Reflection for Week 5 of Digital Graphics and Desktop Publishing

I have been a desktop publishing teacher for the past four years at Kleb Intermediate in the Klein Independent School District. So, when I saw this course as part of the curriculum for my masters I was really looking forward to the time when I would be taking this class. After reviewing each of the weeks I was anticipating on not having to work too hard in having to learn “new information”. Much of the material and assignments presented are what I teach to my students. We also study the basic elements of design, how to design a logo and creating a professional newsletter. I really did not gain any new knowledge on the actual creation of the assignments; however I did gain some fresh approaches in how I can change up some of my assignments so that they are more meaningful to my students. For example, the assignment for designing a logo, I felt the pre-planning part of the assignment was excellent for helping brainstorm ideas. I will definitely be implementing this in my curriculum for this year. I also like the fact that I could choose designing a newsletter that could be used in my personal or professional life. I had choice to create my newsletter for my class, my family, my parents/community or for professional development. I chose to create one for my extended family. Having that choice made it very meaningful for what was going on in my life at the time. This made me realize that I need to be extending this into my classroom for my students. When we work on our newsletters my students work in groups and have to produce school newsletter. I need to rethink this and possibly change what I am doing in allowing them more options. A learning experience that engages students in the study of their own community or culture creates a bond between students and families, generating a wealth of known information for students to read and write about, and to use in other content areas (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, n.d.).

What I gained about learning is that it is so important to collaborate with peers and stay current on professional readings. I enjoy reading the postings from my cohorts as I gain new insights and ideas from different perspectives. As I read through some of the postings I found myself saying “wow I never thought about it that way!” Teachers all too often stay in their own part of the world which offers them no opportunity to see how others may be tackling some of the same problems they are facing alone. The readings in Week 5 centered on using technology in meeting the needs of diverse learners. As a technology leader it is important to keep abreast of “the work of creditable scholars who synthesize a body of knowledge, summarize the evidence, and present it in an accessible format for practitioners” in order to present strategies to our teachers giving them the confidence that they are serving their students well ( Williamson & Redish, 2009). Whal & Duffield (2005) state the obvious – having a combination of students whose academic skill levels can range from several years below grade level to several years above is nothing new for a many K-12 teachers. I learned that the simplest technology tools such as word processing software has great features that support differentiation strategies. For instance, the font size can be changed or enlarged for the student who is having difficulty reading the standard text. Grammar check features can be adjusted for the level of the student. Students can use the highlighter feature to highlight the words they do not understand to later go back and work with the words. They can also highlight key words or main ideas. Text boxes can be created to add comments by the teacher or the student. A rally great feature that I did not know about is Gauging Readability. This is an option in the spelling checker. Teachers can use this to check the reading level of electronic text, as well as the level of students’ writing (Wahl & Duffield, 2005).

As a learner, I still struggle with how I will reach those teachers who refuse to embrace technology as a viable and “easy” approach to engaging today’s 21^st century learners. As a teacher, I understand the statements such as “I don’t have the support or I don’t have the time to figure out how to do all this technology stuff”. I also struggle with seeing the need of effective technology leadership on the campuses. Our campus has teachers that are technology leaders for each grade level in each content area. They are regular classroom teachers that receive a stipend to go to meetings and come back to share with their team. When I speak with them they shake their head and tell me that the meetings they go to really do not help them help their teachers. I would be interested in doing some research to find campuses that are successfully implementing technology-supported instruction.

