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”.