BP8_Links to RILS Comments

This RILS assignment was very interesting.  It was particularly interesting to see everyone's blog and their scenarios.  I've learned a lot this month about the different tools out there.  The two scenarios I commented on so far were Stephanie Waldner's and Hunter Menning's. 

Follow this link to Stephanie's  Designing My Educational Future blog and her RILS about Blogger. 

 

Follow me now to the blog of Hunter, Blogged On Phonics and his RILS on Poll Everywhere.

 

BP8_RILS Publication

Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario
ConceptShare
Dorreen Petersen Davis

1.     Brief Overview – If you are an instructor who teaches any of the arts you will be critiquing student artwork. Sometimes those critiques are instructor-to-student, student-to-student or both. Traditionally this is done either in person or via email. With larger class sizes it is hard to get to everyone in a timely manner, and if you do student group critiques the students will talk more about the weather than the artwork. If done via email it is cumbersome and response time is not immediate. ConceptShare makes sharing more collaborative and easy for both the student and instructor.

Senior students also are required to have at least 3 faculty members and the director critique their final portfolio – a very time consuming process for the student to connect with faculty. ConceptShare would make this process much easier and everyone involved could see other comments allowing them to look at other areas. Other processes that have been tried so far have not been real successful.

2. Target Audience (TA) - Fellow colleagues at the college we teach at. I invited seven of the graphic design instructors and Director for a total of eight.

3. Materials–

·     Computer

·     Email request for participation, which included quick start instructions on use of program and video links. 

·     Invite link to ConceptShare from me.

·     Four assets in ConceptShare for the TA to critique. Will ask each TA to comment on at least two assets, add artwork, and go back in later and reply to at least one comment. Would like them to learn how the program works as much as possible.

·     Google Doc form questionnaire about their experience.

4.   Objectives–

At the end of this scenario, the learners will be able to:

·     Understand how ConceptShare works.

·     Apply the majority of tools when critiquing a student’s artwork and be able to add another student’s work for others to critique.

·     Analyze and evaluate ConceptShare.

·     Compare ConceptShare to currently used process of student reviews and give recommendations on either using this tool at the school or suggest another alternative.

5.   Procedure –

·     Will work on tool myself and write all elements I want the TA to use

·     Send an email that will explain ConceptShare and any instructions on its use (possibly a video), my timeline for scenario, and for them to watch for their invite to look at the tool.

·     Send them their invite and link to Google form.

·     After reviewing forms will look at information received and make a conclusion.

6.   Web 2.0 Tool – ConceptShare is a tool where once a company or school purchase the usage rights can have any of their clients, workers, students upload their artwork, photography, videos, etc. for others to look at and make comments. This is a desktop-like application. 

7.   Social Participation/Social Learning–

·     An email that requests participation in the RILS, what I will be sending them in a couple days. This will also include a quick start instructions, a link to ConcpetShare website, and recommend videos to watch that demonstrates how ConceptShare work.

·     Send email of objectives and deadline for their trial.

·     Once I set up the learners as a reviewer, ConceptShare will send an invite via email linking to workstations I have set up. In the workstation will be several students artwork for them to critique.

·     ConceptShare will automatically send an email to all participants when anyone makes a comment, add an asset or reply to an existing comment. The email shows the asset and comment made and has another link back to ConceptShare, making it easy for them to go back and reply.

·     Once they are done will fill in questionnaire and submit back to me.

8.   Making Connections –

·     Instructors will work and understand the desktop-type application features to create workspaces, add assets and comment on projects.

·     Instructors will find this relevant and connect with the tool, as this could be a more efficient way for them to critique student work.

·     Instructors will connect easier with both students and other instructors as they interact with all those involved.

·     Instructors will discover how easy the collaboration is between students and colleagues.

9.   Create/Produce –

Because of how ConceptShare I will set up the account and invite the target audience in. Each participant will go into a workspace and make comments on assets (artwork) provided using the different tools and reply to at least one other reviewer. They must also add assets for others to comment on as well. When complete there should be at least ten pieces of art in the workspace they were given and an unlimited number of comments and replies.

10. Assessment –

TA will receive a link for a questionnaire with very specific questions and an area for comments and reactions to the tool. I will also meet and interview as many as possible about their experience and how they feel this can be used at our school.

