So this is my Midterm prestation of learning blog post. They are orginized under the following headlines. Enjoy!
1.For Humanities: the Explain Everything and advertising.
2. Scimatics: Child book
3. Maker: blog and photo documentary
4. PGP: goal setting
5. Winter Exhibition
1. A) Out of the assigned tasks that I have done so far, which has been the biggest failures and why?
A) Advertisement-Humanities.
Out of all the work that I have done, the one that was the least successful was the first project, advertising. It was the first time I had experienced working with advertising so of course it was difficult at the start to grasp the concept.
I think that one of our greatest failures was not asking for more specific information about our chosen local business, Ahoy, so that we could have learned more about who we were advertising for and how we could incorporate our ideas with theirs. Even with this obstacle, we were still able to create a few good drafts that met the criteria. Later on when interviewing Dave, the owner of Highlife Adventures , we used our interviewing experience and knowledge and asked as many questions as possible to get the best results.
As seen in this post we were much more efficient in finding important information and using it effectively.
B) Worldview humanities
Another example of failure and not giving up would be My World View task for humanities.
I was assigned to make a animated video that explained My World View in five minutes or less. Explaining My World View in such a short amount of time is challenging by its self, but to animate it and make the pictures move was also a problem since I had very little experience with picture animations. Luckily for me I was allowed to use an app called Explain Everything which had everything I needed and more. My first draft was a complete failure. No excuses, it had not met any of the criteria. The pictures were moving but like a slide show. I had to figure out what was working and what needed improvement, and then start over again, but this time I was set on the right track and I had a plan for what to do next. Here are both videos that show my growth.
Video 1. video one
Video 2. video two
2.What photo skills I have learned and need to continue to develop? (PHOTO SKILLS)
There was one project in particular where I had to use a number of different apps to create the final product. These apps were all new to me which made this task especially challenging. The project was to create an ad for Highlife Adventures, a zip lining company that I mentioned earlier. It took many drafts to come up with this final one.
But I have to tell you how I ended up here.
(See fist section for link)
To create my advertisement I had to use up to five different apps to change colour, shift images, add shadows and much more. As you can see, the first advertisement that I made was not the best because It was hard to change and alter this image and the photo could have been better adjusted so not so much light was in the image.
Now in the last image you can see much improvement. Although the photo is only one of the huge improvements, there is much more that went into this image. The title in the top took a long time to crop, edit and trim so just the logo was in frame. The text was from other apps called over and Typorama , which allowed me to add interesting fonts with different styles onto the photo. Lastly would be the actual photo. I used Snapseed, SuperimposeX and the Photos app itself to make the image darker, move the shadows around and make sure that the picture did not interfere with the text. This task was a great opportunity to get to know how to use all these different apps which will come in handy later on.
Due to these assignments I have become more aware of one photo ad i see around me because of this experience I am now aware of all the different ads. The thing that I really understand now when I see an ad is how much time and effort went into such a small ad. It makes me wonder how much work went into these professional ads because even out simple ads took at least a month.
I am still challenged to communicate message/feeling through one photo, hope there are more opportunities in the future even through all this learning and experience, it can still be challenging to communicate felling and messages through advertisement. Sometimes its hard to create and ad that really speaks to the audience.
The last part of this advertising adventure would be heading to Pound And Grain where professional advertisers looked over our work and gave advice on how to improve. This experience was really inspiring because there were professionals working with apps that resembled what we were using to creat very basic ads.
3. What video skills I have learned and which skills do I need to continue to develop?
photo documentry-Maker
An example of some of the skills I have learned in this short time that I have been in PLP are best represented in my religious photo documentary. Over the last three and a bit months I have developed many different skills with my Ipad and I put those skills into my photo documentary. We had to design a documentary that represented different religions worldviews so I had to take pictures at religious sites.Then out of those photos I had to find which ones best fitted my topic, this meant that I had to use a few different apps that I had recently learned about to edit, crop, center and focus on certain objects if needed. Is not only showed me how many different things I could do with just the basic setup of tools, but how much more I now needed to learn about more advanced tools to make and take better pictures and images.
The second part of learning how to use new skills involved my blog, where this post is found.
It took a lot of time, effort and tools to make the perfect setup. I had to pick a template that we thought was best for our blogs, but that was not the hard part. The hardest part would be creating the actual posts, mostly because we had no idea in the beginning how to make posts! I had to learn how to use different tools within my blog that let me incorporate photos, sideshows and much more that will help my blog become more interesting. To create just one single post requires me to first write a draft, edit that draft, and photos and sometimes videos of slideshows. I occasionally have to add a YouTube video that I have created and I am telling you that one of the most frustrating things about PLP is trying over and over again for and hour until finally your video loads. Although this takes time and effort, it produces good work and good content for my blog. There is still much that I have to learn, especially about becoming efficient.
4.What decisions did I make about how I approach different projects?
Two great examples to explain this question is my Tectonic Plate Book and Goal Setting for children.
PGP/ Scimatics
The big difference between these two is that for the Tectonic Plate book I already had the idea in my head and I knew where I needed to go and how to get there. Where as with my Goal Setting I had no idea whatsoever about how to do it or what it would look like in the end. I had to rely on the instructions and go slowly step by step.
Tectonic book:
During the making and planing of my Tectonic Book I already knew what the final product would look like, so I just used backwards design to complete the task. I already knew what to draw and how to draw it to show my understanding of tectonic plates and how I could explain it to smaller children. Even though I had never done this assignment before I had a clear picture of what I had to do. It was like filling in the blanks or finishing a puzzle that was already half done. All I had to do was put pictures and words into the space where they belonged. Having a clear idea of the final product really helped complete this task.
Goal Setting:
Goal Setting was much more different then making my Tectonic children’s Book mostly because I had never done anything like this and I had to something that I was unfamiliar with unlike drawing a book. With the Goal Setting I am supposed to read a book then answer questions accordingly, so I just dove into the book and just kept doing what it told me to do. The major difference about how I approached these two very different tasks was mostly based on prior knowledge and which one comes more naturally compared to the other one. I am getting more familiar with goal setting, but unlike the book I have no idea of what’s ahead of me and what I have to work towards. I definitely think that this is in area where much improvement has and hopefully will been made
Example: the Winter Exhibition humanities/ maker.
5. During the Winter Exhibition there where a few people whose work/presentation style I would like to emulate.
The first person’s work that really stood out to me was in a stand not far from mine. They were always on topic, talking about all parts of their religion and never pausing once until their audience had a thorough understanding of the religion they were presenting. Secondly this same group of people had an excellent game to get the audience involved with the presentation rather than just listening to some person talk about something they may have never heard of. I think that this person and group did an amazing job and I hope I will be able to appear as knowledgeable and confident as then with more practice.
The second person I noticed really helped their team during the making of their set up for their Winter Exhibition. This person was a real leader by getting people on task and doing what they were meant to do. They helped those who needed most wether that be helping them get materials or helping them with their assignment. They were not bossy or rude and they made their peers feel confident.This leadership is something that I would like to add to work I do later on.
So from just the Winter Exhibition alone their was somethings I noticed that I would like to incorporate into future projects.
In conclusion during the last three months my learning has grown because of all the new experiences. I can keep on learning by pushing my self to learn new and challenging skills all the time.
That’s all for now!