Journal Entry #5

          Clark Aldrich had some interesting takes in his presentation “Simulations and the Future of Learning.”  He thought that simulations are a trend in breaking away from viewing content in only a linear way.  I connected with his view on Choose Your Own Adventure books as an example.  Those were my favorite books as a kid because I liked backtracking to see how the different choices I made affected the ending.  He called his own reading of this genre as “pre-computer bliss” to him. 

          I learned a lot in last week’s assignment of the True/False, Numeric, and Text Variables.  However, it was a lot of clicks for me to get through the True/False and Numeric Variables.  When I add those components into my final project, I’ll have to go back and watch those sections in the tutorial again.  As for this week’s assignment, I look forward to learning the different types of quizzes that Articulate Storyline offers in this week's assignment.  I’ll add these to the end of my final project to quiz the user on the content.
         The topic for my final project is The Story Behind the Grave Robbers of Abraham Lincoln.  I completed the background information section for the last Desk Crit and am working on the story now.  I want to add a Choose Your Own Adventure style where the user has different choices throughout the story.  I think this would make it more interesting, just like Aldrich was talking about.

Journal Entry #4

        If you haven’t seen the topic of my final project, it’s The Story Behind Abraham Lincoln’s Grave Robbers.  I narrowed it down to this after feedback from the Desk Crits and Journal Feedback, as well as polling my students. I’ve explored with the features in Storyline like Audio and Layouts and Layers through our weekly assignments.  I learned a lot in how to add and use the various Animations Storyline offers.  The upcoming Variables and Interactions sections of Storyline should add more components to my final project.

As far as the progress with my final project, I’ve done some minor rough drafting as I’ve learned more and more in Storyline.  Where I’m stuck at is how I want to tell the story of the grave robbers who attempted to steal Lincoln’s body.  The cast of characters, including a gang of Chicago counterfeiters who plot to steal Lincoln’s body and a double agent that infiltrated the gang, all make some major blunders that make it seem more fiction than non-fiction.  I know I want to make it interactive and include choices throughout it, but I also want to keep it factual with what happened that night.  I’m thinking that I want to go back and forth between the point of view of the different characters, and not tell just a linear story from beginning to end.

The reading for this week, “Designing Interactions,” was interesting.  A main point Moggridge made was that designers have to understand who their users are.  He explains how they used the four categories “Learn, Look, Ask, and Try” to learn more about their users to help them design projects.  The “Try” section made me think how I use my Advanced Writing class as a sort of guinea pigs sometimes.  I teach them first thing in the morning and get their opinions on certain things and their interests as they filter in off the buses.  They often surprise me, and it reminds me that I don’t always know everything about my target audience!

Journal Entry #3

My final project is becoming clearer and clearer to me.  As of my last Design Journal post, I had decided to do my project on lesser known events in history.  Here were my 3 ideas that I planned on:

·                  Abraham Linclon and John Wilkes Booth are in the same photo at Lincoln’s Second Inauguration.

·                  George Washington technically isn’t the first U.S. President, he’s actually the 9^th.

·                  Thieves tried to steal Lincoln’s body on election night in 1876 and hold it for ransom.  What happened to Lincoln’s body after that is pretty fascinating.

Originally I planned on including all three of these events in my project, but I realized it would probably be best to narrow it down to one event.  This would allow me to really go in-depth on that one topic.  Sheng-Shiang Tseng suggested the grave robbers and Lincoln story.  I agree that this might be the most interesting story that could be well told using Articulate Storyline. 

As far as the progress with my final project, I’m planning and laying out the story on paper.  There are a number of interesting characters in this story, including a gang of Chicago counterfeiters and a double agent that infiltrated the gang, that could each have their own path in Storyline.  I think re-living the attempted grave robbery from the perspective of each of these characters would be interesting    For my research, I’m using a documentary on the attempted grave robbing of Lincoln and have also read about it online.  Jennifer Colwell also said she bought the book and said that it seemed interesting to her.  I’m still learning the functions of Storyline and plan on starting  my project since I’m more comfortable with using the software.

