The course began with a lesson in basic design principles. While these were familiar to me and normally incorporated into the lessons I teach to my Journalism students, they were a good reminder and provided good concrete examples I could use with my students. According to Yearwood (2009), “Repetition means using the same element or attribute in more than one place in the design.” Alignment is defined as, “the attribute of arranging every element in a design to conform to some kind of horizontal and vertical visual relationship with other elements in the design.” Looking over the examples provided of repetition and alignment provided useful tools to share with my students as they develop the school yearbook and need to create multiple layouts incorporating alignment and repetition to ensure consistency throughout the yearbook.
We designed a personal logo. This was an interesting challenge as there are so many different elements in my teaching career: an English as a Second Language department chair, a technology teacher, a music teacher, and a language arts teacher. Using the concepts of repetition and contrast I designed my personal logo as three rivers running between the letters of my name in various shades of blue and converging in the distance as my professional responsibilities do. One of the most interesting parts of the assignment was gathering input from friends, family members and acquaintances to see what words emerged to describe me. The activity came from the LeaLea blog that was one of the assigned readings. While understanding the nature of graphic design, I had not previously considered the personal aspect that should be incorporated into a logo to make it meaningful.
The third week had us move into animation, a skill I had never attempted before. It was surprisingly easy to create an animation using Stykz. This skill will be useful to incorporate as I move into teaching webmastering in the next semester. My students will enjoy learning to use the basic animation tools and will likely go far beyond the sample I created for my project. Our readings on Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy gave a new outlook to the traditional taxonomy view and a framework for allowing us to more readily determine cognitive levels for the projects we use with students.
The newsletter assignment was a simple assignment for me as I have been producing newsletters for various organizations for a number of years. Creating a digital newsletter using the design principles from the first week’s assignment allowed me to more readily produce a finished product for a local non-profit organization.
Each of the assignments in this course expanded on my previous knowledge and offered pieces that I can readily incorporate in my personal work as well as in the classes with my students. The discussion board and conversations helped me see things from other perspectives and expand my personal thinking. Because I learn best by using technology, the assignments worked well with my personal learning style and illustrated the importance of using the same type of approaches with my students, allowing them time to experiment with technologies and assignments to learn what works best for them. I would like to do further investigation into digital animation as I believe this will capture not only my own interest, but also that of my students. Animation offers possibilities for many subject areas and does not need to be complicated to illustrate key learning points.
Yearwood, J., (2009). Basic Design Principles. Retrieved from https://lamar.epiclms.net/Learn/Player.aspx?enrollmentid=1578712
Alcantra, L. (2005-2010). The Art of Self-Branding Part One. Weblog post retrieved from http://www.lealea.net/blog/comments/the-art-of-self-branding-part-one
Churches, A. (2008). Bloom’s Taxonomy Blooms Digitally. From Tech & Learning. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/article/8670
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