10/2

Discussed the “rhetorical situation” of the blog. The audience is anyone with interest in the hot spots of Atlanta. Our purpose is to showcase in depth experiences about the places of Atlanta. We understand that as we go through all of the blogs, our purpose may morph into something else. As Mrs. A said, you can get through an entire paper and change your mind at the end, and all you have to do is change your original thesis!

We assigned Sam to keep a group record of the specifics of each meeting, and we will update personal blog posts as well. To kick off the project we divided the list of blogs evenly among us and we will have finished reviewing all of them by Wednesday the 9th.

10/4

I am just now starting to get to know my group members. With every group project, there is always a ring leader. Sam and I seem to be amicably fighting over that position.

We work very well together and we seem to drive a lot of the group conversation. Everyone from the group has specific strengths and I am feeling very positive about the direction of our project.

We all started reviewing our share of blogs, and we will meet to discuss our findings on Wednesday.

notes while reviewing blogs: Note that this is just for my divided portion, and not including honors blogs.

Mahsan1:

“Personal Experience with the State Capitol Building”

Lots of pictures, visually pleasing. The language & grammar need work. However the post is heavily descriptive and does not really touch on his “personal experience.” His other PSR on the GSU quad faces the same issues.

Zajuzie1: 

“Personal Site Description West End Park”

Language is lacking enormously. Love the description but grammar errors trump over the description.

Hhorton2: 

“Larry Walker Art Exhibition GSU”

Great overview of what the exhibition is about and includes pictures along with proper citations. Well written post. On the theme of personal experiences, it does not match up because it says little to nothing about his personal emotions/experience there…it is just a description.

***”Castle berry Hill, Atlanta, Not Everyones “Cup of tea” but it will do for me.”***

This post is great. Great description, interviews, pictures, maps, and personal commentary. The *** indicate that I think this post should be considered in our final project. Title can use a little editing.. I do not think cup of tea needs to be in quotations, and the title of a post should be in all caps. However this rule may not apply to blogging, ask group.

manwar3: no posts

bbond2: 

“Inman Park Experience”

Includes pictures and a thought out description, but there are a few major errors in this post. The picture and description do not represent Inman Park, as far as my understanding goes on that particular area. Inman Park is a wealthy residential community and the post doesn’t reflect the correct area. I will discuss this with my group and maybe I am in the wrong and this is the correct area. Also, the description is not personal.

abuenrostro1:

***”My experience at the Georgia State Capitol”***

Amazing post! Includes pictures, and his personal experience is so descriptive and goes deep into his past and also explores his future. There are a few language/grammar errors, but nothing distracting or unable to be easily fixed. I can conduct some suggestions for him to revise but in the event that he doesn’t have the time to work with us, the post can be used as is.

***”Grant Park Neighborhood Personal Site Response”***

Title needs to be changed to something that is not class related, remove the term Personal Site Response. This post is heavily descriptive and identifies with this location in many ways. Childhood memories work well as a pathos approach and his pictures enhance the meaning behind the post. Formatted very well.

 

jchica2:

***”Historic Fourth Ward Park”***

Beautifully descriptive! Not heavily personal, but readers sense his/her personal connection with the space because he writes in first person. While reading, I felt as if I was experiencing this location in his shoes. Pictures could use a little more thought in formatting, but overall this post accomplishes our purpose and I think it should be considered in the final project.

dchin4: Page error, blog possibly does not exist

hduarto1: 

Posts frequently, however there is no post that can qualify as personal. One post titled “Fairlie-Poplar Historic District” touches on a few personal aspects, but the format of the post is one big block of text with no pictures.

He does have an interesting piece on being a MARTA driver. He discusses what it takes to work for the Atlanta public, and tells a personal story. Though grammar and language needs to be revised, the content is interesting and unique.

mepps2:

***”Personal Site Response (Thelma’s Rib Shack)”***

Great post on a unique Atlanta destination.  Again with changing the title to not reflect the class assignment.

