Web Portfolio Themes.

3 potential web portfolio themes:

1. Color-by-number: Each project is a color/number and by the end of the semester, it is clear what the picture is.

2. Tangled jewelry: Each project is a necklace in the tangled mess of information. With each project, a necklace is taken out and by the end, they have all been untangled and are now usable.

3. Scrapbook: Each project is an added page to the scrapbook and by the end I'll have 5 pages to show for my semesters work.

The first and second ideas can easily be used for the reflective introductions. I'll explain how each project is the next color/number in the painting or how each project is another necklace untangled.

Web Portfolio

A portfolio is basically a collection of works that are reflective, have a purpose, and are presented in some organized and stategic way. Web portfolios are one effective form of presentation as long as all the "artifacts" are in a digital format.  With each artifact should be a reflective essay. This should introduce the artifact, explain it how it was done, and in some way tie it in to other artifacts in the portfolio.

I think the two projects that I'm going to revise are my blog and the web redesign project. For my blog, I'd like to revise and edit the content, taking out where there is too much and adding where there is too little. The web redesign will be a little harder to fix because the issues with it where not my own doing (meeting times/proposal). But this project needs to most revision so I'm going to take a stab at it. I think the meeting times needs the chart back and the proposal needs a better direction and a more unified purpose.

There Just Aren't Any Events Out There

Overall,this project hasn't had many difficulties as far as finding material and figuring out how to use it. But there has been issues with finding events that are relevent. There just aren't really any events in the areas that pertain to anti-Semitism. We settled on jewish cultural awareness events, and jewish holiday events. After searching website after website, calendar after calender, I finally found an anti-Semitic awareness event: a documentary film viewing about the anti-jew situation in the middle east. Unfortunatley, 2 of out events have already passed since yesterday. I hope we still recieve credit for them because they were submitted before the peer review and there just aren't any other events available.

Teaching is the Best Way to Learn

I feel like the best way to learn and retain knowledge is to do the research yourself and attempt to present it or teach it. I've learned so much about anti-Semitism from doing this project, having to research and then apply what I've found to blog posts, forums, and media sources. I honestly don't think I would have absorbed any of this information if it were just presented to me. The application part of the research kind of forces you to really understand everything your reading and remember it. Thats how this project have been for me. Particularly, reading all the statistics. The statistics I found concerning anti-Semitism were sometimes helpful, sometimes alarming. They left a lot of room for analysis and opened up space for discussion. For example, 19.5% of uneducated Americans are anti-Semitic.I wrote an entire blog on this one statistic because so much can be drawn from it.

An issue I didn't even realize was an issue.

This SNS project has been pretty fun and interesting. It was actuallyeasier to agree on a topic in our group than I thought it was going to be. Different people have different beliefs and are passionate about different things. We decided of anti-Semitism because of the recent events with various anti-Semitic vandalisms present on campus. It wasn't something that I would have initially come up with or chosen, but it ended up being a topic that I took a good amount of interest and concern in. I didn't really realize how much it still exists! I knew that it was in middle eastern countries and Russia, but I didn't know that 30 million americans share anti-Semitic views. So much for the land of freedom and tolerance...

Forum Topics

1. "March 17, 2008: The home of Yossi Knafo, the Jewish Agency for Israel's representative in Providence, Rhode Island, was attacked with two Molotov cocktails.  No one was injured, but the house sustained damage." Is this an example of an anti-Semitic hate crime, or could it be a shenanigan with another intention? There is speculation that this was an act done by foolish hooligans with no intention further than causing chaos.

2. Why do people choose to use graffiti to express hatred towards Jews? Is this just as bad at hate crimes involving sabatoge and molotov cocktail explosions?

3. Have you experienced anti-Semitism in some way, whether serious or in joke form? How did it make you feel?

Potential SNS Blog Ideas

1. Analysis of RI March 17th, 2008 hate crime event

2. "Education remains a strong predictor of anti-Semitic propensities, with the most well-educated Americans largely free of prejudicial views while less educated Americans are more likely to hold anti-Semitic views. 19.5% of Americans with less than a college education hold anti-Semitic views, a significantly higher figure than the overall 12%"...Why is this??

3. Anti-Semitic graffiti: what type of people do this and why do they use this approach to hate crimes? Is it just as bad as the molotov cocktail and sabatoge incidences?