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The Wikipedia article on Super Mario World exemplifies all of the usual criteria for a good web article. Subheadings divide the article into plot, gameplay, development, and reception with additional subheadings within each section. There are links to additional information as well as scores from various game critic organizations. The sidebar has quick information like release date and platforms. 



Older Versions

When exploring older versions, it is possible to see what information has been filled in. For instance the quick info sidebar has much les information than the current version. There have been many changes to the page, updating and expanding its contents as time has gone by.

Talk

Discussions on the Talk page include users trying to determine whether Super Mario World was ever included with a Super Mario All-Stars release. Some people claim to have seen versions where it was included with All-Stars (which included Mario 1, 2, and 3). There are many other discussions such as secrets that were included in the manual, an NES version of the game, and a secret hidden castle. These are unconfirmed, so that's why they are included on the talk page. 

A Trusted Source?

This page shows all the ways in which Wikipedia tries to include only factual information. Factoids that are questionable are relegated to the talk page before they are allowed to be included in the main article. Wikipedia requires sources, which means that it can be as accurate as an academic paper. Often, Wiki articles are written by experts in the field, and to those who find a subject important, falsified information will be policed.

 
Our group assignment on Thursday was to create a meme. When I first saw this on the schedule, I was worried. I thought this meant we were going to have to edit an image using GIMP together, over the internet. This would have been very difficult to manage, and I believe many of my classmates felt the same. Numerous students asked for details of the assignment during the discussion, perhaps nervous about the upcoming challenge. I relaxed when I found out that we were simply using quickmeme.com and filling a pre-made image.
Breakout Groups
My relaxation, however, was short-lived. Once we started our breakout groups, we decided to each try and make a meme individually. The plan was to come back and discuss our creations. 

Something that should have taken moments, took tens of minutes. No one had any ideas for the meme. The sudden creativity that was thrust upon us was incredibly difficult, and many of us were surprised at that fact. This is a meme! Banal comedy written in two lines, and we all seemed incapable of creating a good one! 
The Creation of a Meme
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We talked among ourselves in the chat, discussing the sudden difficulty to make something that seemed so easy. At which point, with the meme editor open, I simply made a joke: Philip J. Fry saying, "Not sure if this assignment is stupid, or if I'm stupid." 

The joke was a hit. It was born out of the assignment, but not in the traditional sense.  It was created spontaneously and we all took a moment to laugh because it related to our situation. Creating a meme should have been a simple endeavor but we had a hard time doing it. I believe this meme sums up how the assignment gave us a new-found respect for the use of the creative process in developing a meme.

It was a project that we thought would be simple. Although, we had other submissions of memes (included below), we chose this one because it spoke to all of us. We were a small community of people for 30 minutes, and we shared an experience of creating a meme. 

All submissions
Assignment by Blaine Brown, Jessica Tusim, Laura Collmus, and Phillip Owens
 
Here is something I made by messing around in Gimp. I merged a picture of a desert with a red background to make it look like Mars, and then I added a sandwich. I then used the gradient tool with a radial setting to make the sandwich seem like it's the most glorious thing in the Mars. Delicious.
 
While working on my site design, I went through the various points laid out in chapter 7 of Letting Go of the Words by Redish. It is a fun exercise to see the differences between designs and how they can affect the presentation of the content. 

It is recommended to use a search box. I wanted to put that in the top of the right sidebar, but Weebly requires users to pay for search functionality. This is a shame because searching is a fantastic way for users to navigate a site when they know exactly the words they want to find. Savvy users could perhaps use a regular search engine, like Google, and type in "site:http://halloweenbagsearly.weebly.com/" and then their search term. Sometimes, however, the major search engines do not crawl blogs often enough.

With that in mind, I figured out a way to get a Google custom site search onto my page. However, searching for "persona" in that custom search yields no results even though one can clearly see two posts below containing the keyword.

