Journal 9

Here we are... the final journal entry. I really cannot believe this day is here and my time in the program is over. I have learned so much this past year and a half, and I am excited to see how I can put my degree to use in the coming years.

On My Work...
My client is thrilled with her website, so if my client is happy, I am happy! I am proud of the elements of design in my project. For someone who used to think Comic Sans was an acceptable font, I have come a long way in my design abilities. From my research and readings, I feel I have a greater understanding of design.

On What I Have Learned...
Even though I did not stick with Dreamweaver for the project, I still feel I learned a good deal about the software this semester. I now feel able to create a basic website, and I have a much deeper understanding for file management and HTML. This will definitely come in handy in the future. I have an LSTC job prospect for next year, and one of the things the TST specifically mentioned was the ability to create a school website. I also enjoyed learning WordPress; it's relatively simple but produces a well-designed product.

On Where I'm Going...
Your guess is as good as mine! Like I mentioned, there's a possibility I may be able to find an LSTC position for next year. If not, I'll stay where I am, as I'm REALLY enjoying teaching K-5 students technology-integrated projects. I have Higher Ed in my sights (doing a project with Gretchen Thomas' EDIT 2000 students next semester) and also keeping an eye on the business world. Who knows where I'll take my new-found experiences and qualification.

As I close my final Studio reflection post, I want to truly thank you, Dr. Kopcha, as well at Dr. Clinton, Dr. Reiber, and the rest of the IDD faculty for a great experience this past year and a half. I will keep in touch!!

Journal 8

Wow... I can't believe we're already at the next-to-last journal posting. This semester has really flown by!

I am still at the same point with my project: pretty much done with some minor modifications necessary by next week. My client is really excited about her site (She said, "I feel like a legitimate photographer now!"), and I am pleased with how it has turned out. I think it looks professional, serves its purpose, and has some good design elements!

I've really had to push myself with design this semester. I do NOT have an eye for design, so it is something I've had to pay close attention to. The Krause book, Pinterest, and Google searches have all served as good resources for design.

At the dress rehearsal, I had a good response to my project. The people who stopped by had the same suggestions for me as the changes I had already intended to make. I also realized while showing off the site that one of my plug-ins was not functioning as intended, so I have to take some time to figure out what it going wrong. Love those technical difficulties!

As far as my service hours go:
2 hours- Setting up for and carrying out my first Technology/Yearbook Club meeting. This was the "Orientation" meeting, so we made some decisions about the yearbook, brainstormed page ideas, and looked at the yearbook interface.
3 hours- Photographing the Outdoor Classroom Cleanup day with students! My Technology/Yearbook Club students joined me, so I taught them how to use the digital camera, talked some quick photography tips (taking a mix of candid shots and posed, varieties of angles, etc.), and monitored their picture-taking. They had a blast, and you should see some of the goofy self-portraits that ended up on my SD card!
1 hour- Had our second Technology/Yearbook Club meeting. This time, I got FLIP cameras in their hands and let them loose! Not really... we had the general guideline that we were making a PSA about using manners, and we split into teams. They had so much fun!

Total Service Hours: 12 hours

A fun Pinterest find...

From: Top Web Design Schools

Journal 7

A teacher at my school sent the staff a link to this article about math self-concept:
To Get Students Interested in Math, Address Their Self-Concept

While the article was not about teaching with technology, the link is simple to make. In the article, the author points out that,

I learned that, regardless of how ‘tough’ some students are or how weak their math skills are, teenagers still love feeling successful when they become good at something or when they figure something out. A sequence of small successes can lead students to develop intrinsic motivation to learn and take risks in a classroom . . .

Isn't it the same with ANY new skill, including technology? Everyone loves to feel successful and hates feeling uncapable. The article goes on to talk about how to teach to address a student's self-concept:

Instead, I began to design my lessons and accompanying student work so that (1) all of my students could successfully complete the first problem or task independently, and in which (2) the sequence of problems/tasks matched my students’ tolerance for challenge and self-concept.

It all sounds like scaffolding to me. While this article touches on building that self-confidence and self-concept in math and taking the words "I can't" out of a student's vocabulary, the same rings true for teaching anyone, young or old, about technology. You have to make lessons where students can achieve and slowly build up their confidence. A child who has never touched a keyboard before can't be expected to create a PowerPoint, so start at the basics. Scaffold and teach to make all students successfull, and as they see that success, their self-confidence in technology (and self-confidence, in general!) will skyrocket. It just takes patience and scaffolding.

