My Instructor's Home Page Dr.
James Take a Look at My
Home Page
Leave me a message dorion@hawaii.edu
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For members of G1 and G2: If I have in some way misinterpreted your works or have written something that displeases you, don't hesitate to let me know... dorion@hawaii.edu
GENERATION ONE
KEVIN BOGANAppearanceAs I scrolled down the page, there was new hope when I found the colored picture of the class. It gave the page some color and quite a bit of personal touch to it. However, my hopes quickly vanished once I saw the rest of the pages. They all had similar gray backgrounds with so many links. I would have liked to see something eye-catching. Perhaps something bright or anything else other than the meek gray background. I would think that home pages were like advertisements or a product that one has to sell. Since there are so many of them out in the market, the product owner must find good strategies to get the consumer to purchase the product. In the case of home pages, it's getting the attention of the internet user to even take a look at them. The first senses (at least for my case) that work is sight especially when I've gone through hours of looking at so many pages. My attention is taken by some color or a great picture and not by endless pages of words.
ContentIn response to his lab reports, he admits that he worked hours gathering information and surfing the net. I just wished that he had put more feelings into his works. Everything seemed cut and dry. It's like here's the information, so use it. I speculate that he knew exactly what he was doing before he took this class. This did not reassure my fears at all considering the fact that I was totally confused in the beginning about how the internet works and what exactly I was suppose to do.
StructureThe rest of his pages did not have a concise structure. If he wanted to use those images in the beginning of his page, he should have found some other alternative as to where he could place them in his pages to give it character. His topical index did not have the same structure as the rest of his pages. I still enjoyed his pictures, but they all seem to run into each other with no definite regard to its placement on the page.
BEVERLY DIAZAppearance
ContentThrough her reports I also discovered that Dr. James assigned their homeworks through the communication network. My generation should be thankful that we do not have weekly reports due. However, I do feel that we lack the direction in writing our reports as well as what we ought to place in our pages. I don't mean I'd rather be spoon fed but I just wish that we'd have specific guidelines as to what is expected of us. The past generations seemed to have adequate amount of information and questions to compose their report. One prominent feature that I discovered in Beverly's reports that was missing from Kevin Bogan's was the personal feelings conveyed in their writing. Kevin lacked any emotional ties that I can relate with. In Beverly's reports I am able to understand the troubles and achievements that she went through. She made me feel that I was not alone, and there were others who were 'cyberspace illiterate' like myself. Kevin gave me the feeling that one had to be a self-made cyberspace explorer and creator in order to live through the semester. Beverly mentioned the unending waves of low and high tides of her anxiety attacks especially with the first two weeks of learning the ins and outs of the internet. I also felt that way as well in the first few weeks of class. In one of her reports she mentioned being fingered by a friend through unix and requesting to talk to her. Being new to the computer communications system, I am able to picture her as clearly as I can see myself panic-stricken. When such a message shows on the screen I use to think that something had gone wrong with the computer. I would be afraid that what I was composing would be cleared off. I use to scream for my roommates to fix whatever it was that had gone wrong. She'd come to see what I'd done wrong this time and just laugh at me. She told me later what it meant. Searching through her index, I decided to explore what she had to say in her final report. I figured if she survived her journey through cyberspace and came back alive to write her final piece of report then this would be my inspiration. As long as I maintained a positive behavior and a strong determination to finish this voyage then I too may see the end of this semester. After all Beverly had travelled the unknown and came back a heroine who had paved the road for the next generations.
StructureI still did not see the necessity of the graphical home page. All it really contained was the picture of the class similar to that in Kevin Bogan's home page. I thought about it again later as I probed more into her home page. I figured if others did not visit Bogan's page then maybe that picture would be useful after all. It would be a little bit of insight as to who were the first explorers of the cybercommunity of social psychologists. Beverly also had a few links that I found very informative. I looked into the Quick Reference Guide which provided me more information on anchors and hyperlinks. Anchoring is one command I have had trouble understanding. Also, the ordered and unordered list that I could use for my topical index is described here.
