MyEastern: This page is an assault on my eyes. Along with the slide show of Eastern’s photos, the multiple colored drop-down menus and the Announcements menu are enough to make me instinctively cover my eyes every time I open it. Once I regain my vision, certain things begin to stand out to me. First off, the Announcements section consists of news that have already happened, and the Events section is always blank. If they weren’t going to bother filling it in with information, why’d they put it there? The Self-Service menu is just that: it’s a ton of links with no real directions on what to do when I get to them. But, hey, that’s self-service; go on to the Student Accounts page, and help myself with planning my classes for next semester. Good luck knowing what to do when I get there. All of this is bad enough, but that’s not even my biggest problem with the myEastern portal. My biggest problem is that the web designers got rid of that cat. You know, the one you would click on in order to enter the myEastern portal. What happened to the kitty cat? I liked that kitty cat. That was the cutest thing, going into myEastern by clicking on this cute little cat. He had glasses on, and he was reading a book, and he was just so fuzzy…I miss him so much.
Brightspace: Controlled chaos, that is what Brightspace really is. Upon first glance everything seems fine, but once I begin to enter into its entanglement of drop-down courses, countless tabs that take me nowhere and infinitely long discussion threads, I regret all my life choices. Even a tab as simple as Content becomes a disaster zone when teachers go overboard on the number of boxes they have. Here we have two teachers: the really disorganized one who posts everything as several separate documents, and the teacher who is so organized they turn the sample for next week’s essay into the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. One last big problem I have with Brightspace is all the online readings. I can understand why teachers would choose to post an article online so everyone can have access to it, but I would prefer not to have to read more than 70 pages on my bright screen. This is just a personal preference, but the only times I like to stare at my computer screen for two hours are when I’m playing “Portal” or when I’m watching a DVD. I like to keep my reading in my hands bound between two pieces of brightly colored paper.
Eaglemail: This is the BIG one, literally. I have over 500 emails in my inbox, and I haven’t even been here a whole school year. Most of these emails are just spam. Whether it’s spam from Brightspace’s “Help Desk,” spam from the Office of the Provost with their weekly guilt trip about why I should go to chapel, spam from teachers who sent information about class via email and then posted it to Brightspace so I could have the privilege of seeing it twice in my inbox, spam from the Human Sexuality Task Force who feel it necessary to liven up my day by telling me about all the terrible things in the world that I’m not stopping, or even spam about campus news from people who desperately want to drill into my brain what events are happening this weekend on campus and how much money I should spend on them, it’s all SPAM! My inbox is chock-full of useless information and unnecessary GetDIBits I’ll never even open. At least every now and then I receive some very important emails in my inbox. For example I just received this one today that told me I should re-input all of my security information if I want to stay in school next year. Phew, thank goodness I opened that one, or I would have been a goner.
Two Days Later: SHOOT! That was a SCAM!