Stacy-Ann's Final Project: "Search Basics"

Enjoy,

~Stace

Stacy-Ann's Photostory: Skydiving May 7, 2010

Enjoy,
~Stace

Another "response" to On Lionel Kearns.

This is song that I enjoy by Flight of the Conchords called "The Humans Are Dead." They have a cool binary solo at the end that I remembered when looking at the On Lionel Kearns page. I hope you understand and enjoy the humor. : )



~Stace

Stacy-Ann's Final Project Description

Stacy-Ann Edwards
Digital Literacy
July 13, 2010
Final Project Description

            I am still debating which of the two options presented below will be the actual finished final product. I have interest in both search marketing and guitar for difference reasons. 

            I worked as a digital media planner in the advertising/marketing industry for a few years. While working I focused only on “display banners” (an ad with images or interaction displayed on the web). Recently, I became interested in search because my brother in-law, who is a small business owner, expressed his interest in using search to grow his business. He asked my advice knowing that I working in the online marketing realm. In our conversation, I gave him a brief run down of how Google search worked. He quickly reaped the benefits of search marketing/advertising when groups from out of state reached out to him to learn more about his services. I had never been truly interested in search before this although I worked closely with the search team on my accounts and assisted in interpreting and presenting the data. I decided that while I took a break from the industry to explore teaching that I would strive to become certified in Google Search Analytics. After which, I could use my knowledge to assist small business owners or make my self more valuable if I decided to return to online marketing. 

            Guitar is of interest to me because it is my “stress release hobby.” I use it to unwind and well as stretch my creative muscle. I recently discovered than my 8-year-old nephew has an interest in guitar. He wants to play. I would love to send him to this amazing guitar summer camp in Manhattan, but I have neither the time nor money to make this dream a reality in his life. We have also grown a part over the past few years and I have not been spending any time with him or his younger brother. I thought that this project would give me an opportunity to share my basic guitar knowledge with my nephew and help to forge a relationship with him via the web since I have no time to actually spend face-to-face with him. I have been playing guitar for about 1.5 years now and believe I have enough skills to impart the very basics about guitar. It would also be a good way for me to reinforce what I have learned since I haven’t been too diligent this year due to graduate classes and work. Perhaps his younger brother would want to learn as well! 

            Both options will be beneficial to different people/groups in different ways. Option 1, a final project about Google Search Marketing 101, could be used to start a consulting business on the side or used in client presentations if I return to marketing. This task is more daunting and will require an immense amount of over simplification and “thought” on my part. Option 2, a final project introducing the basics of guitar, would allow me to forge a closer relationship with my nephew(s).  

Option 1: Google Search Marketing 101

For the final project video, I plan to create a simple Google Search Marketing 101 video discussing:

1.       What is search and search marketing?

2.      How Google differs from other search engines (briefly).

3.      How to purchase keywords on Google (perhaps).

My audience would be small business owners and entrepreneurs seeking to utilize search to grow their presence on the web and, subsequently, their business. In this case I would focus on writers or teachers wanting to be published or wanting to promote their website.

The tools I would use are:

1.       iPhone 4/iMovie to conduct interviews with classmates about their knowledge of search.

2.      Jing to capture images from the web, specifically to highlight the different elements of search on Google. Or, to captures charts for search statistics.

3.      Google to get other miscellaneous images.

4.      Wordle for a unique font design (perhaps).

5.      iTunes library to add music or sound of some sort.

These tools will be best to provide an idea of what people (in the class) know about search and will assist in the flow, clarity, design and layout of the overall presentation.

Option 2: Intro to Guitar Lesson 1

For the final project video, I plan to create an introductory guitar lesson for my eight-year-old nephew.

I would discuss:

1.       The guitar parts.

2.      How to read the strings on the guitar.

3.      How to read basic tablature.

4.      Two or three basic chords that could play a simple song.

The tools I would use are:

1.       iPhone 4/iMovie to record the lesson or chords I’d like to teach.

2.      Jing to capture images from the web such as guitar chords and parts, and the sheet music for one guitar song with the chords I used to teach the lesson.

3.      Google to get other miscellaneous guitar images.

These tools will help me to record my lesson and clearly illustrate the basics of guitar (its parts, chords, etc.).

