Tuesday, February 21, 2012

EDLD 5366 Digital Graphics Week 5 Reflection

I was excited along with a little anxious about taking Digital Graphics.  As a library media specialist, I am secure using technology but also feel like I know a little about a lot of things.  I embrace technology but also felt insecure about producing finished graphic projects.  My anxious insecurity soon lessened and I relaxed and totally enjoyed the ability to produce graphics in this class.  I was able to use my creativity and explore my use of design principals. 

This course made me aware of design principles and how to use them to create products that are pleasing to the eye and informative.  I can’t say that I had a favorite project.  Each project challenged me and left me with a huge sense of accomplishment.  My self branding/personal logo will be one that I am going to use after this class on my business cards and webpage. I plan on using self branding and logo building with teachers during some tech training.  I hope the teachers will see the benefit and will see how important it is to work with students on self branding.  I am also to put animation into the student’s hands and see how they will choose to use it.  I can see it being used as a story board to show understanding in all subjects.  My daughter is taking physics and we discussed how this would be a great tool to use demonstrating Newton’s Laws of Motion.  This is a prime example of how students can be given a tool and visualizes ways to use that tool for educational purposes.  The webpage project was the most stressful for me.  The project was during a week that I had personal family issues going on.  I am a perfectionist and can also be a control freak.  The working in collaboration with people I had not met before made me tense.  We were able to work together and discussed things via email, phone and texting.  We also worked collaboratively on pages with each other using the Google webpages.  This was very good for me to work with others and create a project building on each others creativity while we were all using the CRAP design principles.  This project I believe gave my group a comradery that we will have throughout our coursework.  This will also influence how I get teachers and students to work collaboratively on projects in the future knowing that everyone can play a part and work on things at their own pace.  The most important thing in our group project was to have a theme and dedication to do our best.  Online collaboration is not only possible but is also taking place now and will allow many to work together on great things without ever being in the same room.  That concept totally amazes me with possibilities. 

All of the tools I learned in this class will be used to show teachers and students how to apply digital graphics to benefit student learning. I have determined that learning takes on many different forms and that an e-portfolio is a must for students as we are creating more digital projects.  E-portfolios will also allow students to continually re-evaluate their work in the process of being a lifelong learner.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

EDLD 5366 Graphic Design Week 4 Webpages

This project at first appeared overwhelming.  Although there were some frustrations and annoyances, I found this group project challenging.  There was a sense of accomplishment when finishing that was very uplifting.  https://sites.google.com/site/edld5366groupwebsite/home