CHERYL REMATAAppearance
ContentThis is a quote I found in her report that I liked. "I'm still on the surfboard, diving into the sea of knowledge, battling the waves of difficulty." This is exactly how I can interpret my feelings as well. I have the hunger for knowledge and the will to survive by keeping my head afloat. Although there are many obstacles to go through before I get there, I will not give up. Some of these problems may be the time management on my part. Time is certainly a big factor and I know that more than half of the members of my class know for a fact that time has certainly caught up with us especially in these past two or three weeks trying to get our pages ready for midterm grading. There's the question of one's potential. How much can a person exert under certain conditions or pressures? Pessimism is also another problem that Cheryl encountered and one that I am familiar with especially when things don't seem to go my way. She claims that one can start to get pessimistic when frustration gets a hold of you. During the beginning of the semester, I seemed to not make any progress because I wasn't catching on like the rest of the members of my generation. I could not figure out why some commands would not work or what exactly we were suppose to be doing. I was getting very frustrated and was almost at the point of giving up. It didn't help either when the computer would not cooperate with me. Just as Cheryl describes, we tend to transfer all our frustrations on people or things around us. I also tend to blame my problems on the computer. Cursing at it and thinking that it is evil and is punishing me for something I've done wrong. I woud get so irritated that I'd bang on the keys when I'm typing or keep clicking on the mouse and flipping it around. She referred to Ryan Higa's week four lab report under fighting pessimism and depression that it is right in that a computer is after all only a computer. It has no motives to sabatage me or my work. He says to take a step back and relax. I guess I do add unnecessary stress on myself. It won't really do me much good to blame the computer. When I get to a point like this I tell myself that it is really time for me to take a break. If I'm at the lab and I don't want to lose the use of the computer, I sit back and close my eyes for a few minutes to let some steam out. It is true from Cheryl's report that it is how one reacts to the feelings of stress, frustration, or anger, that matters. If we let that present emotion take over us then we could never really accomplish any of our tasks and hinders our progress even more. Cheryl also mentioned that unresolved frustrations clouds our problem solving abilities in our brain. I agree that when our mind is not at ease or is troubled by something we can never think rationally and end up in a worse state than we had previously been. I realized that Dr. James seemed to have taken the previous generation's comments or suggestions for the next generations into consideration when he mapped out each semester's syllabus. The lab introduction at the beginning of class was definitely necessary for us to get started and familiarize ourselves with some basic commands. he also eased up on the number of reports that we have to do. Perhaps this is because he gave us each a database to manage and must constantly maintain it.
StructureShe has a good use of descriptions when it came to her home pages for the links she placed in there. She saved me the time of not having to click through each one. I did find it a little difficult to search through her reports because it wasn't labeled like Beverly's reports. Beverly broke her reports down to specific issues. Some of Cheryl's topics within her reports were difficult to find.
GENERATION TWO
RAGNA BORRIESAppearanceAesthetically speaking, pictures on pages add color and spice to them. If you know how to use them and place them at the right postion it adds character to the page. Also they are a great way to entice the visitor looking through the thousands of pages available through the net. For some reason I don't see the point of that square icon at the left of her home page. It seems out of place. I think if she wanted to include it with her heading she should have aligned it with the text. One of the member's of my class was just talking to me about that. I was looking into someone's page and I had asked how I could center the picture right near the heading.
ContentThere is also the strong negativity that Ragna addresses during her many attempts at transfering but was not very successful. At the beginning when I did not know half of what I was doing I would feel negative emotions that I was a failure. Why did everyone seem to understand what they were doing in class? I realized later that everyone did have trouble once in a while and it wasn't just me. I learned to asked others in the class for help, which I wasn't very used to doing. I made mistakes but I learned from them which is the most important part of it all. When I was following a certain command either to transfer or copy something out, I found it very helpful to write them down.