Response to “Using Facebook as a Teaching Tool”

Using Facebook as a Teaching Tool by Elaine Childs discusses just that: her use of Facebook in her English 101 course at the University of Tennessee. The course, entitled, “’It Was Like That When I Got Here: The Simpsons and Postmodern America’” emphasizes teaching basic rhetoric.

First, anything involving the Simpsons is always a plus in my book. I practically grew up on the Simpsons (and Married with Children). How could a course about rhetoric based on the Simpsons not be successful with the social commentary made in each episode? Couple that with social media and it should be a “cake walk.” Surprisingly, Childs’ article reveals it wasn’t the great success expected. I was disappointed. She wrote that, “[She] had hoped that the discussion broad would take on a life of its own and that students would create topics that asked questions or created a horizontal discourse among students, but that didn’t happen.” Perhaps the students didn’t truly understand the practical meaning of rhetoric? Undoubtedly, they used it each day when conversing with friends on Facebook.  Perhaps, in the academic realm it seems daunting? 

Childs is a “good” teacher because in the article she questions her effectiveness at facilitating the organic discussion she hoped to see. She decides to try a different approach by having a “weekly Facebook hour” which I think would help with fueling discussion, but I am still doubtful of how much change will be seen.

Although I read some disappointment in the article, Childs’ use of Facebook was successful in that she tried it! Many college professors are timid about using any digital media. Childs’ is brave enough to acknowledge the change and try to work it into her pedagogical practice. There is no perfect formula in doing this but I believe experimentation helps. I will try to host a Facebook page in future class even if it is just to “[place] course material in students’ social space” providing them with additional access to me as teacher and the course.

Web Tool: Flavors.me

Hi Class-

This is a summary about the web tool I found called "Flavors.me."

Flavors.me allows you to create an elegant and dynamic website using personal content from around the web.

The basic version of Flavors is available for free and provides a taste (a small taste) of what Flavors has to offer. This includes basic fonts and layouts, customizable color palettes, basic statistics, and up to four connections with RSS feeds and social services.

The full version, which costs $20 per year, gives you the true Flavors experience, with an extended font collection, beta layouts, a contact form, detailed statistics, metadata and unlimited services.  They accept payment through PayPal or Google Checkout.

I selected this site because many of you mentioned interest in creating a website, but it seemed daunting and expensive. This is a cheap and stylish solution! You can host and design a "professional" website using this web tool.

Enjoy,

~Stace

Stacy-Ann's Prezi - "Guitar"

Intro to Guitar on Prezi

Enjoy,

~Stace

Wordle!

Wordle: Hillsong - Mighty to Save Lyrics

This is my first attempt at using Wordle. I think it's simply AMAZING. I will be using this to make ads for youth events at my church!




Here is a YouTube video of Hillsong performing "Mighty to Save."

Response to "On Lionel Kearns"

I am confused about On Lionel Kearns.

It was a...unique site experience. I have never encountered a site like this. It’s minimalist and only uses text/letters/numbers, but the text is designed. The welcome page text is designed similar to an arrow or something of the sort. I am not sure how I feel about the design. It’s a little destabilizing because I expect the typical navigation bar I am used to seeing on most sites. This usually contains homepage with a site map of some sort. Even with the arrows, I wasn’t sure how to navigate efficiently back and forth on this site. 

I am not sure if this is because of the site coding/layout or my computer, but it kept crashing. I wonder….

Response to "Visualizing English"

In “Visualizing English: Recognizing the Hybrid, Literacy of Visual and Verbal Authorship on the Web” Craig Stroupe presents the issue of the effects hypertext and the visual nature of the web has on “traditional” or standard English rhetoric. I appreciate Stroupe’s clear narration of the “mulling over” process he went through to illustrate both sides of the issue. His breakdown of both sides of the argument for and against the digitalization of English and rhetoric was, I think, effective and thoroughly researched.

In the article, Stroupe quotes an interesting line from Elizabeth Castro’s Netscape manual: “The beauty—and peril—of the World Wide Web is that everyone can publish their own information quickly and easily. As such, the Web is the fastest growing area in the computer world today. Each month thousands of news pages are added, by huge companies and private citizens alike” (612).  