Journal Entry #2

             I’m starting to feel a little better about the direction of my final project.  I had thought I narrowed down my topic to creating a tutorial for teachers on how to create a STEM unit.  However, Martha made a good point in her feedback when she stated, “Creating a standardized tutorial on it seems to go against the STEM model, not to mention it would require a great deal of in-depth creation to properly showcase it.”  That was a good point.  Then Dr. Orey got me thinking when he said in class to choose something we’re passionate about, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be something we teach. 

            So I decided to do my final project on Lesser-Known Events in History.  I’m kind of a history buff and like learning more in-depth the story behind the story when it comes to historical events.  I want to stay away from events with conspiracy theories like the assassination of JFK and the moon landing and focus more on facts.  A few ideas I have include:

• Abraham Linclon and John Wilkes Booth are in the same photo at Lincoln’s Second Inauguration.
• Thieves tried to steal Lincoln’s body on election night in 1876 and hold it for ransom.  What happened to Lincoln’s body after that is pretty fascinating.
• George Washington technically isn’t the first U.S. President, he’s actually the 9^th.

I’d like to make it interactive, sort of like the Crime Scene Investigation example.  The next step for me is to get acquainted with Articulate Storyline over the next few days to start to get an idea for how my project will be laid out.

There are definitely some aspects from Krause that I can use in my final project.  I really found the section on Composition interesting, but there were so many rules and principles to follow that I found myself overthinking some of the slides I use in my classroom.  Three major rules of Composition that stood out to me were:

• Principles of Unequal Spacing
•  “Dead-center” spacing
• Alignments principles on pages 80-81 that talked about the flush-left, flush-right, justified, and center.

Although there were a lot of rules and principles to follow in the Composition section, the examples made it easy to follow.  The beginning of the Components section was a bit more ambiguous to me, such as the idea of visual texture.  It took some re-reading by me to understand some of these principles.  Some of the principles from Components that I’d like to incorporate in my final project came from the “Supporting Elements” sections:

• Effective use of backdrops (nice examples on pages 182-183)
•  Linework:  Should only be used when needed (great examples on pages 174-175).

Journal Entry #1

Initial Project Thoughts:

I don’t have a definite topic chosen at this point for my final project.  Looking at the number of project examples helped me to better understand what the final project should look like.  However, some examples like “Broken Co-Worker” and “Accident Investigation Demo” seem to be well-developed, while others seemed to be almost incomplete.  That kind of left me wondering, how technical and extensive does our final project need to be?  Knowing this can help me to choose a topic.

As of now, I have two project topics in mind: 

• A tutorial for teachers on how to create a STEM unit.
• A math tutorial for students for adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators.

STEM is the new buzz word in education.  President Obama addressed the importance of it by stating, “We need to make this a priority to train an army of new teachers in these subject areas, and to make sure that all of us are lifting up these subjects for the respect that they deserve.”  I am on the STEM Vertical Team at my school, and we have to train our teachers as STEM is becoming mandatory school-wide.  This project could be a way for me to create an interactive experience for STEM training that the teachers can refer to.  I am also considering the math tutorial for adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators because it’s a skill some of the students struggle with.

 

“Situating Constructionism” and Design Basics Index (pages 8-77)

            Honestly, Papert’s reading was a little difficult for me the first time and I had to re-read it.  The 5 Finger Rule that elementary teachers tell their students for choosing “just right books” came to mind as I was reading it. I think the Constructionist approach described by Papert lends itself really well to the STEM style approach to teaching and learning.  One can definitely see the students “learning-by-making” in the hands-on approach of STEM.  This coincides with Papert’s belief that people who build their own “structures” excel in constructionism.  

            One of the more intriguing aspects I got out of the Design Basics Index reading for this week was the Principles of Unequal Spacing concept.  Thinking back on how I’ve designed some slides for teaching my students as well as some of the presentations I’ve done for colleagues, I didn’t take into account this principle.  The idea of “placing the dividing elements in positions other than dead-center” is something that I’ve actually done the opposite of.  I personally have designed slides very symmetrical, but I see now after the reading that this isn’t the most dynamic and eye-catching form of design.  As a visual learner, I like how Krause shows both good and bad examples of the principles he is describing in the book.