Description of Portfolio

The purpose of this portfolio is to showcase a collection of my work from my summer internship at the Office of Communications and Marketing. The works included in this portfolio are those that I learned the most from and allowed me to accomplish learning goals that I established in my second progress report.

For an overview of all the works I completed during the course of my internship this summer visit my Wiki.

Each post will consist of an artifact i produced during the internship followed by a reflection of the artifact.

Enjoy!

Employee Bio Page

Artifact: Employee Bio

The employee bio was my first assignment in my internship. The purpose of the bio is to provide a brief personal introduction of who i am and my position in the Office of Communications and Marketing (OCM). The audience of the bio are other staff members of the office and visitors to the office’s website. The bio was placed on OCm homepage with the other employee bios.

This writing assignment, though easy, required many revisions by myself and Lisa Low. These revisions gave me insight into the writing style of the writers of the OCM. It is their desire to have a cohesive writing style so this assignment served as my crash course in their grammatical style for the most part.

Overall the assignment was interesting start to the internship and provided a little pressure for me to display my writing skills to the professionals in the OCM. Writing Assignment

News Release: “Little Big Bend”

Artifact: “Little Big Bend” Web Page

This artifact was the the first news release that I produced. Although the news article is short I learned a great deal in the process. This served as my introduction to using the AP style guide as an editing tool. I specifically learned the proper way to site the title of a book, organization and title references in a new release. I learned how to use the prexisting templates to develop Web pages for the TTU Web site, specifically I learned what elements are universal and what elements must by customized for each story.

The most valuable aspect of producing this story was that I learned the syntax used by the OCM when saving Web pages and other content to the server, to be used on the TTU website. This served as an important lesson because using a constant “naming” scheme for Web Pages and content allows a team of developers to easily locate each others work on a server.

Google Analytics

Artifact: Google Analytics Report

This assignment presented me with an opportunity to learn about industry-standard software, Google Analytics, and how to analyze its data. This was a particularly valuable learning experience because it is important for any web designer or content developer to understand how, when and how often users visit their Web site.

I learned how to interpret data such as pings and bounce rate and gained an understanding of how knowing where your users go and spend the majority of their time on your Web site can allow Web developers to tailor to their audience. Using the data from this report I was to determine the most popular videos and manage the video gallery’s “most popular” section effectively.

Developing Flash Media

Artifact: Flash Movie, Video Gallery

This assignment served as my introduction to the process of converting raw movie formats such as .mov and .wmv into Flash videos. I learned why it is beneficial to use embedded flash videos on a Web page rather than raw movie files; embedded flash videos can be compressed saving space and allows the video to stream faster. It was crucial that I fully comprehend the details of this process because It became a routine task for me to convert raw moviwe files produced by the Broadcast Services’ office to flsah videos.

This assignment also allowed me to learn how to maintain the video gallery on the Texas Tech Today Web site. Specifically, I learned the HTML tags used to hide rows of information in source code and I also gained a better knowledge of how to manipulate DIV columns in HTML code, this is valuable for positioning and layout of content on a Web page.

News Release: “Sally Davis Profile”

Artifact: Sally Davis Profile Web page

In regards to the length of the story and the amount of content, this was one of the biggest news releases I produced during my internship. This was also the second story I produced for the Web. I gained valuable experience in several areas while producing this story.

I gained a better knowledge of how to manipulate the TTU Web templates that are used universally throughout the TTU.edu Website. This knowledge allowed me to create a unique layout for the content of this story including multiple “DIV” areas that allowed me to position the text, images and sidebar where I desired.

I learned some specific editing techniques such as removing the repetitive references to the name “Texas Tech” throughout the story and separating quotes from larger paragraphs to create emphasis. I have discovered that while these are minute editing techniques the sum of them allows me to produce maintain the established writing style of the OCM.

Converting To WordPress

Artifact: “Meet The Met” Story

This was the first story that I converted into the WordPress format and was one of the feature stories on the Texas Tech Today Web site. It was a frustrating process but served a valuable learning experience nonetheless. I learned the all about the WordPress content management system, specifically how to use the “write post” feature to develop Web pages for news releases. In the process of learning this new system I also began memorizing more HTML tags such as DIV columns, styles and our customized cutline tags used to place and hold images along with their cutline.

Converting stories into the WordPres format became a routine task following this story prior to the launching of the WordPress site. How the experiance I gained during the delopment of this Web page prepared me for our evental switch to the WordPress system and reduced use of Dreamwaever.

News Release: Dairy Barn Story

Artifact: Dairy Barn Story

This was one of the bigger news releases I produced, it was a featured piece in the Texas Tech Today monthly newsletter. I gained a considerable amount of experience and knowledge about editing news stories for the Web. I learned how to effectively write subheads and how to use them to break up long stories. I also gained experience writing headlines, blurbs and cutlines which is a crucial element of all news releases produced by the OCM.
I received a lesson during the production of this story. I spent a considerable amount of time developing the graphic content of this story, I optimized several images for the photo gallery and developed a unique main image in Photoshop. However the editors decided to use different graphic content, I learned that the amount of energy you spend on content does not determine its usefulness.

Image Gallery

Artifact: Image Gallery Web Site

This is one of the biggest projects I completed during my internship, also one of my favorites. The purpose of the image gallery is to provide high quality images of the Texas Tech campus to all who desire to use them.
I was charged with creating the gallery from scratch and working with another intern to populate it with images offered in three different resolutions and sizes. This project allowed me to display a number of my skills in HTML, layout and photo optimization. I learned the universal Web standards for high and low resolution images including the importance of optimizing images at 300dpi so they can be printed in high resolution. This was important for our image gallery because the primary audience of the gallery is media personnel who may use the images in a newspaper or magazine.
I also became proficient at optimizing images for the Web, particularly landscape images. The optimization process involves altering the brightness, contrasts and clarity of an image, among other aspects, to create an image that “pops” or stands out on a Web page.

News Release: “RaiderPCMart”

Artifact: RaiderPCMart Story

This was the only story I wrote throughout the course of my internship that got published on the Texas Tech Today Website. I learned a great deal about the writing process of professional news writers and editing from this assignment. In particular, I learned how the routing system is used to edit a piece. The story was subject to editing by four different writers, after each review I made the suggested changes and submitted the revised story to another writer. This process allowed me to learn from the edits of each writer, I learned how to properly reference numbers, identify the speaker of quote, abbreviate names and much more.

More than just learning how to write effectively, this story helped acclimate me to the professional world where your work is under constant scrutiny. I learned to not take this type of scrutiny personally or as a test of my skills or abilities, its purpose is to produce a quality story.