Website Design: DOE sites

The design of a website is CRUCIAL.  It doesn't matter if the site is for commerce, personal connections, information sharing, or entertainment.  If the site is poorly designed, then it will not effectively serve its intended audience or purpose.

For a comparison this week, I decided to look at the design of two department of education websites.  I look at these often for my job and have found that some states are definitely more on-top-of-it than others.

LOSER:  Arizona Department of Education
Why is this website so terrible?  Oh, let me count the ways...

1. It is not as "user-friendly" as it could be.  There are too many links on each page with minimal explanation.  It is not always obvious based on the link title which one you should choose.  Often, there are links that have similar titles so it's especially confusing about which is the most appropriate.  Also, there is not always a pathway that shows you how you got to the page you are on, so it is hard to navigate your way back.
2. It is not visually appealing.  Whoever chose the color scheme and banner photos must be color-blind.  On the home page alone, text is shown in: blue, a brighter blue, black, white with green highlights, white with maroon highlights, and black with yellow highlights.
3. The font is not appealing.  Multiple--but very similar--fonts are used.  All are relatively normal sized, with nothing standing out or designed to grab your attention.
4. The images in the banner are cluttered and there is too much to look at.

WINNER:  Ohio Department of Education

1. This website is designed with a nice, simple color-scheme (mostly a muted red with some primary colors).
2. Headings and other "important" text stands out because it is larger at the top of the page.  When you hover over these headings, drop-down menus with more information appears.  Although there are many links, like in the Arizona DOE site, these links are much more clearly labeled.  Once you get into one of these sections (e.g., Testing), additional areas of interest appear on the left with descriptions of various links on the right.  I wish that the descriptions were not cut-off mid-sentence, but something is better than nothing.
3. The images chosen for the banners are simple and easy to recognize.
4. Links and information are grouped in ways that make sense.

It was difficult for me to complete this assignment because I wasn't exactly sure what to compare.  I wondered if I should focus on visual appeal, functionality, organization, color-scheme, amount/size/type of font, etc.

To teach students about web design, it would be interesting to have them complete a similar assignment that has a few more parameters.  As a class, students could generate a list of features that they think are important to website design.  On a SMARTBoard or projector, the class could compare a few websites to see how the design impacts the user's experience on the site.  I think that this would be a great way to introduce the concept of web design in a way that is engaging and covers the material in a reasonable amount of time.

My First Prezi: Justification for Digital Literacies in the Classroom

I decided to try Prezi to create my presentation for class this week.  I've used PowerPoint quite a bit and was ready to try something new and different.  Overall, Prezi was fairly easy to use, but it took me a while to figure out how everything would look in the final presentation.  There are so many possibilities with text layouts, presentation paths, frames, etc. that it could get overwhelming.  When I started, I envisioned a much more complex presentation, but then I realized that part of Prezi's beauty was in simplicity.

I had recently read several journal articles about digital literacy in classrooms, including "An American Perspective: Justifying Uses o Digital Tools to Foster Critical Media Literacy" by Richard Beach in The Journal of Media Literacy (Volume 57, Numbers 1 & 2, 2010).  The quote at the beginning of the presentation is from that article.  I was hoping that this presentation would help me flesh out some ideas for a final project.  Maybe it did.  At this point I'm not entirely sure, but I am also not entirely sure of the shape my final project will take.  Mostly, I've done a lot of brainstorming and thinking about it.  This my first tangible product.  Alright, let's cut to the chase.  Here's my presentation:

Justification on Prezi

Camping: A Breakfast Story

These photos--and to some extent the storyline--are from a camping trip in Kentucky a few years ago.

Overall, creating a comic was really fun and easy.  ComicLife is super easy to use.  It was really simple to drag in the images and add the text.  The characters are based on friends that were camping with me at the time, but I had to think about what they might say or think in brief snippets to make the story come to life in this comic.  Because so much of the story is told through the pictures, it was also important to for me to choose appropriate photographs to convey the story.  This is one thing that differs from most traditional print texts for adolescents and adults.

