Elevating Environment Discourse

I. Title of the project and URL:

Boulder Stand

boulderstand.coloradodjlabs.org

II. Members, Classifications and Emails:

Daniel Randa Daniel.Randa@Colorado.EDU

Sarah Ruybalid Sarah.ruybalid@colorado.EDU

Katie Feldhaus Katie.Feldhaus@Colorado.EDU

Joy Hamilton Joy.Hamilton@Colorado.EDU

Travis Keeper Travis.Keeper@Colorado.EDU

III. Division of Labor:

Daniel Randa: HTML coding, web site design
Sarah Ruybalid: HTML coding, Photoshop, web site design, content(bio pages, book lists)
Katie Feldhaus: Content (about page), design contributions
Joy Hamilton: Content (resources page), design contributions
Travis Keeper: HTML coding, design contributions

IV. Resources (a list of sources with contact information, research materials, major electronic resources used, etc.)

Ben Hale:
Phone: (303) 735-3624
Email: bhale@colorado.edu
CVSP Contact: Center for Values and Social Policy
Office: CSTPR, Grandview 1333
Information: Faculty Page
Web page: http://www.practicalreason.com
Blog: http://cruelmistress.wordpress.com

Tom Yulsman:
Phone: (303) 492-3009
Web Page: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~yulsman/Home.html

Max Boykoff :
Phone: 303-735-6316
Email: boykoff@colorado.edu
Web Page: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/max_boykoff/
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
1333 Grandview Avenue
Campus Box 488
Boulder, CO 80309-0488

Roger Pielke:
Phone: 303-735-0451
Email: pielke@colorado.edu
Web Page/Blog: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
1333 Grandview Avenue
Campus Box 488
Boulder, CO 80309-0488

Center of Environmental Journalism

Grist.org

Yale Environment 360

Acorns Fall

V. Strengths of the Project:
-Contributor Page with bios
-Drop down menus
We all worked well as a team and took the aspen analogy and included it into the design for Boulder Stand. We also tried to be consistent with the design that Tom said with it looking like a newspaper, but online.
-Layout and organization (simple)

VI. Weaknesses of the Project:
-Various technical problems that came about during the process (drop down menu image)
-Lack of content provided by contributors, client communication (glossary...etc)
-Our site is not as easily editable because the menu is an image

VII. Lessons Learned (positive and negative):
-We all learned and got more familiar with HTML coding, CSS, linking, image mapping
-Many things took much more time to finish than expected

Just a conceptual idea. Navigation would appear over the root with an outer glow to make them appear to "grow" from the roots.

-Grog - Top Navigation (Index)-Image/logo
*Only put a portion of post (inch size)

-Profiles- short bio - link pages/photo - social media links - contact info.
*Thumbnail picture link with posts

-About Page - our mission - email link/Contact - link to university/environmental envs.colorado.edu

-Glossary - terms/definitions

-Most viewed or popular posts - links to sites or organizations of interest

(News Feed or news articles/videos)

I tried finding a few blogs that I thought use the group blog format well.

The group blog called Tapped from the American Prospect does a good job of using mostly text and just a few pictures (within the blogs themselves) and keeping it all relatively easy to navigate through. I also like that they don't let any of the blogs get too long, instead they use a KEEP READING link that goes to a new page (sometimes done with "read more" on other sites). It's not easy to tell who the author of each post is, however, and I think that using thumbnail pics of the authors is a good idea (which Joy pointed out is used by Grist).

The Penguin book publishing company has a group blog that I think is set up nicely. It is pretty simple and easy to navigate like the Tapped blog I mentioned above. I like the Guest Author section on the right side, which maybe we can do something similar with for Max's guest blogs. I think that in this case fewer graphics and minimal pictures allow users to get straight to the content of the blogs - which is important.

http://e360.yale.edu/content/digest.msp?id=2477

http://environment.change.org/

http://www.cre3design.com/
(the resources are real good)

http://www.treehugger.com/

Labels: links

I like the section on this Care2 site labeled causes we care about, we could totally at this to our site for environmental causes and maybe have like a donation or contribution button for more info about helping the causes.

The more articles section at the bottom of the New America Media site is pretty cool. I feel like it could be a good way to store our archived stories, but still reminding people that they are there and can look back on older stories. I also really like how they have the section at the top right about Ethic News making headlines in other media outlets. Thank could be a cool thing to add to the page, like Environmental stories that make the headlines or front page news out side of our contributers.