Graphic Creation

The graphic tool I used for this project was Pixlr. I think the graphic tools that I will most often use for my website are image fixing tools: crop, resize, rotate, etc. I do not need super fancy graphics on my website the way I see it. My site is a resource for teachers, so I want it to be very useful and organized and not at all cluttered. I’m not saying my graphics don’t need to look good, but they don’t need to be high forms of art. I think that color adjusting tools are really fun to work with, but they can take your pictures from normal to silly very quickly (like turn everything to shades of green with one click.) The lasso tool was one that I didn’t anticipate using so much but I was proven wrong. It helped with a lot of the graphics I created. I was continually frustrated by paintbrush, pencil, sharpen, and smooth because they never did exactly what I thought they would do or what I wanted them to do. I kept trying to use them and then quickly abandon the attempt.

 

Being in schools there are often strict rules about pictures of students on the Internet. This is unfortunate because I love taking pictures of my kids while they are learning. Next year during my pilot, I might attempt to get a release form of some kind so I can post pictures, but for the time being, I make sure to take pictures of my students from behind to put online. I also like to use the filters to distort the pictures a bit as well, just to be safe. I used the emboss filter on both those images. I had a hard time finding just the right filter to change the picture but not make it “unreadable.” I will put pictures of my students learning throughout the site to demonstrate what we are doing in class. These kinds of pictures will be all over the site, not on a specific page.

I am really in love with how this picture turned out. I took this picture one morning before work. I knew I wanted this to be my header across the top of my site, so I cropped the image to the appropriate shape (which is kind of unfortunate because there were more pretty clouds at the top of the picture.) Then I super saturated the picture to really make the colors stand out, and I raised the contrast.

This graphic took me FOREVER to do. I had the image in my head and I just could not get pixlr to do what I wanted it to do. It was immensely frustrating. I finally got it close. 

He is our school mascot, but I wanted to tweak him to be the logo of my pilot program and my site. I used the lasso and pencil tools to remove the pick from his hands. I added color to his chest, beak, and helmet because he just looked unfinished without the extra color. I took and imported the picture of the iPad. It took me ages to figure out how to turn the iPad diagonally (not 90 or 180 degrees.) Then I seriously struggled with getting the canary to hold the iPad. I had to mess with the layers and watch a few tutorials. I finally figured it out and I am really happy with how it turned out.

Visual Literacy

This is from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE.) http://www.iste.org/docs/excerpts/MEDLIT-excerpt.pdf

The Visual Literacy Tool Box http://www.humanities.umd.edu/vislit/index.php

Visual literacy is my students’ ability to read an image and glean information from it, just as they would read a book or an article. I try to use a ton of visuals in my teaching every day. Keeping multiple intelligences in mind, there are a whole lot of students that are visual learners and they learn best by seeing images and text. I try not to stand and talk at my third graders very often, because I don’t find it very effective and I usually lose their interest very fast this way. I try my best to include images and text for them to look at and interact with. For each subject I teach I have a bulletin board in my classroom. Right now we are learning about the skeletal system, so on my science wall I have posters of skeletons, copies of x-rays of broken bones, and paper models of bones and muscles that I make with my students. Having these visuals in the classroom throughout the unit for students to reference is very important.

My website is not designed for students, but rather teachers. It will be a blog and resource about my iPad pilot program for other teachers to see what apps I use, what I am doing in my classroom with the iPads, and what worked and did not work for me. However, having information rich images on my website would help teachers just as much as it would students. I really like the use of info-graphics to explain concepts, especially technology concepts. It would also be helpful to include screenshots of apps that I use along with the list so teachers can see what the app looks like and get a general idea about it.

Web Tools

Tool Name	Features/ Strengths of Tool	Use/ Grade/ Project Possibilities/ Subject
Desktop: Adobe Photoshop	You can create shapes and colors or you can import already existing images. You have many options to edit those images. You can create layers, cut pieces of pictures out, and adjust color easily. You can sharpen an image, reduce blurring due to shaky camera, and enlarge pixely pictures to look like good quality. A positive is that the tools available are very well laid out. There are neat and simple tool bars for everything.	This software is definitely designed to be used with older students: high school, maybe middle school. I think the only thing I would use this software for would be a photography or graphics kind of elective class. None of the content areas I teach in elementary school would have a need for such advanced images. Enhancing photos taken in different ways would be a main project use for this software. I could also see it being used in a history class to re-create historical scenes. Students could find images of people and layer them together to show understanding of the historical event.
Webware: Picnik.com	A negative for this site is that there are many less features and options of what you can do with the images than you would find on a program like Adobe Photoshop. This can also be a positive, however. If you don’t need anything too complex, I think simpler tools are better to work with. You can crop, adjust colors, and fix red-eye. You can make the whole picture black and white or sepia, and lots of other options as well. You can also have the picture be black and white with one part colored. You can also add text.	This website is simpler and more basic. I think it would be appropriate for upper elementary students up through high school and college, depending on what they are doing. 4th graders could use this site to edit pictures they took on a field trip and then give a presentation of the information they learned there. High schoolers can edit pictures they have taken on a basic level. If it were a photography or more advanced graphics class I would recommend a more complex tool. Upper elementary students could take pictures of themselves and age them (make them slightly blurry or painting like and black and white with worn edges) and write a story about themselves from a different older time period. It could be my life during the civil war.

