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.