References

Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. (n.d.) Meeting the needs of diverse learners. Retrieved from http://www.netc.org/earlyconnections/pub/sec3.pdf

Williamson, J., &. Redish, T. (2009). ISTE's Technology facilitation and leadership standards: What every K-12 leader should know and be able to do. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Wahl, L., & Duffield, J. (2005). Using flexible technology to meet the needs of diverse learners. Retrieved from http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/kn-05-01.pdf

Animation for Learning

Below is the animated GIF created in Photoshop CS4. I first experimented with the software Stykz out of curiosity and to have some hands on with a different type of animation software. I enjoyed learning another way of animating, however I felt this was not challenging enough for me. As a Desktop Publishing teacher part of my curriculum is teaching animation. The curriculum does not allow time to spend on animation so the lesson is using a stick man to create movement. The students really enjoy doing this lesson. I wanted to challenge myself to work with more sophisticated graphics so I chose to use Photoshop.

I began with the image of the the turtle on the raft that I had gotten from Microsoft Office Clip Art. I also found the background trees using two different pieces of clip art from Microsoft Office. I used Photoshop to combine the three images creating the land, sky and water. I separated the turtle into pieces placing those pieces in individual layers in order to be able to have the turtle drop his paddle and fall off the raft. In all, there are a total of 29 frames that make up this animation. It took about four hours to complete, which included the artwork as well as building each frame.

Analyzing Basic Design Principles in Ancient Manuscripts

I looked through quite a few of the manuscripts in the British Library Online Gallery before coming upon this particular page from the Lisbon Bible. I was mesmerized by its detail and use of color. It gave me a feeling of peace and balance. I lingered for a long time studying the detail of this page. The intricacy of the floral borders and the use of the gold in writing the script imply the value and importance of this bible to the Jewish culture. The use of contrast of the dense floral border with the light and airy border that encompasses the text adds a great deal of interest. The dense border grabs the attention then leads the eye on in to the inner manuscript. The use of contrast of the pink filled frame that holds the gold scripts really brings the eye in to perhaps may be the title of the particular page. There is excellent use of repetition that creates unity within the page. The golden-yellow flowers within the floral border harmonize with the gold embellished script. Also there is repetition of blue throughout the page beginning with the outermost border, in the smaller flowers, and then again in the inner borders. Another use of repetition is the pink fill in the title frame repeated from the pink flowers within the outer dense border. Alignment is used to create symmetry and balance within the page. The gold script that creates a border is perfectly aligned within the blue border. The beginning and end of the horizontal part of the border script is aligned with the vertical script to create an aligned corner which repeats the corners of the blue border that it is within. The proximity of the border script implies relationship to the main script within the innermost frames.

Source:
The British Library Board. (n.d.). The Lisbon Bible [Photograph], Retrieved November 18, 2010, from: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/lisbon/accessible/pages3and4.html#content

Reflection on PSA Post-Production

Melba Morales was very instrumental in getting our group together during the first week of this course. She and I worked closely together during the first two weeks helping each other on our projects. We shared our scripts for the purpose of getting constructive feedback. Salvador Huerta begin and Lawrence Anderson joined the group quickly and by the end of Week 2 we were already brainstorming ideas for our PSA on the Google Site that Salvador had created. He posted the template for the project proposal and the shot list and we all began filling in information. We also used Google docs to place files for each other to have access.

I am a planner by nature, so I took it upon myself to initiated Skype meetings, initially to get to know each other on a more personal basis, then to have contact once a week much like our web conferences. W also communicated by email and if needed met up again on Skype during midweek. I feel each team member worked hard to equally share in the work load. Salvador did the video capture and some still shots, I initiated communication, provide still photography, and recorded voice over with Melba. Melba and I used Audacity and sent the files to Lawrence who put it all together using the video editing software on his Mac. Credits and reference citations along with the Creative Commons link were placed at the end of the video. Lawrence then output the PSA to a .mov file. He expressed that it was a bit of a challenge uploading to YouTube. We are pleased with the video, but given more time I think we could refine it even more by deleting one section of the voice over and syncing the voice over more accurately with the clips.

Our Collaborative site is located at https://sites.google.com/site/edldprojectpsa/


CPR - The Act That Saves A Life




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Week 5: It's a Wrap!