11. Reflection –

During the scenario I too received emails of the learners comments, addition of assets and replies. This showed me if they understood ConceptShare. I would go into the workspace and see how they were using the tools to critique the artwork given and if they are adding other assets. Once I received the questionnaire I analyzed and evaluated their reflections on ConceptShare. Their interview added to their overall opinion of the tool and what if any recommendations they had to use or not to use at the school.

The process was challenging in the beginning and there were a couple of glitches I had to overcome. With the short time frame I had to work in a couple different directions at once. I had to get the correct trial version that was going to fill the outcomes I wanted from the RILS. Once I got the trial and received a quick review of the features I put together a workspace and set up the management for the reviewers. At the same time, I had to send out an email requesting the learners’ participation, introduce them to ConceptShare, and set their deadline. I finally got the workspaces up, reviewers set up and introduced only to find out they couldn’t get into the areas; so back to the drawing board. Next day, I worked with my rep and got the problem solved and re-invited everyone again. Now it was working but my time frame was shortened by 24 hours and not everyone was responding. I sent out another plea and success, they started critiquing. A day later, several of the reviewers couldn’t get back in to see the replies of their comments. So I had to go back in and figure out what happened. I determined that I had allowed them too much management capabilities and someone removed everyone from the workspace. Therefore, had to add them all back in. Looking back I feel I needed to have met with all of them as a group (extremely difficult to do) to do a mini-seminar on the tools and features.

Ultimately, when everything was working and everyone was making comments and adding assets, etc. this RILS was a success. The target audience thought this was a good tool to use for in class critiques and especially for our senior portfolio critiques.  In the area of the tool they had control over they felt it was easy to use and that students would be able to use it as well. They were mixed on whether they thought the student would use it. All of them said that they would use it if we had it available and would like to seem more on the tool. So hopefully during our break we can get together and look at it more closely.

PE5_ConceptShare

Wow! Working on showing how to critique artwork using ConceptShare is turning out to be more difficult than I thought.  Both the Screenflow program that will video the screen while I demo, takes a lot of memory and then ConceptShare runs really slow on my wireless network.  So I am trying to do it on my larger Mac the is linked directly to the internet.  So I now have it shot but my office Mac is older than my laptop and so now the Screenflow will not open for multiple reasons.  I am trying to export it into a mov file so I can open it in imovie.  Wish me luck, hope it works! 

Well, here I am again with my iMovie. My frustrations continued as I used Screenflow to record how to use ConceptShare and when I tried to move it into iMovie I discovered I had to export the screenflow into a .mov file.  No problem, right?!?!  Well, I got the movie exported however, the version I but on my large Mac was only a Demo version so my exported movie says demo.  Now I'm really growling – grrrr! But I need to continue on.  So I imported into iMovie where I added the voiceover and completed my video.  So it is done but it's not how I wanted it.  If only everything would have worked more smoothly on my laptop this would have turned out much better.  I did learn a lot and that is what is important. 

In closing, hope you enjoy!

PE4_ConceptShare

Earlier this month I found a Web 2.0 tool that I feel will help faculty critique student projects as well as senior portfolios.   There are times in classes that I want students to critique each other; currently I hand out a form and the students go in groups and critique each other.  I go around as well and try to listen to how the students critique – which are usually terrible. I also need to look at the projects and give critique as well, since the students do not look at the projects with a designer eye yet.  With this tool I can set it up so the critique can be student-to-student, instructor-to-student, or both.  If I set it up as both and then I go in I cannot only critique the artwork but critique of the student comments as well.  Right now they will just say I like that because I like that color. NO! Why is it the right or wrong color, how is the line, shape, message, etc. of the project.  This fills in a large void we have currently.

The layout of ConceptShare has a tiered-level setup – collections, workspaces and assets.   So what is each of these levels? Collections are the main folder that can either be a specific area of study for a school or a division of a company or as small as just and particular faculty member.  In each of those collections one can add the workspaces.  These workspaces depending on the original level can be the faculty, a work group or student folder.  Finally the assets are the work to be critiqued. 
 

