Visit my new website, Gingers Against Humanity (opens in a new tab), where you can learn all about this mysterious organization!
Sites v. DoOO
If I had to describe the difference between these two, I would say that Sites@UMW is a slightly more restricted version of Domain of One’s Own. While you can still customize part of a URL, and make some choices about how you want your site to look, you don’t have as much freedom as you do with DoOO. There aren’t as many themes or plugins to choose from, and you are limited to one application (WordPress). However, that means there are fewer potential issues and challenges, since everything is pretty controlled and regularly updated for you, and you can still create as many subsites as you want, and make them look however you want.
shhhhhh….. This has been such a fun project so far and we haven’t even gotten to the best bits yet! I finished making my storyboard for this and honestly… I think it’s really funny but also kinda stupid lol. I wanted to base my project on the DKC video that we use for class visits and the one that always plays in the HCC but I added a little spin since we are the ADC now not the DKC.
Here’s my video!
One thing I’ve learned throughout this process so far is that 60 seconds is not very long for all the things I want to put in this video. Since my storyboard is already a little over the 60-second limit I might have to chop down on some of my content. Otherwise cannot wait to learn more when I get to the actual editing, audio recording and filming process!
I’ve also made a script for this project if anyone is interested
Here’s my video submission for the DKC human test! In the video, all photos are mine, and the music was found on Freesound and has no copyright. I also cited my sources in the video on the last slide.
Using Canva to make videos was something I never even knew was an option. Overall the experience was very smooth though a bit frustrating. Though I’m pretty sure I only think that because I’ve used other more advanced editing software in the past. Compared to those, Canva was a little limiting in what tools were available and it wasn’t as easy to get the precise results I wanted. Though for beginners or a quick video project, I definitely see the use. Since it’s easy to share, edit, and create with the mountain of templates they have there is little room for failure. I likely won’t use it again unless the project requires it, since to the detriment of my free time I overedit every little thing. Though it’s nice knowing that Canva has so much more to offer than graphic design tools.
My process for making the video was pretty linear except for one thing. Two seconds into making the script for the video I forgot the time requirement was 30 seconds. So I ended up making a full minute-long video talking a bit more about each fun fact and a brief mention of my roommate’s cat, Moby. Sadly, before I could post it Shannon very quickly cut down my dreams of greatness. I rushed to cut and edit the audio in Audacity but sadly I couldn’t keep it all in the final video. And then I forgot to save the original video so no one will ever see the full amazingness of Feli. To make up for it, here’s a photo of Moby to make up for this great loss to the world.
“Welcome to Walking Thoughts with Katy.” *chime sound effect*
*the sound of wooden construction*
“Who put these benches here? Why are there so many? Did Mary Washington like benches? Is that why they’re here?”
*the sounds of keyboards typing*
“It’s the HCC! I Work There!”
*the sound of birds chirping*
“What a funny little guy. He’s got no head, and a big belly.”
“Big tree.”
This has been Walking Thoughts with Katy. Keep wandering. *chime sound effect*
Media
I got all my sound effects, including the “magic wand sparkle”, “birds chirping near the river”, “chatting with a laptop”, and “cutting trees with chainsaw ambiance and axe hits” from unknown creators on MixKit.
The background music is a track called “Valley Sunset” by Alejandro Magaña on MixKit.
Canva
I like Canva because of its simplicity. It’s easy to learn and has quite a few resources, like animations, graphics, and fun templates. However, it is frustrating to see all of the premium elements that I, a lowly freeloader, don’t have access to, and sometimes I feel limited in how much editing I can do.
Bonus Tools
For this project, I went to the HCC front desk to check out some audio equipment. I’ve had a little experience with the audio recorder before and I think the nice sound makes the video feel a little higher quality. I just filmed my video with my phone’s camera. I also used SoundTrap to edit my audio.
The Journey
I started by planning out my transcript, and the shots I wanted to get. I like to write things out so I can make sure that I have a nice variety and so that I can film as efficiently as possible. Then I went outside and filmed as I walked around. I got shy though, so I changed a couple of shots so I could hide and film away from judging eyes and potential sneak attacks. After I got my shots, I uploaded them to Canva and began editing. Then I added in my audios from SoundTrap. I made two separate tracks: one for the voiceover, and one for the music and sound effects.
Wow, that accessibility page was a wild ride! There were lots of weird things going on, but I think it looks better now. I added the page to my top menu for future reference. I learned that it’s good practice to make a note if a link will take the user to a new tab, and that typography is important! Something that I like about this theme is the font, because I think it’s simple and easy to read.
