Screen shots and your final blog analysis

Class, a few of you said you had never done a screen shot, (also called a screen grab). It can be done in less than a minute, using the Print Scrn button on the top right side of your key board and Photoshop. Simply pull up the page you want to work with, hit Print Scrn, open up Photoshop, hit File/New/OK, then Edit/paste, to pull in your image. Edit the image in Photoshop as you would other images, saving it as a .gif, which would then be uploadable to a blog or Web site. About.com has a video tutorial on this, if you'd prefer to watch it done before trying it. Here's the link:

http://video.about.com/graphicssoft/WinXPScreenshot-mov.--8z.htm

A few reminders about your final blog analyses:

* Your edited first entries are still waiting for most of you in the big envelope stuck to my office door, room 4119.
* Many of you are still having trouble with AP style points. It's Internet, not internet; e-mail, not email; home page, not homepage; Web site, not website.
* Do remember to give examples to support broad statements that you make, and remember to provide links to stories you discuss.
* Please upload a screen shot of the pages you discuss in the design portion of your analysis.

Full details on your assignment are posted below. This is pulled from your class syllabus:

# Tuesday, Dec. 15, 3:30 p.m.: (20 percent of your grade): Finals due, (based on the university's finals' schedule): This is a 2,000- to 2,400-word research / analysis of a news Web site, selected from a list I will circulate in class. It will be written as multiple posts on a blog you'll create on godaddy.com for this purpose. Throughout the semester, you should be posting coherent, well-written thoughts on your blog page. Each posting should be roughly 200 to 500 words. You should have a minimum of six posts on six different days during the semester. Postings should address the following points, but need not be limited to these: How well the Web site uses navigation; how clean its design is; how well it uses photos and graphics, broadcast features (including audio and video and podcasts) and interactive elements (such as chats, blogs, polls, map mashups and info graphics, quizzes and searchable databases); and how well stories are written and presented and make use of the medium. You should tell me about any other features you loved or hated and why. In your final posting, you should tell me what changes editors and publishers might consider to better position themselves for the future. The analysis should be based on your observations of the site throughout the semester and on background research you've conducted on the site. Comments should be supported with facts, links and visual screen grabs to illustrate your points. Factual mistakes that have not been corrected by the deadline --including misspelled proper names and faulty URLs--will result in full letter-grade deductions. Information quoted from other sources should be fully attributed in your text. To turn in, please e-mail me your blog URL before the deadline, and turn in a printout of your blog under my 4th floor office door (Room 4119). Finals turned in after deadline will receive an automatic F.