Reflections on Creating a Newsletter (EDLD 5366)

Creating the newsletter for the course took quite a bit of planning. I had previously been a contributor to newsletters but had never been responsible for the entire document. Deciding on a topic for the newsletter was the first hurdle, the second being what articles to include, followed by the design. After I picked several topics for the articles and wrote some drafts I printed what I had and took it to school. I asked several of the other teachers to look at what I had already done and tell me how it looked; was the format appropriate for the intended audience, was the spacing easy to read, what articles were good for the newsletter. I also asked other members of the faculty for input on what articles or announcements they thought should be included in the newsletter.
One thing I learned new in this course was the Consistency, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity principles. Proximity, consistency and alignment were not new to me, but I never taught them as a complete set of principles to the students in my Technology Applications classes. Using the CRAP principles in my newsletter made me stop and look at the design in a critical way. I had to look at each page, looking for repetition, alignment, and consistency, fix anything that looked like it needed formatting, and then look again for the design principles.
I have known for quite some time that I am a visual learner first and an auditory learner second. In creating this newsletter, I struggled with what I consider to be one of my personal problems. I would think OK, I am done, would print it, then see something that could be rearranged, reformatted, edited for better sentence structure, etc. I finally had to say, “DONE! I am not making any more changes.” I was pleased with the final copy of my newsletter. I am not a writer and would not want to have to produce one on a regular basis.

Week 3: Creation of Animations for EDLD 5366

The following animation is one that I did in Flash, recreating the logo from the week 2 assignment.


This is the Stykz animation I made for an assignment during week three of the Digital Animation class.

The 4 Principles of Design -- EDLD 5366 ET8021

First impressions are important, even if we don’t want them to be. My first impression of these ancient manuscripts is they are extremely ornate. Color is used extensively and most of the colors are bright colors. I will focus on the Bible from Ethiopia to illustrate the four principles of design. The first C – Contrast: The bright colors on the pages of the book create one contrast. Another example of contrast is the different stripes on the pages of the canon tables. The canon tables themselves are an example of R – Repetition. Each page has a table with a similar design. The symbols drawn on the pages with text are also an example of repetition. A – Alignment: The pages with text have columns that have justified alignment; the pages that are illustrations all have the same amount of margin. Last, the illustrations all have elements in them that show P – Proximity. All of the pictures that have multiple parts to the story have the characters of each part close together. The parts of the page are obvious yet they create a cohesive page.

All of the parts of the books that are shown on the British Library virtual books pages have a common thread. To show importance on the pages the artists used color. Royal colors show titles and headings, reds, blues and golds. In the Bible from Ethiopia, the symbols on the pages with text are all reds and golds and they are numerous on the pages, indicating importance.

When I looked at the books, the beautiful drawings made me want to keep turning the pages, to see what would be on the next page. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t read them without help, they were worth looking at.

To view the ancient manuscripts used in this assignment visit the following website: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/virtualbooks.

My Public Service Announcement

Here is the video of the PSA Chris West and I worked on together.
The Dangers of Texting and Driving

Week 5 Post Production Comments

Work on our PSA has been intermittent. We came up with the idea of cell phone use in school zones. The shots for this idea seemed simple. So it was time to work on a script. We researched and found the Texas law, HB 55, that established a law restricting cell phone use in school zones. Then we thought we could add information about the number of accidents in school zones involving cell phones. As we looked at the data on the TXDOT website we ended up changing the focus of our PSA to the dangers of texting while driving. We used the data to write the script. Much of the footage that had already been taken was usable for the changed script. We had to go back and take a little more footage of someone texting. We chose to use teenage students for the talent since these are the persons that have the most wrecks.
I like the data that is reported in the narration of the video but I think the video could be a little more attention grabbing although it gets the point across. We used the following articles and websites for the information in the script.
1.http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=18043
2.http://www.textndrive.com/wordpress/2010/09/plano-police-enforcing-texting-ban-in-school-zone/
3.http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/51/5/762.full.pdf/keytype=ref&siteid=sphfs&ijkey=gRQOLrGlYnBfc

Week Three EDLD 5363

This week has been interesting. We are to join with 2 or 3 other people in the class for the last three weeks of the class. This week we had to get our groups together and agree on a subject for our Public Service Announcement(PSA). We finally agreed on the cellphone ban in school zones. Once we decided on the subject coming up with shots was easy. Now in the next two weeks we will have to finalize the shots and the narration for the PSA. OH, we will also have to shoot and edit the video. We are going to use a wiki to keep in touch. The other members of our group are Ashley Dietz, Christopher West, and Stephen Rektenwald.

Web Conference Participation Week 2

I did not find the time to participate in one of the web conferences this week. BUT, the IA sent a link to a saved conference, so I watched/read the conference at a later time. It was very interesting. This was the first time I had "participated" in a web conference after the fact. When the conference first showed up on the screen, I started reading the posts and then tried to scroll down and read more, but the screen kept jumping back up. I finally realized that this was like real time. I had to read the questions and answers the same as if I had participated live.

Many of the questions that I had, and some I didn't know I needed to ask, were covered in this session. I was a bit confused about audio/video and where to post the podcast but those questions were asked and answered. I felt much better after sitting through the conference.