Accessibility Plugin
I decided to install the Accessibility Checker plugin by Equalize Digital. I love being able to see the details about what needs to be changed to make my posts and pages more accessible. It’s really helpful in pointing out things that I wouldn’t have normally spotted! Another thing I learned is that the heading structure order is important. I used to use smaller headers just because I liked how they looked better, but the plugin I installed flagged my headings, so I changed them.
Checking my Website
Being able to use the Accessibility Checker to look through my website is certainly helpful, but I feel like the defaults of this theme often need to be changed. For example, the default “black” text is actually a dark grey, and the accessibility summary keeps telling me that the color contrast isn’t high enough. There’s something that keeps popping up saying “ARIA hidden”. I’m not sure what that means. Something else that bothers me is that WordPress tells me that the blue highlighted link text is too low contrast, but I can’t figure out how to change it!
Today, I learned about designing a website to be accessible. One thing I learned is that text should be at least 16 px or larger. I knew that text should be easy to read, but it’s useful knowing the exact size which it needs to be. Additionally, I learned about linking using descriptive text. This means that when you link a site, you can’t just say “click here”. Instead, you need to describe the site which you are linking. One thing I have a question about is writing alternative text for gifs. I tried looking it up and writing code for it, but I think I was doing it wrong. I’ve never coded before, so I had no idea what I was doing. The accessibility checker gave me a warning about my gif, but again, I couldn’t figure out how to solve the issue.
Today I updated a page on my website called A Guide to Accessible Web Design. At the start, this page was a MESS. The blocks of bright colors matched with brightly colored texts killed the graphic designer in me just a little bit. The first thing I did to fix this page was change the text color and get rid of the backgrounds because they looked funny in my opinion. The next thing I did was change the links to read easier, with descriptive texts. I also made sure that all the headers and body text were the correct size (16px), H2 Headers and H3 subheadings. I also added spaces between the body text, image, and subheadings so that it was easier to read and the text wasn’t too bunched up. Finally, I added alt text to the image on the page.
Additionally, I fixed all of the images on my main site so that they all now have alt text (I also deleted the many extra images I had in my media library (because they did NOT need to be there lol).
I think in the last week I’ve changed almost everything on my website in such small ways that it’s barely noticeable but adds to a better overall look. I definitely spent too much time on little things that did not need them (my home page) but I’ve learned a lot more about WordPress so a win is still a win.
I decided to make things harder for myself so I placed my sidebar in the middle which my theme did not enjoy. I didn’t have too much to add to it just yet since the website was just made but I hope to populate it a bit more. For now, it just has the premade blocks to display your categories and recent posts. Then because I spent too much time looking at it I wanted to add some flare I learnt how to do some small HTML coding and added some border and background effects to the text.
For the plugins task, I chose to add the Accessibility Checker. I remember that we briefly mentioned it during one of our cohort meetings and thought it would be a good one to try out. I’m still working on fixing the entire website because there are a lot of small things that are easy to assume would be easily accessible and are very much not.
I think I’m most excited to learn more about graphic design because I enjoy creating. I already know how to use a few applications but I’ve always wanted to spend more time really learning about it so this would be fun for me.
This was my first time using Canva to create a video on YouTube. I have made YouTube videos before, but I have always made them on iMovie on my phone because I did not have a laptop until college started. Overall, Canva was a useful tool in creating this video. I liked how you could select a cute template to add your work onto. I also liked how you could add music, sound effects, and voiceovers easily. Personally, I added my voiceover by recording on my phone, transferring it to my laptop, and then uploading it onto Canva. One problem I had with Canva was editing my voiceover. When I would go to a certain part in my video, the audio would start late which would mess up where I wanted to edit my video. To solve this problem, I just had to re-click a couple times where I wanted to start listening to the audio. It was an easy fix, but still annoying. Another problem I had with Canva was with the transitions on my photos. I wanted the transition to just be at the beginning, not the beginning and end of the photo entering and exiting the video. Well, when you add another video clip after the initial one, it automatically changes your photo’s transition to be at the beginning and end. It was easy to change it to just the beginning, but I wished it would stop doing that. On the other hand, I appreciate the variety of transitions Canva has. I mainly used the pop effect on my text and the tumble effect on my photos, but they have lots of options. Also, Canva has a variety of clipart on their website that you can use to add to your videos. I found that really helpful!
Unrelated to Canva, I found the YouTube uploading process fairly simple. I have done it before, so I am familiar. One thing I hadn’t done before was add captions to my videos. Since I wrote a script for this video, it was easy to add them into the video. Also, YouTube automatically knows where to time the captions, so that was really nice. It was like magic the way the captions were synced with my voice!
The media I incorporated into my video were either my personal photos of my cat or clipart featured in Canva. The one photo that wasn’t was the photo of the Skippyjon Jones Book. That came from this website. Below is my personal video proving that I am not a robot ↓.
