What Makes a Website Great?

Students will Explore websites from TIME's List of 50 Best Websites - and will choose 3 websites from different categories to examine and compare.
Students will use an analytical chart to discover what "works" for these websites in the following categories:

1. Basic Aesthetic Design
1. PARC
2. Color
3. Fonts/Type
2. Content and Delivery
3. Visual Best Practices
4. Verbal (Textual) Best Practices
5. Organization and Functionality
6. Interactivity

Students will discuss their findings in a blog post - and will, with the collaboration of the class, develop a list of "best practices" from their research. They will use this list to inform the composition of their own website project.

Measure Twice, Cut Once: Website Planning

Rome wasn't built in a day!

Neither was NYC, Paris, or Vegas.

It took PLANNING!

So, before CM412 students embark on constructing a website, they will do some imagining, decision-making, idea-gathering, brainstorming and other planning.

Each student will post a blog entry describing what they want the website to be, do, say, show, etc. They will refer to the planning module they worked through in Weebly, as well as to their simple storyboard for the site. They will make notes of ideas they gleaned from other sites, important info they want to include, and more.

After completing the project, students will look back on this entry to discuss how these ideas guided the website development, what ideas were changed or added during the construction process, and how effectively the website accomplished the first stated goals of the site.

Vlogging the Video Production Experience

What CM 12 Students will be doing on their Vlogs/Blogs...

Making "Meaning" in Video Production

Students will look at Semiotics, Rhetorical analysis and "meaning-making" in video - considering use of colors, type faces, camera angles, selection of shots, editing considerations etc. and will post their thoughts on examples such as these:

The Brady Bunch Intro

The (original) Law & Order Intro

D.O.A. (film noir)

Students will post reflections in their blogs on these and other film/video selections.