Week 5 Reflection

Reflecting back over the past five weeks I have really enjoyed EDLD 5366 Digital Graphics and Web Design. The assignments and readings along with the pace of the course was perfect for my schedule. The group assignment and our group were awesome. In the past, I have always cringed on group collaboration projects. You never know someone work ethic or personal focus or desire to do well in school. But not this time, those thoughts were put to rest after the first group email went out. Everyone was dedicated and working hard to keep pace with everyone else in the group. I thought everyone in the group was very skilled in technology and willing to go and do the extra mile for the team. I hope the same members are in the next group project.

            I liked how each week in the course built on the other. Week one started out by reviewing and analyzing the principles of design. The assignment exercise focused on the four principles of design, CRAP, Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. I felt the assignment need a little more explanation for the actual task. It seemed to me to be vague in direction and it was difficult for me to find the desired answer to the assignment.  Week two had a little self focus built into it. I really enjoyed asking other to list three words that describe me. I found this very interesting especially reverse analyzing the person and the words they chose to describe me. It was extremely insightful. Weeks three, four and five were just simply fun. I build and deploy hundreds of software packages for staff members to install on their computers at work. I rarely get a chance to play or use the software. So it was fun just getting to play with the different programs.

             This course was fun and interesting and I feel that every Instructional Technology teacher should take this course. The knowledge and skills explored would help teachers develop the digital natives into become lifelong learners in collaborative technology. Just like the website project, this would be ideal for the K-12 classroom. Instead of Battle of the Bands, like when I went to school, they could have a project called War of the Websites. The project would follow the same principles as what we did for this course. Each page would have it’s on set of rules the explore and use a variety of web 2.0 tools. I think I’m going to suggest it to our C&I department.  

Bible from Ethiopia

My first impression of the manuscript was impressive. The design inlays on the leather cover was very neat. To think the book is almost two thousand years old added to my fascination with the design. It made me wonder if an old person or a young one created the book. It also made me wonder how many of these books were created. As I turned the pages of the book I could not help to notice the design principles I have been studying seem to be extremely obvious in this very old book. Contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity are very consistent throughout the pages. Knowing the design principles has helped me to evaluate the manuscript with more detail than just looking at text with pictures. Each page, whether it contained graphics, text, or both had alignment and proximity consistent to the page before and after. Each page basically had an inch and a half border. Colors and border designs around the graphic scenes showed the consistency of contrast and repetition throughout the book. Overall, It appears to me, we are not really doing anything different than what people did two thousand years ago.