Blog Assignment 3

Several items I explored this week stand out.  I was glad to see ReadtheWords.com in the tech explorations.  I have been using it in the classroom for a long time.  It has become a tool for teaching and learning as well as classroom management! Sometimes when students are a little restless, I simply type what I needed them to do in the text box, and let the avatar read the instructions for me.  It saves me from having to repeat myself!  Plus, even though it is intended to sound as natural as technology can, it still has a little bit of a robot effect the kids like.  I have even lost my voice in class before, and used this website to communicate basic instructions to students throughout the class!

Also in this lesson different types of publishing programs were reviewed. Even as an art educator, I didn’t think it was necessary to be very appealing when sending home information to parents or giving students worksheets.  I think my justification came from fear that something nicer looking and informative meant twice as much time spent in its creation.  I am impressed with the newer version of Microsoft Word when creating newsletters and other documents for students and parents. It is easy to create colored shapes and borders. Font styles are plentiful to choose from too. 

I went through some of my old handouts, and revamped one using what I learned from this lesson.

As you can see, the BEFORE picture is a letter to parents announcing the start up of the artclub.  The image at the top center is the only colorful, decorative part of the newsletter.  Also, in reflection, this letter to parents it too wordy!  The good part about the newsletter is how some of the words are capitalized or bolded (or both) to stress the importants of some words or phrases. When I went back to re-edit this, they were a visual reminder of information I needed to keep!

To make some changes, I added a more colored background using colorful text boxes to draw attention to less text!

I kept the format of the entry form the same because it is purely for information, but I think the overall appearance works better than the first one.