The navigation bar on the left side of the page demarcated in timeline form provided easy navigation and gave the presentation a real sense of the historical. Some of the right margin effects, such as the blinking OJ Simpson link, became instantly annoying--but I suppose that's part of the tabloid genre. The right marginalia on subsequent pages worked better. Some pages with long rows of text, especially those that dealt with the visual impact of tabloid photos, would have been accentuated by displaying the photos that they discussed. That would have offset the text length on those pages as well.
The text in this presentation set the right tone and was consistent throughout the project--except for the section on the 1970s, which had been assigned to a group member who dropped out of the project at the last minute. The early sections had better content than later ones, and towards the end, in the sections that assessed the 1980s and 90s, I began to wonder if the group was dealing with tabloid journalism or with main stream journalism. I believe the latter portions of the presentation could have been enhanced by juxtaposing mainstream and tabloid coverage of big news issues. There may or may not have been much difference between the story written by an AP reporter and an Inquirer one, but the juxtaposition would have been instructive and substantiated a subtheme in this report. The major weakness of this well conceived project, both in terms of style and content can be summed up in three words: Examples, Examples, Examples.Still, a generally good job.
This is a well organized page. The frames are easy to navigate and the banner uses both appropriate words and symbols to suggest most of the content of the page.
I found this to be a presentation with good content. I was impressed by the readability and evenness of the text. I was Darwin into picking at it on several points:
What source did the definition for a minority group come? Have minority groups always been non-white males?
This project ignored the role of women in the church from Biblical times to the present. What about medieval saints, the cult of the Virgin, and other institutionalized forms of feminine power and virtue?
How did the UN material on feminism, entitled Cross-cultural Feminism relate to the topic of Christian feminism? I lost track of the project's theme at that point.
A pleasing background set off this presentation and while the navigation bar on the left was not useful, due to the quality way in which the text carried the reader, the frames that contained the documents were well proportioned.
The participants in the this project developed a nice historical storyline for their presentation. Despite the absence of violent graphics, or perhaps because that, the story of English/Irish animosity really came through on this project--to a point. It seemed clear that this group didn't sit down at the end and make their text flow all the way through the project. The medieval/early modern elements are well told, then there's a big gap between Elizabethan England and the early Twentieth century. One page, devoted to the Irish Revolution, has no storyline and is really just a collection of factoids. Then the section dealing with the IRA does a deep background that picks up and carries the story through the 17th through 20th centuries. That made for some unevenness in content presentation. Also, the text needed some more careful editing.
The black background and red flag on the front page was somehow attractive, though it set a rather dark, ominous tone for the page as a whole. Easy to navigate from the front page.
I would categorize the content of this page as "factoid." Two pages consisted primarily of lists of facts about Albania and Albanian chronology. The page introducing the basic demographic and economic facts was o.k. The chronological list was deficient in that it was the only approach to understanding the country in the context of its entire life. It didn't address the issue of what Albania means, how the nation developed, what factors are important for understanding Albania's identity. The factoid approach left me with more questions than the lists could hope to answer. Why is Albania 70% Moslem? Why did Ahmet Zogu declare himself king? Why did Albania not get along with the USSR? Some of the facts listed in the chronology suggested that other things had happened which were nowhere explained. For instance, when did Communist troops liberate Albania from the Italians in WW II? Did that have a bearing on the internal politics between Communists and Nationalists? Were the Nationalists allied with the Fascists in Italy or the Nazis in Germany? Did Albania's alliance with China change the nature of Albanian communism or was it primarily the industrial communism propounded by Marx/Lenin? Perhaps the shallow approach of listing information emerged out of an over reliance on encyclopedia articles and online sound bites. Or perhaps, and I hope this is not true, perhaps these group members never sat back to ask questions about what their page said or meant, what its purpose was.
I think it was a good idea to interview an Albanian student in order to get at the social life of late Communist Albania. This interview provides the student audience with a way to connect to Albania.
This page has a nice mostly consistent layout. The background and other graphics are unobtrusive. The only real problem the page has is that the fonts are small and not consistently sized throughout the presentation.
This presentation has lots of good narrative. The reasonable organization of the presentation contributes to its competent tone. The sources noted in the bibliography are strong and appropriated. The only major flaw was the page dealing with key figures in apartheid. The list of notables concentrated mainly on political figures and did not always explain their significance in the establishment or maintenance of the apartheid regimes. Though the text was sufficiently passionate and revealed the moral slant of the authors, it would have been interesting to see an overt discussion of the ethical/moral justifications and implications of apartheid.
This presentation has a nice layout that remains consistent across the presentation.
For a topic that is quite contemporary, which makes doing even tertiary historical analysis difficult, some sections of this project begged for more. Perhaps the strong reliance on internet sources, not known for their in-depth coverage, encourages this problem. The section on monasticism, a topic on which much has been written, was not very informative. I think understanding the long tradition of Catholic religious orders ministering to the poor, sick, and imprisoned places Mother Theresa in appropriate context. I would also have liked a bit more discussion of Mother Theresa's stances alluded to in the section on her critics. As an educational presentation, it would have been appropriate and welcomed to read an explanation of why she opposed abortion, birth control, and female clergy.