Digital comics would be great to incorporate into a multigenre writing unit, or even as a prewriting activity for narratives.  My students often struggled to zoom in on characters, slow down the storyline, and--the classic--show versus tell what is happening.  It would be so great to teach these skills using digital comics.  If I were writing a narrative about camping, I could use this comic to prepare me to write a scene about making breakfast.  When I was teaching, we actually did use a comic to demonstrate "zooming in" in writing, but it would have been even more engaging to have students create a "zoom" and not just look at one.

Unemployment: A Comic...sort of but not really

This is my feeble first attempt at creating a comic.  Although, this is not at all comical.  It sort of tells a universal story about the all-too-common experience of facing unemployment.  I chose this topic because I created a digital poem based on a found poem called "An Unemployed Machinist" by by John Giorno on poets.org.  I had the images prepared and the topic was in my mind.  I would like to make more of an attempt at creating a comic with more of a storyline, since that is a genre very unfamiliar to me.  My home computer is old and not the quickest machine on the block, so I will try to make it to class early next week so that I can give ComicLife a second attempt.

My digital poem

I created this digital poem for an assignment in class 11/9.

The poem is from poets.org.

Images are from flicker.

Potentials of Podcasting

I really enjoyed creating a podcast.  It was fun to choose a topic (reading a personal essay from 10 years ago) and then to actually do it.  The topic I chose allowed me to step back into the shoes of my 18-year old self, which was interesting.  It was encouraging and surprising to read my words again.  Especially since I was recording myself reading, I tried to get into character and feel the emotions I felt when I wrote the piece.  I loved it.  It also allowed me a chance to read my teacher's comments again, which was so encouraging.  Now that I am an educator, I read the comments differently than I did previously.  I understood how essential it is to provide feedback on a student writer's ideas, not just her mechanics.  I knew this before I did the podcast; I internalized it as I was re-reading my teacher's comments.

Once I finally figured out how to turn my blog into a podcast using Blogger, morphing my audio file into a podcast was simple.

Podcasting could be used for a variety of activities in the classroom.

• Booktalks:  If the technology were available, podcasts of booktalks could be shared among students, classes, and even from year-to-year to promote a culture of reading in the classroom.  Although I would not use this as an assessment for comprehension or independent reading, since students could easily read a summary online and translate that into a booktalk.  It would be a nice supplement to other classroom activities.
• Interviews:  There seems to be a lot of potential for using podcasting as a tool for interviews.  Specifically, I think it would be neat to have students interview characters, authors, or other readers about a book.  These would be excellent extensions for other activities in a regular English class.  Depending on the unit of study, students could interview other students, teachers, family members, community members, school staff members, etc. for a variety of reasons.  There really are so many possible uses for this tool!
• Radio Shows:  In a media class, it would be neat to have students research information about various radio shows, such as All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, call-in shows (for advice on finances, relationships, etc.), sports shows, conservative talk radio, etc.  It would be neat to have them look at the different kinds of radio shows, targeted audience, bias, and other unique aspects of the genre.  As a culminating project, students could create podcasts of radio shows.

It's been really fun for me to learn about podcasting.  I believe that this medium has so much potential for use in classrooms that have the available resources.

Getting Rid of the Gunk Podcast

Getting Rid of the Gunk

Here is an audio recording for a podcasting assignment.  For this project, I decided to record myself reading an essay entitled "Getting Rid of the Gunk."  I wrote the essay as part of a "Culture of Me" project during my senior year in high school.  Writing this essay was a liberating experience because it allowed me to voice my own thoughts and struggles.  My twelfth grade English teacher, Mr. Wiebe read this essay to all of his other English classes and told me to send him my first book when it was published.  I've often thought back to that experience.  It's not only a great example of what a powerful writing assignment can do but also the power of a teacher's encouragement.

At the end of my essay, Mr. Wiebe wrote, "We could let all incoming 9th graders have this paper to read along with whatever else they receive at orientation.  It would be the most valuable gift by far [...] Blessings and thanks.  What a powerful vision of life as based on a real life you lived and live.  This inspires!"

That feedback resonates so much more than any editing marks a teacher ever made.

Listen to my essay, Getting Rid of the Gunk