Karulkar Thanksgiving

Here are some pictures from our Thanksgiving in Champaign, IL. My brother is finishing up his Ph.D (his dissertation needs to be finished in a few weeks) so we figured it was best to come to him instead of having him come to AK.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Panraven still smells but kudos to the marketing manager

If you check out my post about Panraven, you'll realize I ripped it a brand new one. However to my surprise Andy Katz, the marketing manager addressed my concerns in this comment. I was very pleased to see that while I don't like the product at the moment, the people behind it are working to make it fit my needs. Anyways here is what he wrote to me. You can find it in my "comments" section on the post below.

"Hi Nik,
I'm a marketing manager for Panraven. Thanks for taking the time to create a Panraven story and provide your feedback.

We do plan to introduce font control and more flexibility with the layouts in the future, as we have learned that is something users would find useful. One reason the font is small is because it is proportional to how it will look when printed. We want to give users the most realistic representation of what their book would look like in a printed form so that when they receive a printed version of their Panraven story, they are not surprised or disappointed.

You also hit on another feature we plan to build out: out library of templates. We continue to add more to the selection, and we have plans to allow users to create their own.

I believe the truly powerful possibility with Panraven in the classroom is the ability for your classes to share their stories with classes from other places around the world. This is something that can't be done with a physical scrapbook.

I welcome your ongoing feedback. You clearly know your way around some of these web 2.0 products.

If you have any further questions or comments about our product, don't hesitate to contact me.

Andy Katz"

I decided to write back to him, this is what I said,

"Andy,

I was very surprised to see your response on my blog. I don't know how you found it considering it was pretty much designed for my class to see, but I also made it a public blog so I guess someone outside of the class was bound to find it. I think Panraven's issue is it's asking a web browser to do too much. I think Panraven could do so much more if the building of a story book was done from a freeware application and not through the web browser. This way people can just load images from their hard-drives, flash-disks, etc. without loading the images onto your servers thus eliminating the need to depend on a good internet connection(I'm in Alaska and internet can be on the fritz sometimes). Once the user has finished their story book, the file can then be sent to Panraven to be posted on the internet. This also will remove the issue of your servers crashing and losing peoples archive of photos and slideshows, though I think you guys would be smart enough to back everything up. I'm not an expert on these kinds of things, I just have used a lot of them. I just felt that mine and my classmates storybooks would have been better if the features I was so frustrated about not being there were there. Once again thanks for the response back but it still doesn't change my opinion at the moment, it reeks of BETA stage. It's good to know you guys cared about what I thought and I hope you can improve Panraven to make it something I'd want to use.

-Nik Karulkar"

Panraven storybook

Reflection

I do not like Panraven. I think it is really tacky and extremely non user friendly. I don't like that I can't resize the images or text boxes myself. If it is possible then it needs to be clearer. Not to over-toot my own horn, but I know my way around these types of things and if I am having trouble, I'm confident other people will. I think I have to use HTML to make the text bigger. Even though I can do that, I know many people can't. I would not recommend this to any teacher to use. I think having the kids make a story book with hard materials(i.e. with paper, pencil, coloring, etc.) is much more effective and worth their time. Yes, I can embed it in a blog, but honestly I could careless because, the product is so tacky in the end(no matter who makes it) that I wouldn't really care to share this. I think the backgrounds are weak and it takes to long to load things. Overall of all the things I was introduced this semester, the only thing I gained from this, is that Panraven is a waste of mine and my childrens time. I don't mean to be so hard on it but I refuse to say "I had fun" and "Panraven is awesome" when the truth is I think Panraven is garbage.

Slideshow

Checkout this slide show I made with Flickr. I like Flickr and I think it's a good tool but it isn't the only tool people could use. There are many other websites and programs available to make slideshows with besides Flickr. As I was making this slideshow I realized how a lot of senseless pictures could really tell a story. For example had I not taken a picture of Jordan mowing the lawn, or Mike using my MacBook camera I wouldn't be able to let the people I know in Alaska about who I am. I really enjoyed making this slideshow and I even though I tried to rush ahead I found myself constantly reworking it. But enjoy my slideshow, they all have picture of my family and life growing up.

Slideshow

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The importance of being a part of the whole class

My friends always tell me that my school is too easy. I think this school definitely has a unique composition of staff and students that does allow for more flexibility then other colleges but the commitment to the class is more prevalent in this school then any other. There are some classes in which a student can miss a fair share of lectures but still get by but then there are the courses in which students have to be ready to really buckle down and consider themselves a part of it. It doesn't mean their lives have to be the course but the student's presence and input only strengthens the course and it always seems like the bullseye in securing a good grade.