This project utilized very appropriate images and sounds in its presentation. I like the Dr. Strangelove audio clip and was disappointed that the Atomic Cafe mpg didn't work. However there were some presentation style problems that really distracted and detracted from the point of the project. For instance, the background utilized a dark, black and white photo that made it hard to read the text on the page. With regard to organization, I thought that beginning with a glossary section on this long page set the wrong tone. It made the more substantive material, which was buried below it unattractive or for the general reader, perhaps never seen.
Factoid is perhaps the best way to describe much of this page's content. I would have liked a much more narrative construct organizing the diverse information contained in this page. An initial section narrating the beginnings of nuclear weapons/power development would have provided an organizational matrix through which to make sense of topics like Chernobyl and the Manhattan Project. I would like to have seen a stronger discussion of the "why's" of nuclear development as well.
This page has a nice background, though it doesn't carry across the entire project. It adds texture without compromising legibility. A slightly detracting feature is the lack of distinction between size/boldness of the headings and text. The font was plains but easy to read. Navigation was easy, though perhaps too subtle in later pages since the navigation buttons to richer material were buried at the bottom of the text rather than worked through. If a reader was not careful, (s)he might not realize that pressing those buttons takes them somewhere that the front page did not.
The content of this project was strong, perhaps the richest project of the semester. There were some proofreading errors, but generally the narrative remained readable and interesting. It took a pretty fairhanded approach to a much maligned topic. I did observer some unexplained inconsistencies. For instance, in the discussion of smoking in the early period, wealthy women had fancy pipes, but in the middle period, women were considered "loose" of they smoked, but that was beginning to change. There's something missing in that flow of information.
This presentation is very straightforward, with an appealing background and an appropriate color scheme. I've seen many Palestinian blue and white shawls with the same texture as that background. Some of the page layout is distracting though. There's not enough paragraph breaks/white space on some pages. The More Information page was workable, but tended to show other topics rather than just the topic to which the reader linked drawing attention away from the narrative to a more factoid approach. Further, some of the pages had a distracting number of links embedded in them. If all that needed background or further information, then perhaps greater explanation in the narrative was necessary.
The narrative was clear and concise. That's a virtue. However, so many listed facts required the reader to make sense of the presentation for him or herself. More work at making the presentation an informative narrative would have enhanced the quality of the content.
I like the idea of a timeline presentation, but this one didn't seem to work. Perhaps the increments were too small or maybe it needed to go vertical instead of horizontal, but I found navigating this page a bit tedious. The fonts were somewhat inconsistent across the page.
This presentation contained many facts. The History of the Market page doesn't really explain the development of the stock market or why the events described were significant to the development of this important financial institution. The factoid list of events almost precludes you from putting the market into larger cultural context. The page dealing with the purpose of the market is really mistitled. This page doesn't deal with the markets purpose, but rather discusses the notion of investment in general. I expected from the title that this would explain the existence of the market in a existential or philosophical way. Finally, there is no bibliography. Where'd you get the information. This was a good topic with lots of potential. I approached it with great expectation and feel let down. However, the list of events is a valuable starting point for further analysis.
This page used nice conservative graphics to enliven a straightforward presentation of Indonesian history and culture. The chief impediment for me was that the fonts were inconsistent and a little too thin lined for easy reading. The image sources referenced the A: drive and rendered most of the images invisible. I'll fix that for you, but is was annoying. Further, some of the pages needed to be broken up into paragraphs using the <P> code.
The flow of the text throughout most of this presentation was appealing. There was some awkward phrasing and grammatical errors suggesting the need for a bit more proofreading. There was some confusion on the religion page. You seem to not understand that Islam is the religion of the Muslims. Thus, the section on religion is a bit nonsensical. I suspect that your sources, mostly encyclopedic in nature, led to your fairly cursory coverage of the topic.
This was a just the right amount of flashy presentation given the nature of the topic and the title of the project (The Exciting World....). The blue background was visually appealing and did not distract the reader.
This information could have, and perhaps did, come out of a pamphlet on birth control found in the County Health Department. If the goal of this project was the educate people on birth control techniques then this was a great project. This project, however, was done for a world civilization class. The section on contraceptive history was nice, but only a really minor part of of the overall presentation. I would be interested in knowing more about the development of contraceptive technology, or about the relationship between contraceptive use and socio-cultural developments. I would be interested in your assessment of contraceptive morality. The Roman Catholic Church, home to the largest body of Christians, bans contraception as immoral. How have non-Catholic groups handled the issue and why the different ideas. How does contraction issues relate to the hot topic among religious conservatives--abortion. This project was informative, but not appropriate as a project in this class. I wish you would have met with me to discuss the direction of this project a few times during the semester, as directed.
Framed navigation is a useful tool. I liked the appearance the way the project navigated. I found the graphical illustration without textual support not very useful.
This was an interesting project and difficult given your approach. Lots of archeology and Egyptology required to understand Nubia in this context. I praise that. I wondered how Nubia fared. I recently saw an blurb noting Nubia as the first Christian kingdom, that later melted away under the influence of Islam. I would like to have seen more about later Nubia.
This page is not very attractive. Very simplistic and not very informative from the front page.
This presentation has some interesting material in it. Most of it is presented in factoid lists drawn out of encyclopedic sources. Narrative presentation answering the question of "Why?" and "How does this fit together?" would have enhanced this project greatly.