Post Baccalaureate Adventures

Final Project Proposal

Kassandra Finklea and Jae Gaswirth

Kfinklea86@gmail.com & jgaswirth@mac.com

8/10/09

EDTEC 541- Thursdays 7:00

Problem, Need, or Opportunity

The life of a graduate student is unpredictable, arduous, and needless to say, busy. In the midst of reading, teaching, grading, and writing papers, we all need a few hours of fun and relaxation. In order to escape the hectic day to day rubric of homework and studying, we have set a side a few hours each week to embark on a San Diegan adventure. Throughout our studies we all move away from our families in order to pursue bigger and better things, but amidst the move it becomes a challenge to keep family and friends informed of our adventures abroad. Therefore, we propose to create a website documenting our weekly excursions which will not only serve as a graduate school memoir, but also a way to keep family and friends up to date on our current endeavors. The site, entitled “Post Baccalaureate Adventures” will contain pictures of our activities, blog like summaries of each event including background information and reviews of the destination, and also things we have learned as a result of the outing. We also hope to include a place for family and friends to leave comments and questions to encourage communication.

Audience

The ideal audience of our webpage will be our family and friends. We may have contact with some visitors daily or may not be in constant contact others, but the site provides a way for all that are interested to follow our lives as graduate students. The site will also be a way for us to document our quick stint as graduate students which is rapidly drawing to a close. Technical skills of visitors may be limited (grandparents, etc), therefore the site will be very easy to navigate, user friendly, and clearly designed.

User Needs

The users mentioned will visit our website for the following reasons:

1. The major focus will be documentation of weekly events with pictures or videos so visitors can see what we are doing. Each event will have its own page linked from the homepage.

2. The users who visit the site will also need information about the event. For example, what are the pictures of? Where was the picture taken? In order to answer these questions there will be captions for the photographs as well as a longer summary for the entire event.

3. Some visitors may be interested in our evaluation of the event and location. In order to answer these questions, we will also include pertinent information about the event including parking, pricing, time involved, and overall reviews of the experience.

The three most important needs of the website are visuals, information, and opinions or reviews. The webpage will be organized by event, and each subsequent page representing the specified event will include photographs and accompanying materials. The homepage will clearly direct the visitor to the list of events in chronological order.

Environment

The environment surrounding the website will be very social. Users will most likely visit the site at home or at their leisure in a private location. The site itself however, will be public requiring no log in required and therefore will not contain any extensive personal information of participants. The site will include videos when available, so certain computer capabilities such as QuickTime may be necessary. The pictures will be placed on the site in a downloadable PDF format so friends and family can print them or save a high quality image to their personal computer if they wish.

Resources and Limitations

Due to the personal nature of the site, all information resources will be easily accessible and easily navigated. Content includes either photographs or videos we have taken, or information we have composed ourselves. The existing information needed will be any factual information about the destination of choice. This can be provided through location websites or information gathered during the visit. The number of pages linked to the homepage may be ambitious considering the frequency of events, therefore we may focus on only a few of the major events instead of minor weekly outings.

General Solution

A personal website documenting our after college adventures will provide a great place to keep in touch with loved ones around the country and globe. Full of photos, videos, and information about each event, friends and family will be able to vicariously experience graduate school with us. The website will be for people who know us and are interested in staying up to date on our current lives. Visitors will visit at their own will and no persuasion will be necessary due to the nature of the site.