Healthcare Still Strong; DreamAct Makes Big Leap Up

Note: Again, I must stress that these rankings do not mean anything -- yet. They simply show the work being done. To emphasize, all that will count in the end is the way your blog ends up.

RANK		Content (x 2)	Design	Editing	Organization	AVERAGE
►	Healthcare Renaissance	3.5	3.5	4.0	4.0	▲3.7
▲	Dream Act	4.0	3.5	3.0	4.0	▲3.7
►	Unemployment Work Group	3.0	2.0	3.5	4.0	▲3.1
►	Taxes-R-Us	3.0	3.0	2.0	4.0	▲3.0
▲	Media Party	3.0	3.0	3.0	2.0	▲2.8
▼	Loan on Me	2.0	3.0	3.0	1.0	▼2.2

Healthcare: Excellent tagging. Although I have never cared for the “brownness” of this blog, I must admit that, with the search engine, blog archive, and label list, this is a very clean, lean layout. Very readable. I am concerned, though, that his group has 4 members and only 1 of you has posted a long essay to date.

DreamAct: Excellent work at clean up and tagging. Note, though, that a few entries are still not consistent with the rest. Impressive that you have three longer essays posted. Editing improved but still needs more work.

Unemployment: It is disappointing that there are no new posts this week, although after review, I did realize that the sidebar had been updated. This is a design/editing “flaw”: you should date these manually so that it is apparent that the blog has been updated. Also in design, the font that you have chosen, which is now at least consistent, is too small to be comfortably readable.

Taxes: Excellent work on organization. However, even though your posts have a tendency to be thorough, the lack of more regular updates is starting to affect your content rating. I still find the design problematic because the right sidebar is essentially unreadable. And an embedded search bar, instead of the generic one at the top, would be a plus in design. And there is still some inconsistency in post formats.

Media: Good work on updating the blog this week, although there is still not a single long essay posted here. Design is better, and still visually appealing, but also still difficult to navigate. Good work on tagging.

Loan: Your blog seems to have stopped growing. And as far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a single longer essay posted yet. There is no tagging/labeling, as far as I can tell, which really hit you this week in your ranking. Your design remains fun, but it is still rather difficult to navigate.

New Blog Rankings: Heathcare Renaissance Continues to Dominate; Big Jump for Taxes-R-Us

An explanation of the revised rankings and averages

"Rank" refers to your blog's standing, statistically, in relationship to the other blogs in the class. The "rank" is based on the "Average" which combines the four areas for rating, as indicated in the chart. You point value increases from the previous week's rating if you continue to add content and you address my comments from the previous week. You lose points in your rating if your content is not sufficiently growing or you fail to address my comments from the previous week.

The arrows in "Rank" and "Average" indicate movement from the previous week.

Note: Again, I must stress that these rankings do not mean anything -- yet. They simply show the work being done. To emphasize, all that will count in the end is the way your blog ends up.

RANK		Content (x 2)	Design	Editing	Organization	AVERAGE
►	Healthcare Renaissance	4.0	3.0	3.5	4.0	►3.2
▲	Taxes-R-Us	3.0	3.5	2.0	4.0	▼2.9
▼	Unemployment Work Group	4.0	2.0	3.5	3.0	▼2.8
►	Dream Act	4.0	3.0	2.0	2.0	►2.8
▼	Loan on Me	2.0	3.0	3.0	3.5	▼2.3
►	Media Party	1.0	3.0	3.0	1.0	►1.4

Healthcare Renaissance: Continued good content growth. Tagging is good but needs to be expanded. Also, you need to start on a bibliography.

Taxes-R-Us: Acceptable content growth. Excellent work on tagging, although "Archive" and "Tags" are still not really readable in the design, as is.

Unemployment Work Group: Still good, steady growth in content. However, fonts still keep changing per post; no tags have been added; no search box available. Also a suggestion: add "Newer Posts" -- "Older Posts" navigation function at the bottom of the page.


Dream Act: Acceptable content growth. Good start with the addition of a search box and tagging. Follow through on tagging with older posts. Also, really like the "Recent comments" section at the bottom.

Loan on Me: No updates for the week. And no revisions or editing as far as I can tell.

Media Party:  Update for the week is not sufficient. Given this topic, there should be far more posts. Am I not understanding something about the way to use this site?

Blog Rankings

	Content (x 2)	Design	Editing	Organization	RANK
Loan on Me	4	3-1/2	3	3-1/2	3.2
Healthcare Renaissance	3-1/2	3	3-1/2	4	3
Unemployment Work Group	4	3	3	3	3
Dream Act	4	3	3	2	2.8
Taxes-R-Us	3	2	3	3	2.4
Media Party	2	3	3	1	1.8

Loan on Me: lots of minor grammatical and punctuation errors scattered throughout. Design and organization a bit busy for my tastes; and I don’t really get the horizontal, seemingly hierarchical arrangement.

Healthcare Renaissance: “medicinal field”? Particularly good tagging. Easy to navigate.

Dream Act: Very busy design with elements all over the place, although graphics are well incorporated in posts. However, fonts and styles keep changing in posts. No tagging. “bi-partition”

Taxes-R-Us: Not a lot of posting, but posts are very detailed. Post archive and emphasis (?) in posts unreadable. No tagging or search.

Media Party: Content only reaching minimum, although spot on.No archive, no tagging, no way to navigate except scrolling down. No search capabilities.

Unemployment Work Group: Good content, and steady content growth. Fonts keep changing in posts. No tagging, no search capability. Minor grammatical and punctuation errors scattered throughout.

Note: These grades are ultimately meaningless, as all the will count is the way the project ends up. However, this is a good way to judge what you need to do.