Instructional Design and Digital Curriculum in Education Today... Black-and-White Photos and Photo Storage in Photography Today

Some interesting blog posts I have read recently about online courses (and blended learning) and photography...
 

"Addie-design" by Dave Braunschweig - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Addie-design.png#/media/File:Addie-design.png

Instructional Design...

Handy Checklist for Instructional Designers
KomiReddy Deepika
http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/checklist-for-instructional-designers

Do you use lists to help you organize your time and efforts? A list can help you to be efficient when you design online courses, too. Deepika's checklist has six parameters (with specific suggestions for each) to check when designing a course. The parameters include:

• learning objectives
• flow of content
• instructional strategy
• presentation
• assessments and feedback
• accessibility and navigation.

These are good reminders of what you should include when you create a course.

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Tips on Accelerating a Digital Curriculum in Your School Infographic
http://elearninginfographics.com/tips-accelerating-digital-curriculum-school-infographic/

The infographic in this article lists some best practices for implementing online programs. The basic ideas include:

• set goals for your digital curriculum
• bridge the "digital divide" with planning
• use digital content to shift students to active learning
• make your digital content easy for teachers to use and share
• use your digital curriculum to make time for the activities you value.

Each best practice lists specific ideas for that step. These suggestions work well for individual teachers as well as for schools and districts.


Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

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B&W Trees / Phil and Jo Schiffbauer / CC BY 2.0

Photography...
Video Series: Black and White
http://www.picmonkey.com/blog/black-and-white-effects/
 
Black-and-white photos are not just... well... black and white when you use PicMonkey for photo-editing. You can use a color picker with the black-and-white setting to filter color. The daguerreotype setting allows you to work with black-and-white or sepia or what looks like a dark sepia. And a color picker is available there, too, for filtering colors. Plus both these options have fade controls.

PicMonkey provides short video tutorials for these effects and they are creating additional videos for other black-and-white effects.

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Olde Time / Jeff Hitchcock / CC BY 2.0

All-Time Greatest Album: the best way to manage your photos online in 2015
Casey Newton
http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8467289/cloud-photo-storage-comparison-dropbox-icloud-flickr-onedrive-free

Casey Newton describes--and then charts the features of--eight photo storage services. He recommends which services work best for different types of photographers (average users and power users). He describes pros and cons for storage, auto-uploading, power, ease of use, value, and costs. The many comments at the end of this article discuss additional issues and provide useful insight.