I removed my name from the header, because it was off to the right in Passive Space. There's no reason to ever look over at that area, so I just left it blank. This resulted in a cleaner look. The site title in the heading is not a logo yet, (hopefully I can use part of the GIMP assignment to do this) but it is a clean, large font that is easily readable and is aligned with the rest of the content. I made sure the menu was aligned properly as well, even though I only have two pages at the moment. 

The sidebar contains valuable information for the reader, including a quick summary about me (the "About" link in the top menu simply links to my "Introduction" post for now) including a link to my twitter account. I've also included the categories menu which will allow readers to select between "personal" posts and "group work" posts. This might be helpful for our instructor.

One could say my site layout is kind of plain, but I prefer to focus on the content and use a minimalist style. I believe that Redish supports my design sensibilities so hopefully the content on this page will begin to speak for itself.
 
Completeing the group project of generating a persona was an interesting example of the creative process at work. Normally, I am not too excited about teaching techniques that my instructors use. They are often too far removed from the content, or the information that is trying to be conveyed is not complicated enough to warrant such a project. The persona project, however, was incredibly helpful in explaining each aspect of a persona and an interesting way to look at web audiences. 

Since we were required to create someone out of thin air, we simply came up with a name at random: Sara. Once we had this, I quickly typed her name into Google Image Search and pulled up a decent picture. We jotted down some quick facts about Sara: 22 years old, works part-time, lives on campus at ODU, single, etc. When we came to the description, something strange started to happen. 

Sara became a person. She had dreams, goals. There were aspects of our make-believe University Library site that could affect her life. We started thinking about how and why she would be using the site. Tutoring, studying, using computers and other facilities and it became apparent how site design should be tailored to her uses. We gave her some quotes that indicate exactly what she wants out of the University Library's website.

This project was extremely helpful in understanding audience and how different groups approach the web in much the same way: they want relevant content fast. Not just content that is relevant to the site, but relevant to themselves.
 
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Sara
  • 22 years old
  • works part-time
  • lives on campus at ODU
  • single
  • full-time student
  • no children

Sara is a full-time college student in her senior year at Old Dominion University. She is working part-time at a Denny’s restaurant as a waitress to help pay for student loans. She is majoring in math and hopes to be a professor at ODU one day.

She tutors other students in math in the library. She often needs to coordinate schedules via email or Facebook, and she needs quick access to the library’s operating hours and which study rooms are available.

Sara’s parents live in Chesapeake, along with her younger, 17-year-old brother. She visits them when she can get away from her busy lifestyle, and of course, on holidays.

Sara uses the internet frequently to complete classwork, to communicate with professors and other students, and for socializing. She rarely searches the web for much more than information for assignments because she feels like she reads through enough of the web for her classes. 

Quotes

“I don’t want to know all about the library’s history, I just need to know when it’s open!”

“I wish I could reserve rooms and computers online. Instead I’m always surprised to find out all the computers are in use.” 

“The search box should be on every page. When I want to look up a book, I don’t want to hunt for the search box.”

Typical web tasks:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Class information and submitting assignments
  • Scheduling tutoring appointments
  • Finding lyrics to songs
  • Reading the news

Assignment by Blaine Brown, Joslin Phillips, Alexia Decker, Matthew Whitley, and Dan Ivory

 
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My name is Blaine Brown. I am an English Major at ODU with a triple-emphasis in Creative Writing, Journalism, and Professional Writing.

My true goal is to write screenplays for television and movies. I am currently working on animating a cartoon all by myself. This is quite difficult because I cannot draw. I am using the brute force method of drawing where I just do it over and over again until it looks right. This is quite tedious at 24 frames per second. 

As a screenwriter, it is possible to simply sell your work to a movie studio, but before I do that I'd like to get hired somewhere like Roosterteeth, or another web video company. I really believe that web video can be just as interesting and compelling as film and television narrative. Additionally, I think it's more important to have my works be made rather than simply cashing in and letting a major movie studio throw my works on a pile, never to be seen by anyone. The most important thing in life is creation. I'd like to share my works with the world.

    Blaine Brown

    Twitter
    Writer and master of all things tech. I also play a lot of video games.

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