Social Networking Project Post Write

After completing this project, I have to say that out of all of the projects I have done for this class, this was not only the most challenging, but also the one I enjoyed the least.  Although I can see how social networking can be used to impact a cause, this project was just not very exciting for me.  

For my cause, I chose domestic violence.  I believe this was the right choice as I have a lot of experience with the topic since I volunteered for many years at a domestic violence shelter where my aunt worked.  I also had a lot of prior knowledge which I was able to bring to the project and which made research fairly easy.  

However, although research and choosing the cause were not very difficult, constructing the site was.  I had never used socialgo.com before, and I found it a little challenging to manage.  I would have liked to have used one of the pre-made templates, but I wanted to include purple as that is the color of domestic violence awareness, and unfortunately I was unable to customize the templates to change the colors.  So, that was a little frustrating.  Still, I got past it and decided to just make my own template, which was pretty easy for me to figure out how to do.  

When it came time to format the welcome page, though, I had a lot of difficulty.  It was formatted as a table, which was fine, but when I tried to add a picture it would not let me fix spacing and add text below.  I ended up having to add text first and then go back and add the picture, and that was only after I accidently messed up the table and had to find some way to get the original html code back.  

I also found it a little difficult to find local events.  Domestic violence awareness month is not until October, so trying to find some events before then was difficult, but I managed by searching around many different sites and online newspapers.  

My last difficulty was deciding what to write about in the forums and the blog.  I had a lot of research, but it was hard to make it fit into blog and forum posts like I wanted.  I think it also would have helped if we had been given some examples.

Overall, I think I did alright with the project, although it still would have been nice to have an example for some guidance as to what was expected.  I tried to include everything in the assignment sheet, and I think I was successful.  However, I still don't feel that this project is the one that best showcases my abilities, and I do not feel like I learned anything from it other than the fact that social networking can help causes.

Enthusiast Blog Post Write

Again, I'm not sure if we are supposed to do a post write for our enthusiast blogs, but I thought I would.  If nothing else, it will help me with the final portfolio.

The enthusiast blog was one of my least favorite projects.  That might be a bit unusual since most seemed to like it, but I liked the website redesign and Wikitravel projects more.  It wasn't that the blog was difficult to do, or that I didn't enjoy writing in it.  I did enjoy writing in it, but it seemed to become tiresome after awhile.  Towards the end, I had difficulty thinking up new topics.  I also felt frustrated because I didn't know how to fix the topic, as the professor wanted, without starting over.  Perhaps I picked too broad of a topic.  I thought I had done a good job of relating all of the posts to the main idea, which essentially was that you can learn more from college than just academic knowledge (specifically what you learn about yourself and what life lessons you learn in college).  Looking back, I should have probably chosen a simpler topic, but I thought it was the best idea I had at the time.

Although I did not enjoy the enthusiast blog project as much as some of the others, I did not have any major challenges with it, besides not knowing how to fix it and having some trouble thinking up new topics towards the end.  The only other challenge I may have faced was making sure to write a new post each week, and that was only challenging because I was not used to it, having never done a blog before.

As for what I liked about the project, it was nice writing every week, and I can see how blogging could be fun.  I think I just would have enjoyed the project more if I had chosen another topic.  So if anything, the project taught me how important it is to pick a topic that will keep you enthusiastic throughout the blogging process.  I also learned that blogging might be something I would be willing to do more of in the future, provided the topic is right.