November 2
We started hashing out our rhetorical situation.
Purpose: In-depth personal experiences at hot spots in Atlanta. Provide material of interest about different places in Atlanta
Audience: People interested in the Atlanta area
Content: Conversation pieces, personal sight responses, blogs about different places in Atlanta
Theme Ideas: Map of places? If possible make it interactive?
Divi
We also split up the list of people in the class to start going through the blogs and trying to find possible blogs to use on the site.
This being the first real day we started I feel like we were really trying to feel our way through and figure out exactly what we wanted.
November 4
We talked about looking through blogs on the weekend and what exactly we were going to be looking for . We also decided we are going to meet Wednesday to talk about the blogs we have found so far and to start working on the design for the site. We’ll also divide up how we’re going to look through the honors site blogs as well.
I felt like we were still slightly unsure of what to expect until we started reading the blogs and we were able to see the possibilities of what we could do with this project.
November 9
We started making a list of blogs we are interested in possibly having on our final site.
We came up with a basic outline for the letter to send out to the students
Monday we are going to decide which honor class blogs we want to use
Things that need to be changed in the blogs:
Formatting, Citations, grammar, title changes….
These seemed to be the only problems in the blogs. They were all very well written.
I really enjoyed reading the different blogs. I think it is a great experience to see how people see the world in comparison to each other. While I saw one thing at the Sweet Auburn Curb Market someone else saw something completely different and it is a unique chance to really see through the eyes of others.
November 14th
We added the honors blogs to the list of blogs we want to use on the site. We categorized them and sent out the email to the students whose blogs we were interested in using.
We also played around on the site a bit to try and figure out how to do different things.
Reading through the honors blog was quite an experience. The writing styles were very different than my own and I really enjoyed seeing their insight on the different places they visited, many of which I had not heard of before.
November 16th and 18th
We started looking at the things that needed to be edited in each blog and talked about our timeline for the rest of the semester to have the project done.
It was interesting to see how we worked together on deciding what needed to be edited in each blog. I feel like we all were really looking for the same things and it really helped that we were all on the same page about what kind of blogs we were looking for.
November 28th
For the students who replied to the emails and said they wanted to work with us, we broke them into categories: Midtown, Downtown, Eastside, and Westside. We decided to do things this way because most people in Atlanta refer to places in reference to Downtown, Midtown, Eastside, and Westside and not the cardinal directions. We also started playing with the site trying to see how we wanted to set up and organize everything. We decided we wanted a map for the background and a sidebar and tag cloud for sure.
I also wrote out a general outline for the about me page to put on the site.
I think that deciding on the design of the site was the hardest thing to do as a group. We all wanted different things so we brought our different ideas together to create the site.
We really struggled to try to figure out Divi and spent quite a bit of time one it when found the theme we are now using. I really like the theme we are using now because of the importance of the visual elements of the blog. Having the pictures from the different sights of blogs really catches the eyes of readers and make the site itself more appealing.
November 30th
We met in the library and stayed until 11 to start putting blogs into the site and changed the theme. We finished designing the site and put in all the blogs from students who had replied to us at that point.
December 1st
Anna and I met in the library this morning to put more blogs into the website and send out a few last minute reminder emails to people who had not yet sent us their revised blogs. We did a few other touch ups and will continue to add blogs over the weekend if we have any last minute replies. Other than that we are finished! We will also try and do any final site touch ups Friday in class and Anna and I will meet on Sunday if there is anything else left that needs to be done.
December 2nd
Today we added introductions to our Downtown, Midtown, Eastside, and Westside pages as well as linking the posts that correlate with each category and adding photos from those areas in Atlanta.
We changed the about me page and also added info for how to navigate the site. I will also add more photos to it so that it is as visually appealing as the rest of the site.
Anna and I will add any last minute blogs on Sunday if the last few people we emailed have replied.
Overall. I really enjoyed working on this project. I feel like it has been such a great learning experience for me. Learning more about the backend of the blog site and how things will be formatted on the front end was very important for me. I also enjoyed editing/suggesting edits for the blogs of others. It really taught me how to edit without being overbearing or over critical. It was so important to keep the voice of the writers in their own blog posts so editing was an interesting experience. I really enjoyed working with Anna, Matt, and Tia. We all have such different styles and voices, but coming togther to work on this project was actully a very fun challnege. I feel like we all learned from eachother.
