Go to Student Evaluation of WWW Skills

Notice the progression in confidence and WWW skills by each student as course developed.

Nicholas

9.3.97

I like the idea of the web project, but I have a bunch of questions that haven’t gotten answered yesterday. Such as whose site will it be at, and do each of us need a copy of it on our web page.....I am also having trouble finding more than one story about Demeter on the web. I tried for two hours yesterday and kept finding the same story or nothing at all.

9.11.97

I found last night’s project incredibly frustrating. We were in the library for two hours last night and could not find a thing. We even had one of the assistants helping us. We found a lot of references to art pieces and poetry about Demeter but we could not find any of the actual poems or pictures. We found a lot of pictures, but they were from Greece. After going back, we finally found a wide range of sources for our project. The only problem was deciding what we wanted to use for our project.

9.4.97

We started working on our web projects today. I already know many things about how to use the internet, but I still learned many useful tools of the web. We learned new ways to make a web page and how to use the Perseus system to look up many stories about mythological characters. Hopefully be tomorrow we will have used these tools effectively to finish the first step of our project.

9.5.97

We finished the first part of our web project today. My group found eight versions of myths about Achilles and made links to seven of those on the web from our home page. We also tried to include a picture on our page, but it didn’t turn out the way we had planned. But we’re still learning! The best thing about this project, I think, is my group - we all get along really well together.

9.7.97

My group got together today to work on the next part of our project. We read all the myths of Achilles that we had already gathered, and took notes on each one. Then we compared similarities and discrepancies of the myths. We tried to start writing our analysis of Achilles on our web page, but due to the storm, the computers kept shutting down along with the rest of the power. So we gave up on that or the day, and just write some ideas on paper.

9.8.97

Our group finished the second part of our project today, but we are still having some technical difficulties with the web. Today our problem was that some of our web page wouldn’t show up - Netscape told us that the transfer was interrupted! Everything does show up when we view the page in "editor" form, however. So it must be a problem with either the way we wrote the page, or the way we uploaded the file. Hopefully we will be able to figure it out before we move on to the next part of the project.

9.3.97

This afternoon with the computers has been the hardest part of the course so far. I am the most computer illiterate person in the world. I try to avoid the computer as much as possible. But now that I am in college, I know that I will have to type every single thing that I turn in, and that’s okay. I can type stuff on the computer. I just can’t search the web. I will definitely go and see the woman Bev in Prall house as soon as possible.

9.10.97

Let’s talk about the Metamorphoses web projects. I think it is going really well. I am learning a lot about Athena, Apollo, Demeter, Helen and Achilles. The only thing I don’t like is using the computer. I hate computers. Thank God we are working in groups because if I had to do this myself, I’d be lost!!!!!

9.14.97

I was very surprised by how many examples of mythology in our modern day society that there were when we were doing our web project. Art was influenced so much by mythological figures. Music and dance were also greatly influenced by myth. Even television has been impacted by it. I saw the Disney movie Hercules this summer and many points in class remind me of it even though it is simply a children’s movie.

9.5.97

Today was terrible. Awful. I had to upload the page by myself because everyone was at work already. Something was wrong and it wouldn’t upload. It was almost 5 and it wouldn’t work. No one was in the computer lab. It was the worst feeling. I started crying and I hate to cry. I got a hold of my friend, Ed, who is an internet genius. Thank God! I finally got it uploaded at almost 7. It was so terrible. But I am so glad I got it uploaded. I hate uploading.

9.8.97

....then on the internet project it happened again. ..... I was left to upload because everyone had to work again and I couldn’t upload it again! This time even the computer man couldn’t figure it out. ....Anyways, I got a hold of Ed again and this time he told me how to do it and it worked! It was such a great feeling.

9.12.97

Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you. I uploaded today. Smooth as silk..

9.15.97

Uploading on Sunday was smooth.
 

Gillian

9.1.97

The project on the worldwide web scares me. I have never done anything more than some informal browsing of web pages for my classes, and I am not sure how I will do in actually trying to build one.

9.3.97

This Internet web page stuff is going to kill me. I felt so overwhelmed with that woman talking 100 miles per hour and using all this computer talk that I don not understand. I understand that we are under a time constraint, but I really think I would have understood this much better if we had been given more time to learn it.

9.4.97

Now that the initial shock of the web page is over, I think I am finally adjusting to the idea that I may be able to do this. I am just so glad that we were able to work in groups, because there is no way that I could have ever figured this out on my own.

