AHA! Journal Week 3

http://adoholik.com/index.php?tag=women

Killing Us Softly 3 is about how advertising has caused gender stereotyping.  Ads like the one on the right (found at http://adoholik.com) are very degrading to women.  This ad is sending a message that if you buy a woman one of our diamond engagement rings she will let you get into her pants.  Ads degrading women are quite common and if you are not intently looking for them it can go unnoticed.  Woman's bodies are often used to sell products and create sex appeal.  Through images and ads that degrade women it subconsciously affects us and makes men look at women as objects instead of human beings.  Some ads even sell rape as "sexy".  Below is the video of Killing Us Softly 3.  The link to the site is http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1993368502337678412#

AHA! Journal Week 2

After learning about the rule of thirds, I decided to go back an look at my favorite pictures I took while on my recent trip to Negril, Jamaica.  I put a 3x3 grid over the picture and saw that my two main focal points were not centered.  I think that because my legs and the palm tree are not centered it creates interest in the picture.

I watch a lot of movies and television shows.  After learning about the rule of three I also decided to randomly pause the movies I was watching to look and see where the focal points were and how the shot was set up. 

I am glad I learned about the rule of three because it has given me a different perspective on how I view things.

Lately I have been addicted to this game called Angry Birds. Angry Birds is a puzzle game. The point of the game is to "pop" all of the green pigs because they have stolen your eggs. In each level the pigs are behind different barriers. Your job is to shoot these different colored birds (all of which have different abilities) at the pigs while trying to get the most possible points. You also want to try to use the least amount of birds to beat each level.

How does this relate to Visual Literacy? Simple, it is a very colorful and interactive game that involves a great deal of problem solving. I believe even though this game sounds simple and does not have a very strong story line could be a great game to have in classrooms. The strategy and problem solving in this game allow for it to be beneficial to education. This is because it trains your brain and challenges you to think about different approaches to a problem.

AHA! Journal Week 1

Visual symbols greatly affect my life on a daily basis.  There are so many visual symbols in the world.  One type of symbol I see a lot of is company and product logos.  Every morning when I get up I see the LG logo on my television.  When I see products with the LG logo I trust their quality because I have purchased LG products before and they have worked very well.  The visual symbols of company and product logos affect the products I use and where I choose to shop.

Another visual symbol I see on a daily basis is stop signs.  I am so used to seeing a bright red sign in the shape of a octagon.  When I see this red octagon I immediately think stop.  The red is used to grab your attention and warn you so that you are able to remain safe.

Intro Preso Experience

I found the partner intro presentations to be fun and creative.  There was no set way of presenting our introductions to the class. This allowed everyone to get creative and use any medium they wanted to make their introduction. Andrew and I chose to use Prezi. They call it "the zooming presentation editor."  For those of you who are not familiar with Prezi, it is basically a more interactive tool that is similar to PowerPoint. There are a lot of differences between the two but they are ultimately used for the same things.  I felt that our Prezi presentation was good. I could do it again I would have practiced it with Andrew to make sure we got our timing better.  Here are a couple cool presentations that show you what Prezi is capable of.  The first one shows how much better Prezi presentations are compared to PowerPoint presentations.  The second one is a Prezi on how to create a great Prezi.

Prezi > PowerPoint

How to Create a Great Prezi


picture from: http://4coopers.wikispaces.com/file/view/prezi.com-logo.png/140655255/prezi.com-logo.png

CCA Expectations

This semester I signed up for a classed called Classroom Computer Applications.  Just from the name I figured it would be about teaching us about how to incorporate different things that can be done of the computer into the classroom.  I feel that this class will rehash some of the major topics and ideas that I have learned about in my other instructional technology classes.  This however is not a bad thing.  It is good to be able to have more time to use these applications in order to become more comfortable with them.  Lots of these applications have multiple ways that they can be used and incorporated into the classroom.  I am excited to be able to be involved in a flat classroom project again.



picture from: http://www.coloring-pages-kids.com/coloring-pages/family-people-jobs-coloring-pages/computers-coloring-pages/computers-coloring-pages-images/computer-coloring-page-11.gif

Flat Classroom Project

Wow.  What can I say?  I just finished judging videos for the Flat Classroom Project 10-3b a couple days ago.  It was quite an experience.  Before being a judge of the videos I participated as an expert advisor for the group called How the World Wide Web Has Changed the World.  I had difficulty figuring out how to get approved so I would be able to join in the discussion.  When I was able to post in the discussion section of their page I never got any responses.  The students on this project really seemed to have a good grasp on what they were doing.  I did notice a few minor things that could have been changed and I noted that to the students.  I honestly felt a bit lost or unneeded during my time as an expert advisor.  If I were going to do that again I would like to be there right when they start instead of coming in after they have already started.
After my time as an expert advisor was up I signed up to be a judge of the students final videos.  I was signed up to judge videos from a different group than the group I was an expert advisor for.  This group was PLEs and Social Networking.  PLEs stand for Personal Learning Environments.  Out of the two roles I participated as I have to say I enjoyed the judging the best.  Each student had to sign up to make a final video that was between 1 and 5 minutes in length on their topic.  Their videos had other requirements as well.  There were about 5 different categories for videos under each team.  This allowed for the students videos to be more varied.  When the videos are looked at as a group it really gives a great end to their topic.

This was such a great learning experience and I would recommend this to anyone with even the slightest interest.  My only suggestion is that it is very important to be involved from the vary beginning of the project.  This way as an advisor you will be able to hopefully be more useful.