- It's just a link, not a heavy file!
- Only the latest version of the document!
- Everyone's copy updates instantaneously!
And when you've had your Cloud Moment, you never go back again. At a workshop in Hong Kong several years ago, I attended a session about using wikis in education. It all made immediate sense to me. As soon as I got home, I started a wiki for my Physics teaching resources. When I told my son I was looking for a good name, he said: "Just make sure it's nothing nerdy".
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Babette Weatherell made the logo of my first wiki[/caption]So my first website was born. One fortuitous decision I made right at the start was to organise the pages exactly as the IB and IGCSE Physics teaching syllabuses are structured. This means that students have an immediate understanding of where to find things. I also created all the pages ahead of time so that when I came across a resource which I would only use in six months, I knew where I could embed it to find it again.
Many wikis, websites and weeblies later, I am thinking hard about my latest online project. The IB's Theory of Knowledge programme has a strange effect on many of its teachers: we see materials for lessons everywhere. So I started Knower's Arc, a teaching blog on which I report about the resources I have found and want to share. I've made a reasonable start, but now I'd like to review my design decisions and build it out to include webpages.
Decision 1: I decided not to use any of the default suggestions from Blogger; rather, to make the blog distinctive, I adapted the Simple template with my own aesthetic choices.
Decision 2: No Ariel font, obviously. I felt that Cherry Cream Soda was a bold choice. As Claudio Guglieri advises: "be playful and consistent when using typography".
Decision 3: I read a great blog post about some prize-winning websites. One of them was inspired by Vincent van Gogh's colours which I hoped would convey his emotional values to my readers.
Decision 4: Although there are many better photographers, I prefer to communicate a personal tone by using my own images. For the banner I cropped a photo of buffalo I took last year in Wyoming. Some of the colours in the scheme I had chosen were repeated in the image.
Decision 5: My main organising principle was to use a limited range of tags related to the ToK course so that visitors to the site could search for posts connected to their particular interest.
But do they all work together?
"Symphony...is the ability to put together the pieces." (Dan Pink quoted by Reynolds)
What I tried to do was to discern simple principles with which to make my design choices. I am conscious that aesthetic decisions have an emotional component and have tried to embody a confident and calming yet inspired vibe.
It's not really for me to say whether my whole exceeds the sum of the parts. Is the font a little bit crazy? Is the title text too pale? Have I been too seduced by the idea of magnificent buffaloes and accepted a blurred picture? The creator is often not the best person to critique the creation. In the next two weeks before I work on my re-design, I'll seek advice from teachers, students and my CoETaIL cohort (please let me know in the comments!).
In his blogpost about presentations, Garr Reynolds recommends starting on paper.
"It's during the preparation stage that you slow down and "stop your busy mind" so that you may consider your topic and your objectives, your key messages, and your audience."
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A site for sore eyes[/caption]It's perfect advice, in my opinion. I have learned that an analogue medium is more flexible and reactive when one is throwing around ideas to see what works. On the right is a representation of the site as it is now so that I can re-imagine the elements. I'm also planning to expand its purpose to a website built around a blog.
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My initial thought shower[/caption]I brainstormed that idea (left) and will let those thoughts simmer for a while now. My previous experience taught me that you've got to get the structure right before investing time in the content.
FINAL THOUGHT
Last week our Grade 7 students finished their infographics project. They did a great job and produced a lot of clear visual explanations. Something I noticed, however, was that in 100 infographics, although they had clearly cited what they had appropriated from other sources, not one student had used an original photograph or image. And the topic of the project was Luxembourg (where we live).
The Presentation Zen blog is a fund of great advice from which I have learned and which I shall pass onto my students. A school project is not a business presentation, however, and does not require the same production values. Our students have recently discovered that with Pixabay they are not even required to attribute what they have used.
Rather than capitalising on new creative possibilities, we are slipping into a world of lazy re-use (albeit perfectly cited). I am making a determined effort for myself and my students primarily to use original images in our blogs and presentations. They won't be as beautiful as the defaults, galleries and templates permit, but there will be more of ourselves in our work.
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteThanks for so many great ideas. I have to say I had an "ah ha" moment when I saw your sketch of your website design. I had read that Garr Reynolds suggests planning presentation slides on paper but I hadn't thought about how valuable it is to plan our website on paper. This advice comes at perfect timing because my students are creating a Google site for a country they are researching. We are still in the research phase, but I had the idea that as they are researching, they could draw out each page of their website in their notebook and use it to organize the information they are learning. To me, this is the best part of being in this cohort, the opportunity to be inspired and get new ideas from each other.
The other thing you said that really hit me was how "we are slipping into a world of lazy re-use." Wow! That is so true. That made me think about how important it is to include our own original works. It's just so easy to grab a cool photo with a few clicks. Now I'm thinking about how important it is to use my own works and encourage my students to do the same. So thanks for the encouragement.
--Michelle
Hi Steve, just a few thoughts off the top of my head to help guide some future considerations for your re-design. When we consider readability, a colored background (even black) often is one immediate area for improvement. The contrast between the color and font is important. Also, in terms of font choices, we need to consider how a particular font displays not only on the web, but on mobile devices, etc. Love the idea of using your own photos for your creations - I absolutely encourage that. Do you happen to have a higher resolution version you could find? In terms of navigation, perhaps the top links could be a drop-down menu or placed on the sidebar? Again, these are just things to think about as you move forward, but ultimately, it's your own creative domain!
ReplyDelete[…] In a previous post, I described how I initially decided on the look for my Knower’s Arc blog. Now everything has to change: function, layout, appearance and content. It’s nice when you get it right at the start (which I didn’t). Otherwise you need to intervene and fix it. Here goes. […]
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