How to Evaluate a Digital Literary Narrative

The first video was very creative and interesting at first to watch. The use of music and words combined with images made it dynamic and informative. It did drag on at the end and would have been better if it were shorter. The second video was shorter than the first and easier to watch. The use of the film strip made the voice over easy to follow and interesting. Like the first video though, it dragged on after a while and was seriously repetitive. The third video was very dynamic because it was done in an informal setting and the story made the video very interesting and fun to watch. It ended at the right time, so it didn't drag on and become boring. The fourth video was interesting in how it began and the topic discussed. The downside was the amount of time that was used to show texting, especially since the audience has a hard time reading the words and thus being distracted from the point. The fifth video was interesting in the difference of how the video was made compared to the others. The use of still images and words made it easy to follow and funny at times. After reviewing these different videos, the idea of having a common grading system seems more complicated than black and white. To grade the videos certain aspects need to be graded. Does the video get across the required point? Is it easy to follow or confusing? And is it interesting to the particular audience? Each of these questions needs to answered to come to a decision in terms of a grade.

Reflecting on successful texts

The three texts I had to read for this blog were from Ariel Popp, Austin Robertson, and Kelsey Rock. Each of them had a very different theme and subject they were analyzing, ranging from recipes to comics to game wiki pages. The first one, by Ariel Popp, was about successful comics on webpages. In particular, life experience type comics were being evaluated. Ariel discussed five different comics, highlighting the similarities, specifically webpage format and content, and differences, specifically ad space and color. In the end, I learned that organization, emphasis through color, contrast, and framing were key to making the comic interesting and user friendly. The second webpage, by Austin Robertson, is about gaming wiki pages and there effectiveness and user friendly capabilities. Austin discussed the usefulness of the wiki pages in correlation to the game, for example Eve is built into the actual game, thus is more user friendly and formatted to match the game. An example he discussed of a bad or less useful wiki page was the last one, which had almost nothing useful in terms of the game, except the walk-through, and a useless toolbar that distracted from the text being presented to the audience. In the end, his discussion left the idea that to have a successful text in concerns with a wiki page, it should be ascetically pleasing along with giving useful information that is easy to find for veterans and rookies. The final webpage, by Kelsey Rock, discusses the representation of recipes online and the effective use of organization, emphasis, and user-friendliness in terms of the audience. It talks about the format and organization design which would be most compatible with the intended audience. An example of this being the use of a note card format, which speaks to people who have been using notecards to write recipes. Another example is the availability and accessibility of print to make it easy for the audience to get the recipe. 
My favorite website has to be: Megan Hitchens because of the contrast between the background and the words, which is very visually dynamic. Plus she has a Tolkien quote.