Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Advertisement


My partners in this project were Crystal and Rachel. We worked together to complete this assignment and collaborated via email. I enjoyed this project. I opted to use Microsoft Publisher to do the print ad because I just find Microsoft products much more user friendly, at least right now, than Adobe. I know it is mainly because I am just familiar with the Microsoft products because I use them daily. Adobe, not so much. Maybe in the future I will learn to use some of them better. That will be my goal!

Friday, April 3, 2009

Business Card


After spending HOURS downloading the InDesign program (oh how I wish for DSL service in ALL of Buna), reading through the instructions and trying to maneuver my way through the instructions, I opted to go to Word and create my business card. It took me just a little while and I made changes, played with background colors, etc. I am much more familiar and so much less frustratable when using Word. Although some of these things were new to me within Word, I still felt so much more inside my comfort zone than working with InDesign. I think it is probably an awesome program - IF you have time to learn how to manipulate it and get familiar with it before creating something. I think I 'freaked' myself out over this one because the last assignment seemed so difficult. This course is definitely expanding my mind! I sent the copy of my business card to my classmates and professor Friday night after posting my blog the first time without a picture of my project. After realizing that the Word document I was sending might not show the same fonts I used, I took a screen shot using Jing and uploaded it that way. Thanks for Jing! I sent this out again to all and was then able to put my business card here in my blog.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Systems Approach Model for Designing Instruction

http://www.gse.pku.edu.cn/jxsj/materials2/Dick%20&%20Carey.htm

The information found at this site was brief but descriptive as well. The key terms were a very good idea and will be a good reference tool to use while working on our project for Instructional Design. I also like the Elements of Dick & Carey as this looks to be a step-by-step process that can also be used to work on our project. All in all, this was short and to the point. The key terms and elements were most of the article as well as the highlights.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

A Brief History of Instructional Design

This article gives a 'time-line' of Instructional Design. The author states that the early contributors to ID were Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato. Then it was added to by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. The history then skips until the 1920's with a mention of Thorndyke. It appears that the military really took advantage of this information and used it to train soldiers during WWII. In the 1950's, Skinner emerged with his book the Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching talking about basic behaviorist principles. Next we move on to Benjamin Bloom and I think every teacher is very familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy. In the 60's, Robert Glaser introduced the concept of "instructional design" although his idea was more directly linked to individualized instruction. Also during this time several other ideas emerged, computer-assisted instruction and performance objectives. The 60's and 70's were remarkable in that an almost complete overhaul of the education system was needed. The 80's brought many different instructional models and with the 90's came even more technology accented models and ideas.

This is a good overview of the history of ID and how it has evolved into what it is or presumed to be today. It is brief but gives one a good idea of the evolution of this idea and concept.

Why ID? The Benefits of Instructional Design Models

I think that as teachers, we may understand Instructional Design better than some. We already follow a design (as mentioned in the article) for instruction by using our curriculum, goals, objectives, etc. in our lesson planning. In one of the textbooks I have used, there is the 5E model of instruction. This is a prime example of a model that can be followed and implemented in most every subject. I agree with the article that Instructional Design is not a step by step process necessarily. There are steps that must be repeated along the way sometimes and as teachers we often have to revisit certain objectives before our students master them. We also evaluate along the way, sometimes after each step. I agree with the article in the conclusion that ID models can aid individuals as well as teams when designing any type of instruction. The team/individual just needs to find a model that works well with the material they are teaching or using.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Logo.....


Ok. I think I accomplished at least 2 of the 3 mediums - web and print. Will revisit the video medium after posting. I created a logo for Casey's baseball team. Their team name is the Storm. The SJCLL stands for South Jasper County Little League which is the league here in Buna. The Storm is a pre-T-Ball team. I chose a lightning bolt because it reminds me of a storm and looked better than the tornado I also looked at. It is black because that is what their color is. I chose blue for the SJCLL because Buna's go-to color is 'Buna Blue' - we all have to bleed that around here...lol...I chose orange for the "Storm" because it was the opposite on the color wheel from blue. I did some twisting of the font in the word storm to make it look like a storm. Well, at least that was what I was going for anyway.

I feel that I probably did learn from this assignment although I will have to give my brain time to unwind from ALL the information I read and trying to put Photoshop CS4 instructions into my Photoshop Elements program. After HOURS of working on this (thank goodness I am on spring break and could devote the time), trying to download Photoshop CS4 (still downloading, by the way since about 6pm) I finally tried again with my program. I pulled out my Adobe for Dummies book I bought last summer to help with web design to find out more info. on layers which were giving me fits. FINALLY it all seemed to come together.

According to the rubric, I would give my self meets expectations on most everything and a few exceeds. Quite honestly, I am glad this is over. I really hope the rest of the assignments are not as difficult as this one has been for me.