November 24th, 2009

Readability

I think that the official Bob Dylan site has a high degree of readability. When you enter the site, the first screen you see is very simple. It has a background that doesn't distract you from the content and a picture of Bob Dylan - just in case you forgot what you were looking at. Across the top of the screen, there are links to the other pages of the site including: home, news, tour, albums, songs, media, fine art, community, features, and store.





When you navigate to other pages, the same plain background and picture of Bob Dylan are used, which I think helps the reader get used to what they will see on the pages. When other pictures are added, like the two cameras, they are very simple pictures. Another feature I liked was that the page you are currently on is highlighted in blue. That helps in the navigation of the site.






The only page I found that was a little harder to read was the link for the albums. When you click on it all you see are small icons that are pictures of the album covers. This was a barrage of information compared to what was on the rest of the site. It was helpful, though, that I could put my cursor over the picture and it would tell me the name of the album. All in all, I thought this was a good site.



On the flip side was the Walker Art Center's website. When you get to the home page, you see things that are both helpful and a hindrance. On the top of the page is that helpful bar with the links again, just like on the Dylan page. But, the rest of the page is not so simple. You are flooded with images from the collections that they currently have on display. These images change when you are on the same page for awhile. That was a bit distracting for me. Then, you scroll down and come across 14 boxes that all typically have a different color assigned to them as well as a picture to go along with the words. The boxes themselves are pretty simple...a heading, a picture, and an explanation...but the sheer number of boxes was overwhelming. Also, I noticed that when I clicked on the linked to these boxes, all but to of the links sent me to a page found within the calendar section of the website, which is one of the handy links on the top bar of the page. I am not sure why they had to have the info in more than one place. You could say to emphasize whatever was in those boxes - for example the British Television Commercial Awards - but why do they need to highlight 14 different things at one time?


Activities

As far as activities for the students to participate in and help them gain an understanding of design features and interactivity, I think practice makes perfect. You could teach them the design features that websites do/should use to enhance readability and have them first search the web for things they are interested in and check out the readability (much as we did) and then have them employ those understandings in designing their own websites. They could design a website for a research project or for a pre-reading assignment. Same thing with designing PowerPoints...you could assign a topic to a student. Have them design the PowerPoint. Then you could give them the interactivity lesson and have them redesign their PowerPoint. They could then compare their presentations. Also, they could show their presentations to the class and give feedback as to which one works better.

Here is my presentation.

November 17th, 2009

Before this assignment I had previous experience using ToonDoo to create an online comic strip. I decided to use this technology again, instead of ComicLife, because I have very few pictures on this computer. I was then able to use the wide range of characters, backgrounds, and props that are available on the ToonDoo website.

I decided to create a comic strip that illustrates a section of Macbeth. This came from an assignment I gave out two years ago, before I know of ToonDoo. One of the creative project ideas was for my students to draw a comic strip that would retell a portion of Macbeth. I had one student complete this assignment, and her drawings were great. I think that having an online technology to use for the "drawing" would help draw more students to this particular assignment.

Creating the comic was fun. I liked looking around for the "perfect" character and "perfect" setting to illustrate my ideas. There is a bit of a drawback, however, in the amount of characters or settings you have to choose from. I felt that there should be more choices for how you wanted things to look. But again, there were more choices here than on my computer.

One thing I had to think about was how much information should go on each panel. It got pretty crowded when multiple characters talked in the same panel, therefore I settled on only one character speaking per pane. I would need to create quite the multitude of strips to illustrate, say, an entire scene of Macbeth. This is definitely something that is different from reading print texts. When reading print texts there can be so much information on one page, and it isn't distracting or information overload. That isn't true of comic books. You need to be careful of giving too much info on one page - it will either get skipped and your reader wont catch it all, or there will be that information overload.

I think I would like to try my assignment again, but this time instead of using paper and pen, I would allow the students to work on ToonDoo. I would have to adjust exactly how much of the novel/play I would want them to illustrate, however, since they wouldn't be doing it by hand.

Here is my comic.

For some reason the second panel of the strip isn't showing the words. I have saved and reedited three times, and I cannot make the words appear. I will have to fix it later.

November 10th, 2009

I liked the process of creating the podcast. It took me awhile to think of something I wanted to record that would be "perfect." After I stressed myself out for awhile, I realized that it did not have to be perfect, but I should instead focus on something that would be usable for my classes.

Looking forward to what I will be teaching next quarter I landed on recording a poetic devices podcast. I chose four of the main poetic devices (you could do many more) and talked about their definitions as well as gave examples of each type of poetic device. All in all it was about four minutes long.

Looking back, I think that I would want to script it out a little more. I had a basic outline of what I wanted to say, but a more complete script would be really helpful. I think it would help me go deeper into the subject that I was covering. Not only talking about the definition, but what these poetic devices bring to poetry. It would also help eliminate some of the longer pauses from when I was trying to think of how to transition on to the next topic.

Saving the sudio file and uploading it to media mill was no problem. I have not yet converted it into an actual podcast. I am not sure if I need to do so for what I would use the audio file for. After listening to Pete last night, I think it would be just as good to upload the audio files onto my class ning for my students to listen to. I don't think the technology of the podcast would necessarily be more helpful than that.

I think that I am going to continue to work on creating a lot of audiofiles for use in my poetry class. I think that there are many topics that I could cover. From poetic devices, to poetic form, to analyzing specific poems for both devices and content. I am sure that there are many others as well. I also like the idea of looking at slam poetry and having my students use either garageband or imovie to record themselves. I would have them use garageband if I really wanted them to focus on the emotion and the words. imovie would be useful when covering the delivery method of the poem.

I don't think it will be too hard to engage these students in creating audiofiles/podcasts/vlogs. I think that these students love to work with this type of technology (really they just like to hear the sound of their own voices). As far as evaluating them, I think that I would have to give them some pretty straight-foward guidelines or a rubric for what they had to make sure they had in their projects. Then I would look and give them their due points.

November 3rd, 2009

With limitless options for topics I could cover in my podcast, I was having trouble coming up with one that I wanted to do. I think, however, that I will record a poetry lesson. I will cover a few of the main poetic devices, providing definitions and examples for each.

I will probably record it as though it is one in a series of podcasts on the topic of poetry, not really giving a lot of background about myself, but instead focusing on the subject matter. I think it would be good to use these in my classroom as a way for students to access the "notes" while at home. It would also be helpful for a student if they happened to miss a day that had a lecture - they could listen to the podcast to receive the information I covered in our discussion.