Our group worked so well together that we had a good part of our project at its final stage toward the end of week four. This week we had no changes to our script or shot list. It was more about fine tuning our video and adding the credits, references and Creative Commons licensing. During our meeting at the end of week four we discussed what we needed to accomplish for week five. We were in danger of having more than sixty seconds and all agreed that it was imperative that it remain below that time limit. We also discussed what tags we would attach to the video. Lawrence uploaded the video to YouTube on Saturday and sent us a notice via gmail. After viewing the video I found that the credits were wrong and the Creative Commons logo was not at the end of the video where it should be. I emailed everyone and got on Skype to discuss what changes we needed to make. Salvador and Melba were able to attend and Lawrence communicated with us via gmail through his iPhone. Lawrence expressed how he had some issues with the way YouTube was uploading the movie file. In the end the changes were made and our PSA was successfully uploaded to YouTube. The past few weeks demonstrated successful collaboration and production of what I think is a great PSA for amateurs. I feel through this experience I have learned how smoothly a collaborative effort can be achieved. This is something I can take with me in helping students work collaboratively in the classroom as well as working with teachers.

Week 4: PSA Production Group Work

Our team has done remarkably well in collaborating and getting many things done. We feel like we are in a very good place and will have no problem meeting the deadline. This week I worked on revising our script to trim down the message for the sake of time. I performed a search for the sound of a beating heart and uploaded it to our wiki /Google site. I also took some photos around my school for the shot list and uploaded those. Lawrence and I met earlier this week on Skype to discuss the revised script for editing footage. Our group met again Sunday on Skype where we revised our shot list based on the revised script and Lawrence’s editing this week. We ended up deleting some of the video shots that were not necessary. We found that we could still have impact and our message was still very clear. Melba and I recorded the script for narration using Audacity and sent it to Lawrence. Salvador worked with getting the embedded html for placing Creative Commons licensing information. We plan to meet again on Thursday at 7:00 to view the video and see if we need to make anymore changes and for posting our video.

Our Collaborative site is located at https://sites.google.com/site/edldprojectpsa/

Web Conference: September 19th

The web conference I attended yesterday was helpful in clarifying our next steps for producing our group's Public Service Announcement. The question that kept coming up during the hours was centered on having to have at least two narrators in our PSA. I did not attend the last web conference on Friday evening; however I read through the script and was surprised when I learned that we were to have more than one narrator. I had already produced the narration for our video. I immediately emailed our group and informed them of this new insight. We met at our scheduled Skype conference and came up with a solution. Melba would record the same script making sure each statement was on a separate track and Lawrence, our editor, would use his best judgment and decide who would do the opening and closing and who would do the mid part of the narration. Sounded like a great solution. Throughout the rest of the conference I learned that we also needed credits, those involved in making of the PSA, and APA formatted references all at the end of the video. This could pose to be a problem with our 60 second time limit. I made the comment that I have seen movie credits roll by so fast that it was a blur. As long as they were on there that is what matters. I liked Sherrie’s comment “piece of cake... i can roll citations as fast as anyone”.

Week 3: Producing a Public Service Announcement

Our group began forming when Melba Morales posted on the discussion board for parties interested in establishing a group with her. I replied, then soon after Salvador and Lawrence joined. The next event that happened in our group was Salvador establishing the wiki for collaborating on our project. This was a huge step for our beginning! There we were able to brainstorm ideas and volunteer for parts in the production of our PSA. Also, Salvador jumped right in and shot the video. This caused much concern for me as the video was one long take. I posted on the wiki that after completing the week's readings that I was concerned about not having the suggested different types of camera shots. In reference to "Guidelines for Shooting Quality Videos" (part 5) it is suggested to use many short clips of five to ten seconds in duration to be more effective and bring variety to the audience. I suggested that parts of Sal's video could be clipped so that it is in segments. I also suggested that we shoot some more takes such as close up view of just hands on chest using live models demonstrating the pumping action - about 3 to 6 seconds worth. Then another close up of the AED, about 3 seconds worth.

