before, and even though I hadn't used it recently and did not have much experience using it with my Mac yet, I was sure I could figure out how to do everything I needed to.

Researching my topic was easy once I knew how to go about looking.  The iPad is pretty popular and was in recent news due to the premier of the latest version.  The one thing I had a problem with at first was finding information on the original iPad in comparison to the newest one.  However, once I began searching for "iPad 2010" things got easier.  The first place I went for research, of course, was apple.com, which helped quite a bit. I also contacted my cousin, who works for Intel, which works with Apple, and he pointed me to a lot of good resources online.

Organizing the PowerPoint was a bit more difficult because there was so much information concerning the iPad.  I tried to concentrate on the essentials, which I viewed as explaining what it was and giving background information so anyone unfamiliar with the topic would understand it, as well as answering all of the questions or covering all of the points on the assignment sheet.  Overall, I think I did a pretty good job.  I tried my best to keep it as concise as possible, but with so much information it was difficult, and the PowerPoint was a little longer than it was supposed to be.

My biggest challenge with the project, besides trying to condense information, was figuring out how to narrate the presentation.  I became really excited when I realized that the PowerPoint on my Mac came with its own narration tool.  However, I soon learned that it wouldn't be that easy.  Every time I recorded, the narration would get cut off on playback.  Upon doing some looking around online to see if anyone else had encountered similar problems, I learned that it was not just my program, but that everyone who had purchased the Microsoft Office for Mac software had the same problem.  I also learned that no one had discovered a way to fix it.  With that option out, I figured I'd use GarageBand, as had been recommended.  I hit another stumbling block as I learned that GarageBand had somehow been uninstalled on my computer.  After finding the disks I needed, I successfully reinstalled it.  I wish I could say it was smooth sailing from there, but it wasn't.  I had never used GarageBand before, and I couldn't seem to get the voice recording to sound exactly as I wanted.  It recorded with an echo-like quality to it, and I couldn't figure out how to fix it.  In the end, I figured a narration that sounded like it echoed was better than no narration, and I went with it.  The entire time, I wished that the narration in PowerPoint had worked.

Overall, despite the problems, I was proud of how the PowerPoint came out.  Besides the length and the echo of the narration, I thought it was well done, especially for it being the first time I had used PowerPoint so much on the Mac and for it being the first time I had narrated a PowerPoint.  I feel like I chose the right topic and put in a lot of effort, and I hope the professor agrees.

Website Redesign Reflection

When I first began the website redesign project, I was pretty nervous.  I had some website design experience from a class I took in high school, but that was two years ago, and my experience overall was fairly limited.  So when I read the assignment sheet and found out we were using google sites, I felt a lot better.  I had never used google sites before, but it seemed pretty easy to learn how to use it (and it was).  Overall, I figured google sites would make the whole process of making the website redesigns easier.

While that turned out to be true for the most part, I did encounter some problems and frustrations.  There were times, for example, that google sites did not want to work as I wanted it to.  I would be editing a site and hit the button to take away an indent, and it would instead increase the indent.  Little problems like that were a bit of an annoyance.  

The cause of most of my frustration concerning google sites, however, was its limitations.  There were times when I wished that I could customize the sites further without having to use html code (which I can't quite remember how to do).  This was especially true in regard to the themes of the sites (I kind of wished they had more of a selection or that I could edit them further).  I also wished I could have changed the alignment of the headers.  (If that was something google sites allowed, I did not find it.)

Besides that, though, I found google sites to be pretty easy to learn and use.  So far, I am pleased with how my redesigns are turning out (I only have one more page to work on for each), and I think the changes are beneficial.  I reorganized the entire site, adding pages and making edits to existing pages.  For example, I moved the menu to its own page, and deleted other restaurant listings and listings with links that did not work off the "what's nearby" page.  Speaking of that page, I also added more listings for things to do in the area and a couple more places to stay, as well as a brief description of the area in which the restaurant(s) is/are located.  For the home page, I added a little description of Flo's.  Other pages I added included a directions page, a history page, an awards page, and a contact page.  I also put photos throughout the entire site, and overall it is more welcoming and navigable.

The original site: www.flosclamshack.net
My first redesign: sites.google.com/site/flosclamshackmiddletown/
My second redesign: sites.google.com/site/flosclamshackri/