Best and Worst of the Internet

	Site Name	Color choices	Typography uses	Audience appeal	Communication value	Overall page look and feel
Best Sites	Disney                          http://disney.com/	The white background is very clean looking. The top of the site is colored to go with the current feature (frozen.)	Headings are black which pops nicely off the white background. Descriptions are dark gray. Links are blue so it is easy to tell what is clickable.	The site definitely has an appeal for kids. There are videos from various Disney shows and pictures of characters.	The most important information is featured at the top. There are a few of each category on the main page videos, games, characters, etc.) with links to others. Everything is very easily accessible.	Overall the site is very neat and organized. It is easy to peruse and browse, but also easy find information. It’s simple form and layout make it aesthetically pleasing for someone who hates clutter, like I do.
	Tumblr       http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard	The dark blue background is basic and has become iconic with Tumblr. Each individual blog has a different theme and those vary wildly.	Typography varies from blog to blog, but the main site has easy to read font in a light blue that contrasts well on the dark blue background. Main headings are white, which pop right off the page.	Because it is a blogging platform there is a wide audience that Tumblr appeals to. The basic layout caters to everybody and does not target one demographic.	There is a side dashboard that allows for easy navigation of the site and allows visitors to easily get to the information they want. On the dashboard the most recent information appears on top.	The feel is calming and simple. There aren’t too many things to focus on and the pages are clutter free!
	Atari Arcade http://atari.com/arcade#!/arcade/atari-promo	The background is black with Atari red accents. It’s a stunning color combination.	Text is blocky and easy to read. It is light gray, which is easy to read, and it turns red when scrolled over, making it easy to see where you are clicking.	This site was definitely designed for people who love video games. The site itself looks like a video game. I’m sure that was on purpose.	The homepage is SO COOL. The right side is empty and up the left side is a 3-D rotating wheel of games. The site gets its point across with no distractions.	I am enthralled by this site. The design is awesome. That factor alone makes me want to spend time on this site.
	BBC News       http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/	The site has a white background with a  BBC red header. Videos have orange captions. The lack of crazy colors focus attention on the news/content.	Text on black is white and on the white background is black. Everything clickable (which is a lot) is blue. There are many different sizes of text depending on importance.	The site has feature news stories. It could appeal to many different kinds of people in Great Brittan and elsewhere in the world.	There are multiple navigation bars across the top of the page. Top stories rotate through the top and decrease in importance/ timeliness as you go down the page, i.e. the most important information is “above the fold.”	It is a very professional looking site. There are hard lines and clean cut boxes.
	Site Name	Color choices	Typography uses	Audience appeal	Communication value	Overall page look and feel
Worst Sites	Sixties Press http://www.sixtiespress.co.uk/	The background is swirly and distracting. The colors on the page do not go together at all.	The headings are bright colors on black, which looks awful. The text is tons of different colors, fonts, and sizes with no foreseeable rhyme or reason.	I’m so distracted by everything that I don’t even know what this website is for. There is a picture at the bottom of the page that  doesn’t work and there is a picture filer icon in it’s place. Unprofessional looking.	There is somewhat of a navigation bar at the top. But everything else is totally jumbled.	The overall look and feel is absolutely ridiculous. It looks like a fourth grader with ADHD that just learned how to use a computer designed this site.
	Norton        http://us.norton.com/	The site is white background with yellow and light grey accents to match the product.	This is the biggest issue with the site. The text is light grey which is not easy to read on the white background.	Everyone uses computers are needs anti-virus, so the product appeals to everyone.	There is a header with navigation tabs and a scrolling feature box at the top. It’s hard to read specific information because of the colors.	The site looks pretty nice. It isn’t too cluttered. I had to increase the brightness on my computer to be able to read it though.
	Pine-sol      http://www.pinesol.com/	There are like 27 different colors on this homepage. It kind of all works together, but it is a lot for my brain to handle.	The text is in all capital letters, which bothers me. It is easy to read. The headings are white and different shades of the color box they are in, which again, is too many colors.	The site looks like it is trying to market to pre-teen girls with bright neon colors. The product itself appeals to many people.	They are throwing so much information at me at one time I don’t know where to look. I skim the page and still have no idea what is going on.	This site is way too busy and cluttered. It’s like they tried to put every piece of information they wanted to convey on their homepage with no adjoining pages.
	Chester Tourist http://www.chestertourist.com/morehotels.htm	The background is black with some kind of dark grey design. The text is white. There is an awkward bright purple box in the middle of the page that doesn’t match at all.	The text is too small and in a font that makes it more difficult to read. The navigation bar has even smaller text.	I am turned off by this site and wouldn’t look at the business because of the bad web design.	This site links to a lot of other websites and I’m not really sure where to look or where to find information because there is so much going on.	The overall look is just cluttered. There is too much text and too much going on.