My thought was to also change our focus from CPR training, which would really require longer footage, to the promotion of faculty and staff attending CPR training. I know at my school not too many are trained and each year our nurse offers the session without much attendance. A script suddenly came to me in the shower that morning getting ready for work. I have my best ideas in the shower! I always keep a pen and paper in my dressing area so that when I come out of the shower I can quickly write down my ideas. I posted the script on the wiki and notified my team members by email to take a look and give feedback.
I spent some time looking at other PSAs on CPR and the better ones did not have a lot of script. "Less is more" is what I am always telling my desktop publishing students. I found a good example of a video that uses lots of short takes and different angles and posted it on the wiki on the Video Collection link that Sal had made.

I got an overwhelming response from the team and we were off and running. Salvador, Lawrence and I met that Saturday on Skype. We came up with the outline and the shot list. We discussed photos that we could shoot to add to the video and also narration as well as text slides. It was a very productive meeting with everyone knowing exactly what to do to accomplish our goals.

Week 2: Tutorial on Adobe Premiere Elements

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Evaluating Video Editing Software

After reviewing both Premiere Elements and Windows Live Movie Maker, and using a fee video clip to experiment using the programs, I chose to use Premier to edit the video clip. I really thought I would choose Movie Maker because it is a very basic program for novice users. I believed it would be easier to use even though I am familiar with Adobe products. (I have used Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, previously PageMaker, since the early 90s.) I found the opposite to be true for me. I suppose because I am familiar with Adobe's interface it made it easier, although I still found it a challenge to figure out. I watched YouTube tutorials on both. The Adobe Premiere Elements tutorial video and Microsoft Live Movie Maker tutorial on YouTube were both excellent videos for getting started with the basic features. The main feature I found that made me lean towards Premiere Elements was the fact that it was more versatile. In my title frame I wanted to change the color of only part of the text. In Movie Maker it changed the entire text on that frame. I also wanted part of the text larger. When I selected only the part I wanted to increase in size it changed all of the text. It gave me little control over text attributes - that would not do at all! Also, I could not get Movie Maker to show the separate clips of my video; it appeared that the entire video segment was one clip. When I imported the video into Premiere the timeline showed where the clips ended and another began in order to edit for special effects and transitions. “When you’re trimming frames from a clip, the monitor window displays both the clip that you’re editing and the clip directly before or after. This allows you to more easily create frame-accurate edits and see exactly how two clips will look together.” The last big difference between the two are the number of formats the software was capable of exporting. Premiere is able to export in a number of file formats – Adobe Flash, MPEG, AVI WMV, QuickTime, Image files and Audio files. However, Movie Maker only allowed the choice of WMV (Windows Media Video). Both also allowed to share online directly to YouTube, whereas only Movie Maker allowed you to also share on Facebook. Premiere was the right choice for me to be able to have more control and ease of use as well as a professional package that would enable me to do more complex editing. If I were to choose for using in the classroom it would have to be Movie Maker as this is what is loaded on our computers in my district.

Reference:
Siegchrist, G. (n.d.). Video editing software review – adobe premiere elements 3.0. About.com Guide. Retrieved from http://desktopvideo.about.com/od/desktopediting/fr/adbelements.htm

Week 1: Multimedia and Video Technology

I was very excited about taking this course for the reason that this is the type of work I love to do. I could spend hours playing in Photoshop and editing. I teach Desktop Publishing so this is the type of work that is near and dear to my heart. Before teaching I worked for a video editing company. I worked with still graphics that were to be imported into video. I learned many things in that position.
This week our assignment was to create a personal digital story using digital photos and editing software. I enjoyed the assignment from the beginning to the end. My story was difficult but therapeutic. I enjoyed going through the pictures finding just the ones that I had in my mind for the script. I have never thought of myself as a writer, however I found writing for the video enjoyable. The most difficult task was trying to stay within the small time frame of two to three minutes. As you can see I did not meet that challenge. I worked hours trying tweaking and cutting from the story. Then I got to a point where I thought I could do no more for fear of losing impact. I must admit it is with great trepidation that I post something so intimate and personal on the internet. I spent days trying to come up with something else but this story continued to flood my mind. So here it is posted. The making of the video has been a pleasurable experience and I am looking forward to working with my group in producing a PSA.