Collections – 2
My classes and GD_BS Portfolios

Drop down menu also available on the left side
This collection will contain my classes

I have made 3 workspaces within 1 of the collections.
These are 3 of my classes

These are individual folder within the workspace –
I put individual student folders here

At each level you can set the email notification for each person that has been invited.  However, the reviewers can also adjust how they receive the emails.  So as the administrator I might set send email when: Any comment is made, replies to my comments and new assets added.  But the reviewer may just want notification for a new asset; they can reset it if wanted.   

Email to reviewer inviting them to
ConceptShare to critique work

The assets can be images (jpg or tif), vector (eps), video (Flash, AfterEffects), PDF files, and Word documents.  Once downloaded you can select your reviewers and send them and invite via email.  As the administrator I can allow the reviewers to see only specific areas.  I can left them see one or all of the collections, I can limit them to only specific workspaces within a collection or as low as only one student or piece of work.  Whatever I allow them to see is where ConceptShare will take them.  The email will have a link to my ConceptShare and the reviewer will just sign in with their own password and start to critique.

Assets for 1 student
This student has 2 projects to critique

One asset open and ready for critique

So that’s if for setting up the collections and getting it ready for the reviewer.  Next I will show you how one will critique using ConceptShare. See you soon!

BP7_Kuler iMovie

The assignment was to create a one-minute video.  We needed to think of our video as a commercial for our favorite Web 2.0 Tool for the week.  Hence, the Art Director came out of me and the video has a very commercial feel.  I also wanted to try something I hadn’t done and that is a movie with all still photography.  A very interesting process and more time consuming that I thought.  The challenge was not to make it just a slide show, but to add some variety and interest as I went along.  The time limit I feel was easier to achieve using this method as I could add and delete images as needed. I still however, ran out of time so didn’t get my music added. 

You can view it here or go to my Viddler page.

Hope you enjoy!

Dorreen 

BP6_Polleverywhere

Polleverywhere sounds like a web 2.0 tool that every instructor could utilize in their classroom. Follow this link to my comments on Hunter's blog where he discusses this tool.

Image from polleverywhere website

BP5_TrackClass

For a great student organization web 2.0 tool follow this link to my comments on Kimberly Duran's blog on TrackClass.

Become a follower of Dorreen on my blog:
DoDesignBlog

BP4_Kuler

Adobe Kuler is a very good site for anyone who has to choose colors for their design themes; graphic designers, interior designers, or anyone that wants to see how colors go together to create a mood or feeling.

Go to the website (http://kuler.adobe.com) which takes you to a theme window where you have a large selection of color themes.  You can see the highest rated, most popular, random or even type in a word that fits your design concept.  I chose romance and it came up with 340 selections.  I can reduce that number by adding the color rules for the theme.  For example, I want to use only complementary colors. If you do not like any of the themes, you can make your own (even from a photo from flickr™) or change one you have found. 

First selection after search for "romance"
339 more to look at

Once you have selected a theme you click on it and you go to a second window. Here you can manipulate the colors even further. It also gives you all of the numeric color values, so when my students need to know the CMYK numbers to make that color in their brochures or RGB if they need that same color scheme for a website, they have it here. 

Cool Romance is the color scheme I chose

Second window for "Cool Romance"
Here I can adjust the colors or get the color values for each

If you are a registered user you can then save the theme to your own Mykuler space where you can go to any time to view and retrieve the themes you like. If the person using Kuler has any of the CS5 programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.) they can go to the panels within that program, connect to Kuler, find the color scheme they want to use and then add it to their swatches tool within the program. 

I really like this web tool and will start requiring my students to use it to select their colors for their projects. 

PE3_iMovie

By the end of the video the theme had changed from having everyone just meeting my dogs, to a video for my daughter about her leaving for college and helping her remember the menagerie that she left behind. So this is for her!

I had gone through the video making my own transitions with no theme and then at the end I wanted to see what would happen with using one of the themes they have and how it effects the outcome of the video.  I liked both but ended up using the themed video for the end.  I would like it if we could create our own theme, but understand that this program is for the masses and not necessarily for the professional.

I have been using ScreenFlow the last few projects and I am liking features in both;  combined they would be very powerful.  