Structure
CHRISTINA KEALOHAAppearanceThe backgrounds that she chose did not overpower the text and the pictures she used. They were subtle pale colors that brought even more beauty to her work. Her backgrounds gave her pages some kind of delicate mood almost like a warm and inviting feeling. I would not have definitely bypassed her pages.
ContentI think it was a good idea that they were given the opportunity to rate themselves weekly. It provides a means of self-assessment so one can ponder on those questions and take a step back to re-evaluate the self. I think Dr. James gave this as an assignment. We've done something similar to this during class, but it was on paper. Another thing I liked about this rating scale is that it gave them some sort of direction every week. There were specific topics to cover. There were answers to address for the reports. I assume Dr. James gave them certain tasks to do throughout the semester. Since every generation seems to be his guinea pigs, I'm starting to realize that he is using the lassez faire method on us. He isn't giving us very much direction with our pages and reports except a couple of directions to start off. I sensed that all the generations seemed to have this sense of fuzziness in the instuctions as she had mentioned. I'm not exactly sure what is expected of us at times. There is also the constant change of expectations. We are given something to do for one class period, then when we meet the next week we are told to change what we had already worked on. Dr. James' aim is to allow learning through interaction with the community using the internet. Christina was questioning the true community especially when we are sometimes bogged down with so much work to do. I think getting on the internet is the learning that we experience. We've actually accomplished so much just through searching the other web pages of previous generations and from there putting up our own pages. Our learning, however, is not just limited to the internet. I find myself talking and interacting more with class members in the class than I would normally to do in many psychology classes. I think community learning always occurs in class especially asking questions that we don't understand that members of the class would be able to answer from their own experience.
StructureFor every link in her home page, it was visible exactly where you were. I like the consisitency of her pictures from her tables to her pages. I am also setting mine that way. I just figured out how to make the icons smaller. It is required that I set the height and width of the picture I want right after the name of my gif file. Just judging from the structure of her pages one can tell that she is one who likes precision. I liked how her pages just flowed. Her pages were nicely set in terms of managing the amount of space in her pages.
RYAN YAMAUCHIAppearanceUpon clicking at the rest of the pages I found only gray pages, so naturally I was very disappointed especially with the high hopes his first page had given me. He placed rainbow colored bars on the other pages and that was it. Some of his pages seem as though he did not pay very much attention to them. They seem as though they were done with haste. I had hoped he'd put the ame effort in putting up his other pages like the first home page.
ContentRyan mentioned in his report one about his blind attempts to search through the net during the first week. I found the freedom of searching just as interesting as he did. I'm sure he had a lot of patience since he went through links that he mentioned took a while to load up. Actually when I come upon pages that take too long, I tend to just click back to the original and look for something else that won't take as long. I am a very impatient person and it causes me to miss some of the good things that may be out there. I've noticed that they searched through What's New and What's Cool. Come to think of it I never did try those buttons. I just realized them right now. I was wondering where I would find those since it seemed like an interesting world to go to. Perhaps when I get the free time after midterm, I will definitely look into it. I think the freedom of clicking here and there on the first few weeks of class was really taken advantage of. I like the fact that we could search for anything we wanted. I am starting to understand search engines better. I agree with Ryan that they are in fact what net is all about. It is the purpose of being on line and gathering the information that one needs. Search engines are a gateway to the heaven of vast information available to the cybercommunity.
StructureOne thing that I am glad Dr. James told us to do is to make the heading visible. Whenever I land on a page I want the title to be very visible. However, there is difficulty in locating where exactly one has landed on Ryan's pages because of the lack of a big heading. Ryan confessed that he had hijacked Jason Raad's work. I clicked on Jason's pages and I did see the similarity. Now I wondered what Ryan received in this class. There is a difference in borrowing ideas and plain and simple copying. Ryan may have been pressed for time, so his easy way out was to copy the creation of another. There are a few adjustments he made. I read through some of the descriptions for his weekly reports and they were also in aome ways similar to Jason's. There is also the possibilty that Ryan may have just liked the simplicity of Jason's work and thought to gear his pages in that manner.
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