While this article and journal was not about design in the aesthetic sense, it is very much about the instructional design process. I have had to scaffold myself this semester, not overwhelming myself and expecting myself to learn the complicated before the basics. Especially with Dreamweaver, I had to take it step-by-step and learn the foundational elements before I could begin the complicated. Through this process, I have found myself building a self-concept in both web design and the design principles that I did not have before, and it has resulted in a higher self-confidence level in these two areas.

Journal 6

Not too much to update at this point. I've spent the past 2 weeks working through difficulties with adding images to the website. The template's Gallery option didn't work as I wanted, so I had to find a plug-in that met my needs. Once I picked the plug-in (Next Gen Gallery), I had to figure out how to make it display properly within the template. There were some frustrating moments, but I feel like it works now! I'm at somewhat of a halt at the moment; I have the website looking the way I want it with the information I've been given. It's very close to being completely finished and is just lacking a bit of information from my client. She just got home from a cruise, so I'm giving her a bit of settling in time before I bug her about these last couple of elements.

Thinking of our reading for this week, The Nature and Origin of Instructional Objects, I was able to connect most with Pillar 1:

Interactions between teacher and learner require clear communication and presentation of information. A learner-centered take on instruction would make sure the learner-as-individual gets a good message, presented in a clear way, suited to his or her prior knowledge and learning preferences, with lots of opportunities to use the new information in practice. Thus the teacher-learner relationship can rely heavily on cognitive learning psychology to achieve good transmission of information.

All of the elements listed for Pillar 1 (Cognitive Load, Instructional Guidance, Schemas, etc.) reminded me of the learner-centered "guided" teaching that has been pushed in the recent years. Guided Reading seems to have been a cornerstone of good reading instruction in the past years, but recently, there has also been a push toward Guided Math, and now I'm hearing Guided Science and Guided Social Studies. The guided teaching principles match the elements of Pillar 1, in that it is all about individualized instruction that directly meets the student's needs in a way that best appeals to each student. These instructional techniques are directly in line with cognitive psychology, but do they include any elements of the other three pillars? Yes, I agree that it is important to teach a child at his or her own instructional level, but with 100% of the focus being on these guided instructional techniques, are we leaving out the other 3 pillars?

Journal 5

Over the course of this project so far, I have found myself stuck on a handful of occasions simply because I am lacking some of the background knowledge necessary to build a photographer's website. I'm not a photographer [trust me, you should see the pictures currently on my point-and-shoot!], so I do not always know what items are most important to photographers.

So, this week, I took a different approach to my "readings" and selected two photography website "guides" that offered some tips when creating a photography website.

Here are the links:
Five Great Photography Homepage Design Tips
Ten Photography Portfolio Website Tips from a Web Designer

These two articles provided some helpful tips pertinent to the creation of Jessica Nicole Photography's website. I especially enjoyed the first article because, much like the Krause book, it provided an example of a "good" design and explained why certain features work on the site. From the first article, the most critical lesson I learned:

"What I mean by this in the context of your homepage is that you should be selecting a few of your absolute best images and featuring them BIG. We are photographers so we want our work to be at the forefront of our potential clients’ minds and this is a great way to do it." 

I had been struggling with this idea. Previously, the images on the front page were moderately sized. Reading this quote, though, emphasized to me that the images on the front of the site need to be prominent. This is, after all, a photography website, and what better way to attract potential clients than to show off her amazing photography?

From the second article, I got a bit more of a general web design tip that I hadn't considered:

"If all you have on your site is a title and photos, there won’t be enough text for Google to place you high in search results.  The best tip for improving your photography site’s SEO is to add Alt and Title tags to EACH PHOTO YOU USE!  These tags are meta tags that you can add to a photo so Google knows what is represented in the photo."

I had never heard of SEO until these two articles, but it makes perfect sense. The whole purpose of Jessica's website is to attract new clients and give her a web presence. This means that her site needs to be searchable on Google or any other search engine. As a result of this, I have gone back and added additional tags on the photos included in the site, and I will continue to do so. The more keywords I put in the title or tags of the photos, the better chance the site has of showing up in a Google search.

All in all, reading these two articles gave me a fresh perspective on creating photography websites, and I feel I come away from these articles with some good, key ideas I can implement on Jessica's website.

Journal 4

At this point, I am in a good rhythm with my project. I have the basic layout ready, and I am familiarizing myself more with the Wordpress system layout and modifying CSS to fit my needs. Right now, I am awaiting information from my client. I asked her to select some of her favorite photographs for the galleries, and once I receive those from her, I will be able to put the images into the site and ensure the slideshows work as intended. After that step, I will have to get her "filler" information for each of the pages.