9.5.97

(referring to the www} I found it much harder to analyze Demeter than it was to find stories about her. Even though very few stories exist about her other than that of her daughter Persephone, at least when we were looking for myths, they were easy to find. When we were trying to make a conclusion about what Demeter stood for, it was a very hard decision. It was easy to answer the obvious questions about what makes her tick, but it was very hard to analyze her motives and actions for everything. An easier way of doing this might have been to analyze each myth that we found, but not try and tie them all together to get at her full "meaning."

9.8.97

Each time we go to work on our web page, I feel a bit more confident that everything is going to work out. Today when we went to upload our interpretation of Demeter, we checked the page and the picture that we had tried to upload earlier was on it! It was really great to be able to look at something that cool and realize that I had been a part of putting that together. It is also a big relief to see that we are now one third of the way done with the projects. I have to admit that at first I really doubted that it could be possible to make a web page in three weeks, considering that no one knew much of anything about them.

Laurie

9.1.97

I had a chance to check out the mythology section on the www. Wow! There is an endless list of sites and sources to check out.

9.4.97

Started looking on the www for good links for the first part of the project, due tomorrow! I found some interesting things, I just hope we can figure out how to get everything transferred onto the page!

9.5.97

WWW project - I spent almost three hours on that thing today! I think I have the whole uploading thing down - backwards and forwards! Still, we did get it up in time, and for the most part I am satisfied with how it looks. I just hope everyone decides to pull their weight throughout this project.

9.11.97

Spent quite a bit of time on the web project today. Reading some of the books on reserve as well as searching in the stacks for more modern twists on the myths of Athena.

9.12.97

More frustration with the web project - as usual it seemed as though no one had done anything again. They seem to think we can wait until the last second to do things and still get it done well. Wrong! And that darn link still isn’t working right. It worked for a while, and now it’s screwed up again - Aaaaahhhh.

Shannon

9.4.97

In the oh-so-foreboding web project, I’m enjoying learning about the computers (even though they scare me) and I probably would have thrown a monitor across the lab by now if I wasn’t.

9.9.97

All in all though, despite my ever present fear of the web, I’m very happy with the class and my progress in it.

9.10.97

The group hung out and read the verses tonight after we did research in the library (lot of luck this time!). We had a lot of fun and I’m glad we can all be doing this together - so at least I won’t feel overwhelmed and I can laugh about it.

9.11.97

We made a heap of progress on the web site tonight (we even added pretty colors). How nice it is to not feel a ton of pressure about it this time. We may even be done before the deadline!

9.15.97

The group has been worried lately about what we’ll do when we’re not in class together and we don’t see each other every day. I think that is the biggest challenge of the block plan - making an effort to stay friends when you’re not forced to be together. But I really like those guys a lot, so I’m going to try my best to hang out with them and not read myths. (Not that there’s anything wrong with myths!)

Jenny

9.5.97

I’m so glad we got our web page to work so well. I’m also glad Achilles had the decency to give Hector’s body back for a ransom. It earned him back some of my respect. I can’t wait to read Gilgamesh.

9.5.97

The other thing that I find interesting is programming the web page. Not only am I leaning about our group’s divinity but I am also learning the important skill of setting up a web page which I am sure will come in handy time and time again over the next few years. At first I had a problem with the technical details, but after working for a few days I not only feel in my element, but almost comfortable with all the things I am working with.

9.12.97

(referring to the www} The last stage of the metamorphoses project (Part 2A) has cause my group and I a bit of trouble. We didn’t have any problem finding the actual material, but when it came to the analysis we had a bit more trouble. It was very hard to draw out the artist’s ideas and thoughts from either a tiny bit of text or a diminutive picture. The only exception was the ballet which did a fine job of conveying the ancient themes.

April

9.3.97

Today I learned how, or least attempted to learn how to make my own web page. I think I will have to read over the materials several times in order to even grasp the concept. I’m not quite sure why I want to make a web page, but if you think that it’s important, then ok, maybe it might be useful in the future, but time will tell.

9.5.97

(referring to the www) Today I leaned a lot about the goddess Helen, who I guess is not even a goddess. She is immortal because Menelaus wanted to kill her, but the gods were watching over her. They whisked her away and made her immortal to save her from the wrongful death that would have occurred otherwise. The Helen that traveled with Paris was supposedly a phantom. The real Helen was being kept in Egypt because Athena couldn’t really let Paris take her captive. I’ve leaned that there are so many variations to myths, which make them so very interesting. I hope to explore more gods and goddesses who have many more variations than Helen. Helen doesn’t really have many different myths about her. They all sum up to the same old "fair armed Helen." She is sweet and elegant, yet at the same time a twit with little understanding of the world.

9.12.97

The project 2A was very interesting to work on. Trying to find two sources by women was a task. We found plenty of poems but they were mostly written by men. We found one poem by a woman which you will see in the web.

 
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