For this semester, I continued with my astronomy-themed blog. Unlike last semester, I tried to get a bit more involvement out of my readers by posting comments to address their questions more thoroughly, directly asking questions at the end of most of my posts, and even attempting to organize a stargazing/camping trip (which didn’t quite materialize as I had imagined it, but was still pretty fun.) These definitely payed off, as many more people commented on this semester’s blog posts than last semester’s. Now for my favorite ones…
“Look Out Below!” was by far the easiest post to write. In a week when the largest meteorite in about 100 years struck the Earth, I couldn’t exactly write about anything else. I had noticed that there seemed to be rampant confusion as to what exactly happened on social media and in the news. Angry questions such as “Why didn’t NASA see this?!” or even “Why didn’t we shoot it down?” were everywhere as comments to news stories. I figured that this would be a rather kairotic moment to address the issue of asteroid deflection or mitigation (the fancy term for blowing it up.) The abundance of high-quality videos from Russia also made the post much more interesting for readers.
“How Close are we to Colonizing Mars” was a blog post that was written at the request of some of the students in our class. I’d gotten a lot of questions such as “So when are we actually going to Mars? Is that actually possible?” The answer is yes, it’s possible. We have the technology and the drive. We just don’t have the money right now. This was also a response to a discussion that I had with Priyanka about a friend of hers that thinks the moon landings were faked because radiation belts prevent us from leaving Earth. I figured addressing space radiation was necessary just for that reason. I also always like to include an element of humor in my blogs, which is why I included the video of a couple of Apollo astronauts singing and jumping around on the moon. I successfully managed to address every issue that I could think of involving us leaving Earth, which managed to garner three comments.
Finally, “Tools of the Trade- How Stargazing Works” was a response to some confusion about telescopes that I’d noticed while volunteering at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. Without any previous exposure to telescopes, why would anyone know how they work? It’s a rather complicated process of light reflection and refraction, so I really couldn’t blame the poor people that would look through the finderscope and be disappointed by the tiny image or the guy that kept looking through the telescope before I put the eyepiece in. I thought that a little background about how telescopes are used and how I make the pictures that I put on this blog would be useful, though I probably should have done this as one of the first posts instead of one of the last. Though this post didn’t receive many comments, I thought that it was necessary background information for my audience.
And here’s the link to my websites: timothygleason.weebly.com
Sorry about this, but I realized that most of these concerns have already been addressed several days ago- I simply forgot to hit “Publish” before class. Thanks for the advice- hopefully I fixed most of them already. It’ll be updated soon.
Note: I hope that my comment doesn’t seem to harsh; I just tried to pinpoint everything. You have a really good portfolio and take everything I say with a grain of salt.
1. You said that your intended audience is future employers. However, I don’t get this feeling from your homepage. Rather, I just feel like your e-portfolio is a representation of your works for whoever wants to read about you. Try to make it more narrow in the homepage. Are you planning on putting works from the past? I think that, as Sarah said, you should probably stick to works that you wrote in college. But, I don’t know how your other pieces of writing fit in your blog so it’s up to you to make that call. Also, I think that within your homepage, you need to be more explicit about your audience and organization. Only because I talked to you early do I know how your site is set up, but I don’t think a random employer would.
2. It seems that your organization and tabs are fine. However, I was slightly confused at first (it took me a while to figure out that clicking a tab would give me a summary and hovering over the tab would give me the articles). Maybe you should mention that. I think that your order is fine, but just make sure to put your about page last.
3. I think that there should be a stronger overall theme for your e-portfolio. For example, I know that it’s very natured-based, but your eportfolio works dont’ follow that theme. Your categories are writing and advocacy, but within those categories, the works don’t match. In the advocacy section, you talk about fracking and you being agnostic. Maybe there is a way to connect everything back to streams and stars? You could try making all of your works being based on of one work like your This I Believe. I believe in agnosticism so much that you like streams and stars (I don’t know…). Anyways, I think the same also goes for your visuals.
4. I think that you should definitely introduce each paper with a specific focus in mind. Instead of just summarizing it, say how it relates back to your theme. I guess consider it like a trailer for your work, except in written form. At this point, I can’t see the connection in your advocacy tab. Also, rather than giving a general intro to the tab (like in the writing tab), just introduce each paper.
5. I think that one of your strengths is definitely your space and nature background. Definitely try to emphasize this more. Also, I love that most (all?) of these pictures are yours (especially the bunny!) I really liked how you linked your blogs back to your original blog. It was a nice transition.