As I have been working, I have been struggling with design. I do not have a natural eye for design; it takes careful consideration for me to determine what is visually appealing. So, making a website for such a visual business (photography) where design is important has been difficult. I have found myself referring to many different design sources, especailly the Design Basics Index. One aspect of the book that helped me this week was the section on Harmony. "Visual echo is achieved through clear correlations between the colors, styles, content and typographic elements of a design" (Krause, p. 54). That page also gives the example of a postcard with an image of a flower, and the colors in the postcard match the colors in the image. I used this idea in the creation of the website; I have focused my color choices on those in Jessica Nicole Photography's logo:

I asked my client to give me the specifics on color- the exact codes for each color used in her logo. This has helped me to match the colors exactly on the site, and it has made for a more cohesive look to the site.

(Of course, my lack of design intuition is highly hilarious given that I will be creating my school's yearbook this year. This may be a true test of my design abilities!!)

Referenes:

Krause, J. (2004). Design basics index. Cincinnati, Ohio: HOW Design Books.

Service Hours

It dawned on me this week that I am doing a project at school that can count as my service hours! This year, I was asked to take on the rather daunting task of creating our school's yearbook. Typically, this task has been assigned to the school's PTA. Last year, it was a disaster; students paid for books and did not receive one, money was lost, and a host of other issues. So my principal decided to take the yearbook away from PTA and, instead, make it a school-sponsored project. Because of my new role as the Technology Specials teacher, the administrative team decided I would be a good pick for the Yearbook Chair.

I have also decided (and gotten approval) to create a Technology/Yearbook Club at school to allow students the chance to create the yearbook. I will teach students to use the digital cameras and Flip cameras provided by the school to capture photographs for the yearbook. They will also take video of various events so we can produce a video yearbook to raise money for the technology fund.

So far, here is a log of the hours I have put into this project:

1 hour- Meeting with principal and school photographer to discuss expectations for the yearbook
2 hours- Creating proposal for Technology/Yearbook Club, creating application form and permission form (click here for link to my website with details on the club)
3 hours- Setting up, attending, and photographing the school's Fall Festival

Total hours so far: 6 hours

Journal 3

After much deliberation and genuine frustration, I have given up on Dreamweaver.

Okay, not so much given up but switched my creative efforts to WordPress. And what's great is that now I actually have theories to support that switch, or at least a supported rationale for the switch.

I realized last night that my centrisms were not in line with what the project needed to be. While making the site in Dreamweaver, I was tool-centric, but because that is not technically one of Gibbon's centrisms, I can best relate it to a Media-Centrism: "Media-centric designs place great emphasis on the constructs related to the instructional medium. The technology itself holds great attraction for new designers" (Gibbons, 2003, pg. 22).

Coming into this project, I knew I wanted some first-hand experience designing and creating a website in Dreamweaver. My LSTC had mentioned that Dreamweaver would be an important tool for me to learn in case I become an LSTC at a school where Dreamweaver is used to create the website. Over the past few weeks, I have spent several hours figuring out Dreamweaver, and in reality, I have created a pretty good rough draft of a site. I even showed screen shots to my client, and she loved the design!

So, then, why am I leaving Dreamweaver in the dust?

I was way too tool focused these past few weeks, ignoring everything else but figuring out how Dreamweaver works. And it was to the point of frustration. While the site was looking as I expected, I believe I made a serious mess out of my CSS. It was incredibly difficult for me to modify.

And I also had a revelation last night: Because I am making this site for a client, it will be turned over to her once the project is complete; I will not be linked to this project forever. My client has zero knowledge of Dreamweaver, not to mention that I've probably made such a mess of my CSS that any knowledgeable web designer would likely have to trash the entire thing and start over from scratch. So, my media-centrism and focus on the tool would have left my client in the dust once the project is over.

I got so wrapped up in my tool that I forgot to consider my client and the context in which I am working. The good news is that I do feel like I have a decent-enough handle on Dreamweaver that I would be able to make any necessary changes on a school website- just not enough that I could build one from scratch.

So, last night, I made the switch to WordPress, and man, was that easy! In a matter of two hours, I was able to make the site to the point where I had left off in DreamWeaver. We even got her a domain name!

The site can be found here: jessicanicolepics.com

References:
Gibbons, A. S. (2003). What and how do designers design? TechTrends, 47(5), 22-25.

