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I read the An Ugly Duckling Tale case study about updating outdated instruction, and it rang particularly true with me.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.