 

I absolutely agree with this statement and think it is still relevant in 2010. Managing content is one of the major challenges faced by content designers/developers/managers. There’s just so much out there. This is probably why traditional English scholars are hesitant to embrace the Web. Traditional written text has to go through “qualified peers” or gatekeepers for validation in order to be published in journals on and offline. This process acts as a form of check and balance and maintains the exclusivity of what is deemed as good rhetoric. The Web completely shatters this. Any old “John Doe” can publish on the web whether or not it is factual, well researched, and subjective.

 

What about (“unskilled”) bloggers being hired by reputable news papers because of their web publication?  They may not know the “conventions” of rhetoric, but qualified journalists and editors are validating their skill and ability by hiring them and giving them a more prominent place on the web to display their discourse. Without the Web and applications like blogs this may never have been possible. Still, bloggers face a fight from “purists” and are not being compensated like traditional journalists. See one article I found about this issue here for further details. 

 

Design is an issue in composition but it is not the real. As we discussed in class, everything is designed. A research paper is designed; it’s just at a different end of the design spectrum. The issue is acceptance of web/hypertext discourse; it’s about classism (as Camille stated). It’s about maintaining the status quo and controlling who is able to a convey message.  It will never change because of the prejudice of the “conventionalizing reader.” Still, a case can be made for conventionalism. To become “unconventional” you must have some knowledge of what is conventional.  (Perhaps?)

Challenging Myself...

So I took Prof. Peele's challenge to heart and started fiddling with my blog design and layout using the new Template Design feature offered by blogger. I have to say it was "super cool" to add some new things that I would never think of adding to my blog typically.

For instance, I added the 5 blogs that I follow with brief excerpts of their most recent posts. I think this is amazing from a consumer and advertising perspective. As a consumer, I can share my interests with people by showing the blogs I subscribe to and as an advertiser (if I were to monetize my blog and have ads) I could get more "organic" traffic to my blog if someone else were to show my blog on their blog!

Another feature I added was the Youtube video feed. I chose to only add the basic "top viewed" videos (because I like to know what "the world wide web" is viewing) but I plan on creating another more personal blog and including the the guitar, sewing and comedy video series I like watching in my free time.

I think I may become an avid blogger soon because I plan on writing a book but documenting it via blogger. It would me cool to align my emotions with videos or articles or images online. 

I am going to "master" Google Blogger before moving on to WordPress (although I have checked it out and it looks pretty cool as well). 

~Stace

Frida Kahlo's Birthday

 I discovered Frida Kahlo from my Mexican neighbor, Ofelia, who is now family. We have become close over the past 12 years. 

I didn't realize today is the anniversary of her birthday. 

Below is a brief bio about her life. There is also a movie about her staring Selma Heyak. Info about movie on IMDB 

Enjoy reading about her...

~Stace

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Mexican Painter.

From 1926 until her death, the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo created striking, often shocking, images that reflected her turbulent life. Kahlo was one of four daughters born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descent, in the Mexico City suburb of Coyoacán. 

She did not originally plan to become an artist. A polio survivor, at 15 Kahlo entered the premedical program at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. However, this training ended three years later when Kahlo was gravely hurt in a bus accident. She spent over a year in bed, recovering from fractures of her back, collarbone, and ribs, as well as a shattered pelvis and shoulder and foot injuries. Despite more than 30 subsequent operations, Kahlo spent the rest of her life in constant pain, finally succumbing to related complications at age 47. 

During her convalescence Kahlo had begun to paint with oils. Her pictures, mostly self-portraits and still lifes, were deliberately naive, filled with the bright colors and flattened forms of the Mexican folk art she loved. At 21, Kahlo fell in love with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, whose approach to art and politics suited her own. Although he was 20 years her senior, they were married in 1929; this stormy, passionate relationship survived infidelities, the pressures of Rivera's career, a divorce and remarriage, and Kahlo's poor health. The couple traveled to the United States and France, where Kahlo met luminaries from the worlds of art and politics; she had her first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City in 1938. Kahlo enjoyed considerable success during the 1940s, but her reputation soared posthumously, beginning in the 1980s with the publication of numerous books about her work by feminist art historians and others. In the last two decades an explosion of Kahlo-inspired films, plays, calendars, and jewelry has transformed the artist into a veritable cult figure.

Bio taken from here.

5 Blogs I Like

I am not super into blogging or reading blogs; however, I do have a few blogs that peak my interest. I actually only read three blogs consistently, but I decided to seek out two other blogs that would be of interest to me over the 4th of July weekend. These are the 5 Blogs I enjoy reading (and will read) whenever I have time to spare.


