In order to collect any data, I had to have participants, so I advertised at the Global Schoolhouse Network and at Teutopolis High School's home site. Then I emailed all of my fellow CTER students, all of my IVHS and THS colleagues, my IVHS students, my friends, and my family. Just about everyone I know received an email asking them to participate in my project.

The response was pretty meager, considering I advertised so broadly. I didn't hear anything through my GSN advertisement, and response from my friends and family didn't amount to much either. I did receive several poems and a few pictures, but essays were hard to come by.

After the first poem came in, I realized I needed more data from the participants. I initially only asked for their name and the name of the poem, essay, or picture's original artist in addition to the content of the contribution. But I decided that it would be nice to know the contributor's age and email address and the title of the work submitted too. This addition served my purpose well. By knowing the age of my participants, I can determine whether or not they have the right to decide to put their full name with their contribution. If they choose not to submit their age, then they automatically forfeit the right to have their last name included with their piece.

I saved all the email submissions...in case I need them for verification at a later time. I'm not sure that I'll need them, but if I delete them, I'll be sure to need them later.

After making the revisions of the process for collecting data, I took a closer look at my site. I looked at a few aspects:

• Was it visually appealing?
  • I added a nice soft color to the background to enhance the serene mood that I wanted to create, and rather than using black text, a harsh color to be sure, I used a dark green--the color of nature. Then I added small graphics, limiting them to one or two per page. I didn't want to overload the pages with graphics, but I thought that the few I incorporated promoted the mood of serenity. I also added music to the home page. I thought that it helped create the desired mood, but I didn't add it to all the pages, because I thought it would be distracting to those viewing or contributing pieces. Finally, I received a suggestion that I anchor the images that I used. Some of them were floating around in different places for Netscape users, so I fixed that!
• Was it easy to navigate and use?
  • I put navigational buttons at the top and links at the bottom of every page. In addition, I used links within the content of the home page and in the gallery pages to assist the particpants, which, I hope, really helped make the pages more user friendly. Also, I think the directions were easy to follow. The vocabulary was rudimentary so that I could reach even the youngest readers, and the content was concise--without a lot of fluff.
• Did it incorporate all the necessary and desired elements to make it successful?
  • I asked myself what elements this project needed, and I decided that I should use a text field for the narrative contributions and email attachments for the graphic contributions. Without these elements, the project might not be successful. How would people contribute their art? I needed to check the links and make sure that the submissions would go to the right place--my uiuc email account. I submitted several pretend poems, essays, and pictures to myself before assuming that the format would work. When I didn't get essay contributions, I took a closer look at that specific section of the project. I wonder if the word "essay" scared participants off. Maybe I should have written "Journal," "Notes," or "Narratives" instead. Or maybe I should have had separate sites for "Stories" and "Letters." Also, I wonder if I should have added a page for "Great Quotations." Would people have contributed more then?
• Was the technology required simple enough that a vast majority of computer users could participate in this project?
  • I have had some requests to accept audio and video contributions to include on the site. I am considering these requests seriously, but for now, I want to keep this site as user-friendly as possible to as many people as possible. I'm afraid that, at this point, too many people don't have the technology to support these types of media, and I don't want to discourage their participation. In the future, though, I think that it would be very beneficial to my site to include various media, including audio and video, in the Serenity Project.