***”Underground Atlanta (Personal Site Response)”***

Describes Underground Atlanta in the past and compares it to how it is now. Description is well thought out and also touches on personal experiences with the site. Emotion provoking and eye opening into experiencing this area as a resident.

ogage1: 

***”West End Park- Subjective”***

This post is well written and paints a descriptive, and very negative, image of West End Park. Though the personal experience is there, this post comes off as racist. I will show this post to the group and see what reactions they have to it. I see it as border line offensive…but it does accomplish the goal of a personal Atlantan experience.

Subjective Post- Old Fourth Ward Skate Park.

Not very interesting and while it does portray her personal experience in the park, the content lacks depth and meaning.

kgettys: blog not found

aharvey15: no posts

11/9

Today’s Agenda:

• go through blogs we liked
• narrow down categories
• compose the letter
• compose thesis/message

I have sent an email to the ENGL 1102 students who’s posts we liked and would like to work with them to use their work. This is what my email said.

“Dear students, 

Ask in meeting:

Links or copy and paste whole article? How do we place the post in our own blog. How has this done in the past.

For Monday:

• Have the ones we chose in google doc and categories
• Go over honors blogs

Meeting with mrs. A

• embody a sense of history and potential
• include participation incentive for contribution to blog
• selfie post on Monday
• 5 categories with 3 or 4 posts

11/18

After meeting with Mrs. A and also reading through all the blogs, the purpose of our website has shifted. As I suspected it would. Our “about me” page will state the purpose of our site.

We are starting to get replies and have decided to categorize the posts as north south east and west. We did this so we can broaden the categories to place more posts into fewer categories. We are going to include a sidebar of tags. After looking through all the honors blogs, we found so much content that we would like to use and now it is just a waiting game to see who replies. We plan on sending a reminder email in a couple days to catch any last minute people because we want as many  quality posts as we can get! 

All of the names of blogs we liked, we entered into a shared google doc. Once they replied saying they would work with us, we turned their name green. Then once they compete editing, we will turn their name blue, and once their work is entered into our blog, their name will be turned red for completion. Here is a link to that google document.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SaXg6CpfqO7h9jP14G8ainJtybdMi7Jgi9h4YpaJibU/edit?usp=sharing

Agenda for Monday

• Start website
• Assign direction to each group member
• REMEMBER MLA FORMAT

Standard reply to people once they reply to original email. 

Sounds great! Thank you for your reply. A member from our group will be contacting you by your preferred choice of communication the week after Thanksgiving. We look forward to talking with you and getting this done!

Thank you,

Anna & Team. 

11/28

We sent emails to everyone who replied to our request, providing specifics of what they need to change.

I am in running communication with many students in order to get permission to use their work and/or editing their work. They are probably getting annoyed of seeing my name in their inbox!

On Wednesday, we plan on further diving into creating the website and hope to have replies from most people so we can begin to place the posts into our website.

We did not end up dividing the posts to each person based off direction. We decided that because I was the origional person to email everyone, that it made the most sense for me to keep up correspondence with them. Sam and I met up on 12/1 to edit other student’s blogs for grammar etc, and we inserted them into the blog.

We had plans to use Divi theme, but we were having trouble navigating the theme and began exploring other options. After playing around with a few, we decided on Gridster. This theme allows us to categorize in a simple and understanding way, and we can easily add and organize our posts. We removed side widgets that are not topical to our project such as “recent posts” because all of the posts will be added into our site at the same relative time. We put a “Tag Cloud” in its place which shows the most used tags within the posts. This is much more relevant to our mission.

Tags will include

• Direction
• Exact name
• ATL
• themes in the posts (family, culture, etc)

12/4- the day before it is due! Everything is done for the website. All we had to add this weekend was a couple edits to the “About Me” page, and to add in one more post from a late responder. I have to compose a list of everyone who contributed their posts so that the students can receive the credit from their teachers. I will put my formal project reflection into another post.