Personal Digital Story

Internship Web Conference - July 23

I am now in my fifth class and beginning to feel overwhelmed - not from the coursework, but from many directives. There seems to be too much information coming in from too many sources and some of it is conflicting. Other students seem to have the same problem. There is still the issue of when our assignments or due in 5301 Research class, Friday or Sunday. Instructional Associates are telling us Sunday, Dr. Abernathy says Friday with a two day grace period. I believe the confusion lies in that this class is mostly geared toward the EL students. Requirements change and are added in. So, thus the blog. I am blogging about the web conference I participated in at 4:00. I didn't gain any new information concerning the internship, only that we need to blog about our web conference for giving feedback. I am still unsure if we blog about each one we attend or only if we are asked to at each conference. I am going to try and attend tomorrow's conference to see if I get any other information.

Integrating Online Learning in the K-12 Classroom

What benefits do you see in educators knowing how to design and implement online learning?
From the standpoint of a leader the main benefit I see in educators knowing how to design and implement online learning is increase in student performance. As leaders we are focused on campus improvement. One of the areas we need to focus on is how we can use technology to bring our teaching into the 21st century. If educators want to have relevance in this century, it is crucial that we find ways to engage students in school (Prensky, 2005). I believe incorporating online learning inside the walls of our schools we will have more opportunities to meet the many diverse needs and learning styles of our “digital natives”. If online learning is designed correctly, especially using the backward design approach, it will provide clear goals, directions, and learning plans. Tasks will be more authentic, learner-centered, and students will be more engaged. According to a 2004 study in the British Journal of Educational Technology by Dr. Namin Shin and Jason K.Y. Chan, the main factors in a successful online learning experience are: student achievement, satisfaction and persistence.

Prensky, M. (2005). Listen to the natives. Educational Leadership. 63(4), 8-13. Retrieved from http://www.siprep.org/prodev/documents/Prensky.pdf

Shim, N. & Chan, J. (2004). Direct and indirect effects of online learning on distance education. British Journal of Educational Technology. 35(3), 275-288. Retrieved from [PDF] Direct and indirect effects of online learning on distance education


How will you professionally use your course that you designed?
The course that I designed is actually a redesign of a unit I have been teaching for several years. I redesigned it just this year into a web quest. For the purpose of this course I took it once again and redesigned it using Wiggins; and McTighe’s backward design. I learned from my study in Understanding by Design that I had not established clear goals in certain areas of the project. Using the template made it much easier to clearly establish the learning outcomes. I was able to throw out some of the project that really did not add function to their learning. I plan on continuing to refine this project and use it with my students next year using Schoology. I agree with the authors of Understanding by Design that backward design can yield “greater coherence among desired results, key performances, and teaching and learning experiences, resulting in better student performance – the purpose of design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2006).

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.


Will you integrate online learning in your role as a teacher/staff developer?
I have enjoyed facilitating my Desktop Publishing class the past three years utilizing my website as an online communication tool for my students. Seventy-five percent of what I do with my students is given to them via my teacher website. Having been introduced and being able to experience Schoology has shown me how I can take my “online teaching and learning” to a whole new level. For instance, I have students each year missing two and three weeks of school traveling abroad for religious holiday. Although they could “keep up” with what we were doing in class they were still very much isolated. I see integrating this online course in my classroom as a great benefit for this instance alone. My students will be able to keep in touch with me and still be able to collaborate with their peers. They will be able to turn in assignments, watch videos, and ask questions. I will definitely continue to explore and master this new tool to be able to seamlessly integrate it in my classroom.