1) http://excelatwork.blogspot.com/


This blog is...practical. It's very straight forward. You can look up excel shortcuts, formulas, and any other "tips and tricks" about excel you may need. I used it constantly at work when I first started working with excel as media planner in advertising. I still visit this site when in an "excel bind."


2) http://valentinestudio123.blogspot.com/


This blog I discovered randomly. I don't remember, but I think I may have seen an ad about crafts and clicked on the link. I like crafts and I "aspire" to be "crafty." : ) She creates and sells all sorts of crafts from clocks to refrigerator magnets. I like it and glimpse it from time to time to be inspire to do some project when the spirit bids me. I haven't ever completed a project...


3) http://pbkbrenda.blogspot.com/  (aka: "Better Full than Empty")


This is a blog I read when I'm...bored, perhaps. She is a mother who talks about the most random things. Sometimes I gleam little words of wisdom from her blog. 


These are the new blogs I discovered over the weekend. I tried to find blogs about crafts and "homey" things. 


4) http://www.hostessblog.com/


This blog is all about parties. It’s not actually a craft site but it is filled with inspirational party ideas. It reminds me of this Martha Stewart magazine called Blue Print. I loved that magazine and then they canceled it because of lack of sales. This reminds me of it, somewhat. 


5) http://www.bakerella.com/


This blog is about baking. I tried baking once and I wasn't very...successful. The pound cake looked "right" but it didn't taste too right. I recently decided to revisit baking and this blog looks like a good way of breaking back into baking.  I also like the way the site looks. It's simple and clean. 

Response: “Why technology matters to writing: A cyberwriter’s tale”

In “Why technology matters to writing: A cyberwriter’s tale” Jim Porter reflects on his journey from “pencils-to-pixels” in the form of a personal narrative; an “odyssey” from writing longhand to writing on a typewriter and then the computer. He discusses its effect on his style as it relates to writing, composition, education, and pedagogy.

Although I grew up in the 90s, around technology, computers, and the internet, I could relate to Porter’s initial reflection about learning to write in the second grade in the 60s: “We did a lot of writing—not to express ideas but to form beautiful letter” (376). I recall my father having me write my homework assignments on separate piece of paper before transferring the correct assignment into the workbook or my class notebook. He was vigilant about my penmanship, but to no avail. As I became older, my penmanship became worst. (It may have been my way of rebelling because I certainly could not protest or whine about the process.) This practice of writing it on scrap paper is probably because he was from that generation concerned as much with “beauty” as with substance. Still, this process has impacted my writing, in terms of “official documents.” I sometimes find myself writing responses to applications on scrap paper and then transferring them to the document once I was certain about what was being asked.

Another aspect of his narrative that was interesting was his recollection of the investment needed to purchase a personal computer. I found it comical that someone who did this was either “serious” about the purchase or “foolhardy.” I still think a computer is an investment, although not as costly. I also liked his keen identification of his first “social network,” via the Purdue network, established after “one-by-one, faculty and then eventually graduate students purchased computers and gradually dropped out of the learning community that had been established after hours in the public lab” (382). A new virtual community had emerged because of this social shift from using publish labs to having access to this technology at home. 

This entire process from writing longhand to using the typewriter and, now, the computer has impacted (and is still impacting) a generation of “traditional” writers as well as future writers. Although this doesn't exactly relate to "why technology matters to writing," I began to consider the affect this change has had on our brain. From this article and my own writing journey, I am inclined to believe that because of this change our brains function differently as processes information differently. I goggled some articles about the affects on brain function and computer use and found some interesting things. One article cited an interesting study. “When 24 adults with and without computer experience had their brain activity measured while they searched the Internet for information, the experienced users’ brains were twice as lively as the others’.” I am not sure if this is propaganda but I do always feel more drained after being on the computer as opposed o reading. This could be due to the increased brain activity described in the article. Check out some of the articles below and make your own conclusion to the affects of the computer on the brain.

“Don’t Let Computer Use Harm your Brain”

http://www.bottomlinesecrets.com/article.html?article_id=48302

“Internet 'speeds up decision making and brain function’”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3262597/Internet-speeds-up-decision-making-and-brain-function.html