Blog Prompt: Fake news & what to do about it.

Over the past week or so, we have spent time discussing the problem of "fake news," how it is hurting our democracy and how to combat it. The city-state of Singapore recently adopted a sweeping law targeting online platforms spreading fake news. Watch the following short report about the law. Do you think the U.S. ought to adopt similar legislation? Why or why not?

Blog Prompt: Transmedia Storytelling

Here is a short video of Henry Jenkins, author of our textbook, discussing the growing importance of transmedia storytelling. He insists here that such storytelling is becoming increasingly important as a Hollywood strategy but is also becoming popular with amateurs, fans, who are creating their own transmedia projects. What do you think of Jenkins' arguments here? And what are some of your favorite examples of the sort of transmedia storytelling he discusses in his book and this short video interview?

Here are some complete, pre-fab web templates that you can use. Be cautious about using complicated templates that employ lots of images as elements of the design, use XHTML, have multimedia capabilities, etc. In my experience, those templates are difficult to edit without screwing up their formatting and creating more headaches than they are worth. It is best to use very simple templates (with basic 2- and 3-column layouts) as you can simply past your text directly into the text "container" and they can typically be modified without too much trouble.  In the past students have had success with designs like "Simple Beauty", "Simple #2," "Three Column Fluid," and "Event Horizon."

• Open Source Web Design
• Open Design Community
• Free Web Templates
• Free Website Templates
• Open Web Designs

Free skeletal designs:

• CodeSucks CSS Layouts
• Smashing Magazine's CSS Layouts
• More free CSS layout

Finally, if you work with Adobe Dreamweaver, you'll find it comes with a number of different easy to use templates. When you start up the program, just click on the "Create from Sample" option.