What questions do you still have about online learning?
It has been determined that there are many advantages to online learning, however there are some disadvantages that could hinder the success of learning for some students. In face-to-face interaction students rely on verbal and visual cues for understanding. Some students are not independent learners and need frequent feedback to feel confident in what they are doing. Online learning requires students to have the ability to pay attention to detail. It takes a very mature, self-motivated and disciplined student to succeed in online learning. Also, what about the students that lacks organizational skills and discipline to managed their time in order to keep up with the pace of the course? What about the students that do not have the technical experience to be able to comfortably confront any technical issues? And last, what about those students who do not have the access to technology at home? Research shows that dropout rates for online courses and programs may be 10 to 20 percent higher than for in-classroom courses and programs because students lack time, management oversight, motivation, support, or because their individual learning style is not congruent with online delivery strategy (Digital Bridges, 2005). How do we address the needs of these 10 to 20 percent or even possible even a higher percentage for our younger students?

Digital Bridges. (2005). K-12 online instructions for teaching and learning: what does research tell us about online education. Northwest Regional Educational Library. Retrieved from http://www.netc.org/digitalbridges/online/essentials/research.php


What benefits do you see in educators knowing how to design and implement online learning?
At this present time I will use online learning in my classroom as a supplement to my existing program. I plan on using the course I have already developed in Schoology after some more revising. I also plan to use it at the very start of the academic year. Each year my students walk into my Desktop Publishing class with excitement and anticipation about working with state of the art computers. They are quickly disappointed when they realize they can not immediately jump right on the computers and start “playing”. The curriculum starts off with the history of desktop publishing the studying hardware and software. I would like to redesign this part of my curriculum using the backwards design and use the online learning management system. I am excited at the prospect of turning the beginning of our year into a learning experience that my students have never encountered before.

S Ta R Chart Blog Presentation

S Ta R Chart Blog Presentation

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The Weak Link

The Educator Preparation and Development area of the Texas Long Range Plan basically states that in order to successfully equip students for the 21st Century teachers need to be current with the knowledge and skills and strategies integrating technology into the teaching and learning taking place in their classrooms. As teachers, to meet this goal, we are dependent on the leadership as well as the infrastructure. I believe if teachers are aware of the “vision”, have effective training and support, and time during professional development to work on applying what was learned we will meet this goal. However, on the two campuses where I have worked I have failed to see the majority of the teachers able to seamlessly integrate technology into the learning process. Why is this? On my current campus the data shows a drop from 18 points (07/08) to 14 points (08/09) in the area of Educator Preparation and Development. The drop in 4 points was specifically due to four out of the six focus areas dropping from a score of 3 (Advanced Tech) down to 2 (Developing Tech). These four focus areas are in Content of Professional Development, Models of Professional Development, and Capabilities of Educators and Level of Understanding patterns of Use. The other two focus areas stayed the same. I am curious as to why this has happened – what does it mean? Is it because teachers in 08/09 received less professional development and support than in 07/08? Or maybe is it that they feel that they now possess a clearer understanding and vision of where they should be and see that the weakness is in lack of effective development? These are answers that I feel would be advantageous for campus and district leaders to pursue. It would seem that the best possible way to understand the drop in data would be to seek out feedback from the teachers, perhaps in some type of forum.

Entering Into the 21st Century

How exciting it is to experience another area of technology! This evening's participation in EDLD 5306 Concepts of Education Technology web conference was a first for me. It was a cumbersome yet exciting experience. At first I felt as if I were stumbling around in the dark. Some of us could be heard but not seen. My camera was on, but my video would not appear. We had a rough start with a lot of audio feedback as well as it going in and out. But, after a while it began to sound better with the help of several in our group. All in all I consider it a success. Anytime I can get my feet wet and come out with a better understanding is an accomplishment. It was also great to be able to associate names to faces. I am looking forward to our next conference.