Journal 2

My husband and I on our honeymoon!

I can't say I'm too particularly excited to be writing this blog post. After all, I did just return from a beautiful honeymoon cruise after a magical wedding day [see the above picture of our dolphin swim in Nassau, Bahamas]. However, my magical week has come to an end, and it's time to get back to work!

I read the An Ugly Duckling Tale case study about updating outdated instruction, and it rang particularly true with me. It reminded me of Gwinnett County Public Schools' beginning of the year training. Each year, faculty and staff must review the county's ethics policies, sexual harassment policies, and seclusion/restraint policies. In my first two years with the county, these reviews were done in a large-group setting (often in the cafeteria) where our principal would show a 30-something slide presentation FILLED with text, and it was expected that she either read the entire thing to us or she sit and wait while we read each slide. Can you say BORING? And truthfully, beside it being horribly boring, I can't say I learned a single thing from those experiences.

This year, however, the county took a step in the right direction. Instead of a whole-group PowerPoint full of text, they transitioned to more individualized, video-based tutorials. Granted, these videos were still VERY text heavy and not at all interactive (truthfully, they were videos that I turned on and then worked while they played), but it was a much more pleasant experience, and I learned more from this year's presentation than in years past.

This is, of course, almost exactly the same situation as the case study presented. DAVS' training needed an overhaul, as the text-heavy PowerPoints were not proving to be helpful (plus, what multimedia company can justify a text-heavy PowerPoint????). So comes the question of how they could reformat their training to be more interactive and user-friendly. All of the digital options presented would be great improvements from the current training. I, for one, am a big fan of the video (especially with the additions of Glogster or VoiceThread components) as they are the most engaging for me as a viewer as long as they are interactive and/or more engaging than just text in a video format.

As I think about this case study in relation to my project, I realize that a static website is not going to be as engaging as something more dynamic or visually engaging. Luckily, because I am working with a photographer, there are a lot of images for me to choose from and a number of ways for me to make them engaging for her potential clients. Because I am working with a business, I need to make sure the site visually engages the consumer so they'll remain on the site and looking at what is presented.

Second-Timer At Last (Journal 1)

Ahhh... feels good to be sitting on the other side of the room this time! Like we emphasized in the Second-Timer Panel, it's a whole 'nother ball game sitting on the second-timer side of the room. I don't feel nearly as stressed or overwhelmed as I did this time last semester. At this point, I'm just hoping somebody liked me enough to want me as a mentor! :)

For this week, we read the Kapor article about software design. I was especially struck by the quote on the first page, "The most important social evolution within the computing professions would be to create a role for the software designer as a champion of the user experience...What is design?...It's where you stand with a foot in two worlds- the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes-and you try to bring the two together" (Kapor, pg.1 [emphasis added]). I love that phrase "a champion of the user experience" because I feel it explains perfectly how I see my career goal of becoming an LSTC, as well as my thinking for my project. As an LSTC, my job will be to become a champion of the user experience; how can I instruct teachers in tech tools in such a way that they feel confident in their own experience with the product?

For my project, though, I must think along similar lines. I have decided that, this semester, I will be creating a website for my neighbor who has recently gotten into the photography business. She currently runs her business off a blog, and while she desperately wants a website for her business, she considered it to be too expensive.... until I came along! This semester, my thinking about the project was a bit flipped: while last semester I knew I wanted to do a project that could help me in my future goals, this semester I am more focused on the tools that I know I will need as an LSTC. My LSTC emphasized that I need to know Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Since I am quite novice at both of those tools, I knew my project this semester must focus on them. I couldn't think of any projects LSTC-related that would incorporate those tools, so I decided to work backwards and find a project that COULD use those tools. That's when I thought of my neighbor! So, I will be creating her website and making it live before November.

When considering how to design her layout, I truly had to focus on the user and be a champion of the user experience. I've had to think about layouts that would be most intuitive, a design that would allow people to easily find the content they are searching for. And the Dreamweaver tutorials I watched on Adobe TV emphasized "no more than 3 clicks"- that a user must be able to get to their content in no more than 3 clicks. So I have been focusing on how to get all of the content she wants on her site (galleries, photo proofing, her blog, her facebook, pricing information, session information, about her, etc.) organized in such a way that the user will easily be able to navigate the site. So far, I'm having a lot of fun learning about Dreamweaver and setting up the "bones" of the site, and I'm looking forward to challenging myself in my learning a bit more this semester!