Now that I have my movie uploaded and have played it I'm not happy with the quality.  The quality is a little better on viddler.  The link for Viddler is: http://www.viddler.com/explore/dpetersendavis/videos/11/
Here it is a little better, but if I go higher in quality it takes so much time to upload. Is there a standard?

PE2_iMovie

After shooting all three of my dogs, I went into iMovie and started to import video and edit.  The tutorial really made this much easier, especially in choosing the video and marking the parts of the videos I wanted to use.  I still had to go back the tutorial a couple of times for the audio and transitions.  I soon had the majority of my video but I didn’t have a beginning or and ending so had to go back to past video and photos to complete the storyline.  Again, it was easy to find everything and bring it into the event and then into the project.  

All video imported

The hardest thing for me is to grab the part of the video or audio that I want to change and adjust.  It would take me a couple times to get into the correct window or effect the change properly.  Testing the video manually also doesn’t flow as easy as it appeared to move for Garrick in the tutorial. 

Rejected video

Voice over and music added

Overall – a much better experience. 

PE1_iMovie

When we were introduced to iMovie during month 1 I spent a lot of time experimenting the testing different effects and how to move things around, etc., which was discussed in this tutorial.  I only wish I had worked smarter then and used the tutorial instead of using the iMovie help windows and struggling.  I tell my students to use Lynda if they need help and then I didn’t do it either. 

For me seeing how Garrick thought through his project was just as helpful as how the tools within iMovie work. I’ve overseen many photo shoots and videos but have never been on the editing side.  It is very similar in thinking about how to set it up but very different in the execution. Understanding the difference between a project and event now makes total sense. I particularly liked that section on organizing the clips as the first time I worked in iMovie I kept reviewing the same clips over and over, that the majority of the time was spent deciding what to use and what is valid or not.  The shortcuts to help you make those decisions more efficiently and will really help in the future.  The other section that was very helpful was the audio section and the shortcuts there as well. 

I have gone through the tutorial once making notes and now I’m off to go shoot some video and put the tutorial to the test.  I look forward to sharing my next few steps with you. 

BP2_ConceptShare

In researching Web 2.0 tools I chose ConceptShare.  When I first selected this tool I was thinking that is would be a tool that my students could use that would help them come up with a concept for their projects, but I was very wrong.  But this is a case of being wrong took me to something so right.  While researching this tool, I discovered that Full Sail uses this tool, so if any of the instructors or students who work at Full Sail have used it I would like to get some comments on how you like it.  

I reviewed the website and went to the blog which took me to a couple tutorials on schools and companies who have used it. I then requested a trial version and also talked to one of the representatives with took me through some of the features I hadn’t gotten to.  

I can see this as a very helpful tool, not only for my class critiques, but for proofing with my clients. Currently I either get an email or a phone call with the corrections.  Their comments may say “page 10, left column, 3^rd paragraph, change 3^rd sentence to read . . .  ”.  With this they could just highlight the problem area and then type in the new comments.  With this tool they can highlight and make the correction either in place or in the comments box.  They can go through the whole document with comments and if I don’t understand something I can reply back to the comment I don’t understand. 

A Main Asset

Two projects in the main asset

You can point at a problem area and make a comment

You can highlight an area of interest and made comments

Here I am showing points for the same problem,
circled another problem and made comment

It is very user-friendly; even my clients (who are not necessarily web 2.0 tool savy) could use it. When I received the trial version it took me about 5 minutes to start adding projects and to start commenting on them.

For my classes, I can have a learning resource center where I can create tutorial listings for demos I use in class or I’ve made for a project, then direct the students to the tutorial to fix a problem.  I can have students upload their projects here and either make comments or allow fellow students to comment.  It will allow the student to reply to me or anyone else as well. I can make it as private or as public as I want. 

I am also a member of the portfolio committee.  Currently, one of the faculty members is using a blog for the students to show their portfolio and to allow faculty and fellow students to comment on portfolios.  However, this would be a great tool, more interactive and allows for visual comments as well. Here we can easily see other faculty comments, eliminating redundancy, hence not wasting our time or the students.

At the end of the project I could make a PDF summary so the student could download all the images, comments etc into one document and keep for their records.

This may be a perfect tool to use for my capstone! I’ve gone way over the word count but I am so excited about this tool. I have already shared it with a fellow faculty member and plan to show my director tomorrow.