EDLD 5336 - Week 5 Course Reflection

It's hard to say I learned much from this course. It's more of a reference to my prior experience.  I've worked in graphic design for years and have trained hundreds of people in desktop publishing.  I also helped Dr. Yearwood, the professor who developed a portion of the course materials, deliver his desktop and web publishing courses numerous times.

That being said the most important concepts shared in this course is the CRAP of design (Yearwood, 2009).  By adhering to these guidelines even a truly untalented designer can produce mediocre work.

The first idea portion of CRAP is contrast.  As Dr. Yearwood explained contrasting items should be "really different" (Yearwood, 2009).  Minor differences are necessary in documents but they do not provide real contrast.  Contrast can be shown through color, font and/or size.

The second concept is repetition.  Repetition allows for continuity throughout a document.  As the old saying goes, "repetition makes an impression".  Without repetition a project will feel random and disconnected. Or as Dr. Yearwood put it, "reminds the visual cortex of the brain that there is something similar here, and this suggests that there is a kind of unity in the design." (Yearwood, 2009)

Alignment is next and most often overlooked issue.  Alignment guides the eye of the viewer. Inexperienced designers often break alignment attempting to make things look "designy".

Proximity is allow about grouping.  By allowing room for separate parts of the document to breathe it becomes easier for the reader to view relationships.

I have a had a fairly firm understanding of these concepts for year but enjoyed discussing the with classmates.  I'm not sure many of them grasp there importance.  A properly formatted document can make an incredible difference in it's usefulness to the viewer.

I was able to complete most the assignments without exerting much effort at all. Once again this is more of a reflection on my past than a reflection on the course.  Students who are new to desktop publishing and animation may have struggled with developing quality work.

My interactions in the course had little to no impact on my performance on the assignments.  Once again this is more of a reflection on my past than a reflection on the course.

I always strive to create both beautiful and effective documents.  I do not see this changing in the future.  My main take away from my interactions with my colleagues in the course is that some people don't take constructive criticism well. They prefer a pat of the back to a suggestion on how to approve.  I constantly study trends and techniques in design in an attempt to produce designs I can be proud of.   I am by far my worst critic. This provides me with the motivation necessary to continue improvement.

Yearwood, J. (2009). Basic design principles and some observations on how we see.

EDLD 5366 - Week 1 - Assignment 1.2

Sultan Baybars' Qur’an

Sultan Baybars' Qur'an is an exquisite example of ancient handcraft art.  The designers are beautiful and unbelievably intricate.  It must have taken thousands of hours to complete the book in such a flawless manner.

Because the text is read from right to left all of the text is aligned to a right margin.  Lines of text aligned horizontally in an unbelievably accurate way.  The color, texture, and shimmer of the gold contrasts to the page.  Colors, writing style, and design style are repeated throughout the book.  Spacing is given between lines of text to allow for the elaborately designed text be more easily read.

The incredible detail used in illustrating the text shows that the book was extremely important.  This along with the entire text being written in gold makes it clear that the book was for someone of extreme wealth and power.  The artistry shown indicates that the creator of the text held the purchaser and/or the text in great esteem.

EDLD 5363 - Week 5 Reflection

I expected to learn how to produce multimedia content and use those produced materials and educational tool. I suppose it was unfair of me to expect to learn much about video production. I already have fairly advanced knowledge of video editing. I’ve taken advanced digital film editing courses and train university faculty on how to edit every semester. The base level of knowledge for the rest of my classmates is probably much lower. Unfortunately I didn’t feel like the course offered much in the way of using multimedia to educate. I was hoping to at least learn best practices for producing multimedia content intended for use in a course.

I edit video on almost daily basis as part of my job. At Lamar we constantly try to convince our faculty to utilize multimedia content in their online courses. The learning outcomes of the course mostly covered topics I already had and advanced level of knowledge of coming into the course. The only outcome I didn’t achieve was participating in the optional web conference. This is only due to time and family restraints. I also wasn’t very motivated to participate. I provide training on using the acrobat connect system on a very frequent basis.

With the exception of the week 2 assignments the course work was very easy. Week 2 was not particularly hard, but I was very confusing.

My daily work is done in a collaborative environment. The application of the skills I’ve learned through past experience made working in a group for this course easy. We all worked well together. Everyone was willing to apply their full efforts. I love having an opportunity to work on creative projects. I essentially functioned as the creative director for the group. I’ve worked in this capacity professionally and very much enjoy in the process involved. The rapid birth and death ideas is very exciting to me.

EDLD 5363 - Week 5

Our group worked extremely well together throughout the production process.  Our main venue for communication was email.  The threaded nature of our conversations made it easy to follow.  All messages were sent to all group members so that we could all be aware of any developments.  The brainstorming process was rapid.  We gathered 10-15 ideas but quickly settled on text messaging while driving.  The topic seemed interesting and we thought we could have some fun creating the PSA.  We bounced around ideas of how best to cover the topic and finally decided on a simple model.  A single shot that loses and regains focus to indicate changes in the driver’s attention.  Our video was produced in 720p HD quality.  We were able to preserve the high level of video and audio quality by utilizing YouTube.

Call me arrogant if you want, but I believe firmly that our PSA is television ready.  The only improvements that could suggest would be using a higher quality microphone to record the narration.

As a group we decided to avoid using any copyrighted material. We shot our own footage.  Sound effects were either self-recorded or from royalty free sound databases.

EDLD 5363 - Week 4

You can view my groups activity report at:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=17TheKw2hpFs240rLbWKPkvSuyvdtG4YKDcVEClsEQVs

The bulk of our production took place this week.   All of our footage was filmed, the rough edit was completed and the narration was recorded.  We have all focused on our strengths.

Jacqueline has become our videographer and our record keeper.  David has become the voice (literally) of our group.

EDLD 5363 - Week 2 - Video Editing Software

I've worked with video editing software years.  My first introduction to the area was through Windows Movie Maker.  Anyone that has ever used anything else will tell you that it is extremely weak.  It's feature set are as minimal as possible.  Shortly there after I was able to get my hands on the Adobe's video editing solution, Premiere. Adobe Premiere is professional level editing solution that is on par with the industry standard, Final Cut Pro.  In more recent years I've had substantial experience with Imovie and Final Cut Pro.  The most bang for your buck can be found in Imovie.  Imovie does 90% of everything I need to do. When i need more advanced capabilities I use Final Cut Pro.  Like most software every year brings new features and numerous other changes.  I constantly look into new versions of software and new tools that available.  I tend to export my videos as either mp4 or mov files. Mp4 is more of universal standard.

EDLD 5363 - Photostory Reflections

The most difficult part of creating a photostory was finding time.  I knew from the beginning that my son, Parker, would be the inspiration for the video.  He's consumed most of my time for the past 20 months and is the only subject I have a substantial number of pictures of.  I enjoyed the opportunity to share a little of our story.  I would really have loved to have been able to create a narrated story book video for him though.  A similar process to what was used for this video could be used. The main difference would be the use of illustrations.