You know I’ve never seen been able to appreciate art or enjoy art. During week 1 of this course we had to look at various graphical designs and decipher the elements that went into the work. Since then, I have been more critical of how I view my own work as well as others including my own students. As we progressed into week 2 and we created our own logo, I saw a side of me that didn’t know was there. I really enjoyed creating the logo assignment of this course. It taught me to think critically and evaluate myself in a creative way. Even better I was able to successfully use this assignment in my own classroom so students can evaluate themselves and create meaningful logos that represent who they are. Some of my students used logoease.com to help them get started while other students had no problem using MS Paint or MS Word to complete their task. I am always looking for ideas to help my students think critically and I never thought that creating a logo would achieve this. The Art of Self Branding worksheet provided by blogger Lea Alcantara is an excellent resource to get your students started with their logo design. It is important students complete this worksheet before they are even told that they have to create a logo otherwise they will want to start drawing and designing before even knowing about the adjectives that describe them. Being able to view other of my classmates’ logos on the discussion board was also a great help to the design of my logo. I was able to get ideas but also see the many different types of creative logos and how they tie to their personality. As we reached week 4 of this course, I was very confident about doing the newsletter and incorporating the logo we had created back in week 2. I was in for a big surprise as I had a very tough time completing week 4 assignment. I had created newsletters before using templates but creating them from scratch posed a big challenge for me. It took me several tries and many hours to get the newsletter close to what I imagined it to be. I kept referring back to week 1 and thinking about the CRAP elements. This made realize how critical I had become of my own work. Overall, I really enjoyed this course despite my initial skepticism about visual design and animation. The most important thing I learned about this course is the meaning of the word PRACTICE. This course truly was one of very few courses where I had the opportunity to sit down and practice (hands on) new acquired skills to finish assignments. As a result of this course, I decided that I needed to dedicate more time to practice on assignments in order to achieve greater learning. My logo design included the words continuous learner. If I want to achieve this goal, I need to become more proactive and practice more of things I don’t like or enjoy. In this case it wasn’t that I didn’t like design, it was that I didn’t have enough practice before so I assumed that I wouldn’t like it. Finally, week 5 was also a very informative week and we got very important resources that can help us as technology leaders. The resources provided provide many relevant examples of how we could use common software like MS Word to help diverse learners reach their potential and close the achievement gap.
Source:
The Art of Self-Branding: Part One | Lealea Design. (n.d.). Web, Print, Graphic Design and Creative Solutions | Lealea Design. Retrieved December 17, 2010, from http://www.lealea.net/blog/comments/the-art-of-self-branding-part-one/
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