Blog Post #7

"Focused Freewrite" on Previous Posts

After going back through my previous posts and the feedback I have received on them, I feel that one of the main reasons that it seemed that most of my designs came out well is because I mostly sticked to the basic ideas and strategies described in our readings. Where one of the texts offered hundreds of things to consider and pay attention to when designing things, for a beginner to try to consider all of them at once for each design would have made the process brutal. I definitely paid more attention to details relating to color, aspect ratio, focal points, and layout than any other ideas; perhaps because these are the biggest things I pay attention to when looking at designs I did not make.

Obviously, without the opportunity to use some of the techniques and tools discussed in the readings, I would not understand them as well (That is a perfect example of Bloom's Taxononmy at work...). Even though the use of any of the tools required for the MDMC or the blog posts (Fotor, MovieMaker, etc.) were difficult to use, now that I am starting to edit some of the raw pictures and videos taken during labs the past few weeks (for use in my MMP), I appreciate better understanding all of the capabilities of these and other tools.

When I first started the course, I did not think that the design used in getting across a message was anywhere near important as the message itself. However, I am starting to understand how design can be used to help viewers better put the intended message into their own context. For example, for years my coworkers and I have been struggling for ways to motivate our students to review for the Final Exams, in College Prep Chemistry especially. We have kept going back to the standard review packet that contains about 100 Multiple choice questions and a few other types to help guide their studying, and we have always been disappointed in the results. I took one of the ideas from one of our mini art schools, the "Concept in 60 seconds" video, and we are putting together a plan to have a contest for all 350 students in the course to make a video that reviews any topic that will appear on the final exam. We aren't sure how we will judge the winners or what the prize will be, but we are hoping that the contest will do two main things to help improve the students preparation for the Final. First, the students who participate in the contest would essentially have to become 'experts" at their chosen topic in order to make a video. Second, we think that students would be a lot more likely to study if all they had needed to do was watch a few short videos created by their peers. Unfortunately, this process will not start for another two months; after this course is over. Where we are hoping that the design process, as well as a change in the format of the review materials will help our students, all we really know for sure is that there is no place for the results on the Final Exam to go but up...