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.

Tools to Design Graphics Pages

Brent Schlenker describes two interesting tools for creating graphics, Canva (https://www.canva.com) and Placeit (https://placeit.net/), in a recent blog post. I decided to try Canva... and then to compare it with PicMonkey's (http://www.picmonkey.com) design and collage features. (Note: this post has been modified since its original publication earlier today.)

 

Designed w/ Canva using my own photo

Designed w/ PicMonkey using my own photo

    

Designed w/ Canva using my own photos

Designed w/ PicMonkey using my own photos

Both applications are easy to use. Canva is a design tool which provides photo-editing options. PicMonkey is a photo-editing tool which has options for designing pages and creating collages.

I find PicMonkey easier to use, but I'm sure that my experience using it plays a large part in that. This is my first time trying Canva. Both applications provide useful content such as fonts and graphics. You can use each well for free, but both also have additional features and/or content available for a cost.

Both applications were easy to use for my first experiment, the two graphics pages at the top of this page. I used the blog graphic page in Canva and the design option in PicMonkey. Using PicMonkey feels more comfortable, but then I have used (and have been pleased with) PicMonkey for a long time.

After publishing this post earlier today I decided that a fair comparison requires me to also create something more challenging. So, I designed the themes posters displayed above. Canva is rather easy to use for this task. I can tilt the photos for a more casual look, although I chose not to do that for this test. I particularly like two features: (1) the ability to arrange individual photos forward or backward (on top of or behind other photos) and (2) being able to arrange the photos free form rather than in a matrix.

The design option in PicMonkey did not give me the flexibility I need for the themes poster. PicMonkey's collage option works fairly well, however. One feature I would like to have available when creating a collage is the ability to arrange an individual photo forward or backward when it overlaps another photo.

Angie Nelson also tried Canva and decided to compare it with PicMonkey. Read her blog post to see how she compares the two applications. (Hint: she also sees pros and cons with each.)

At this point PicMonkey is still my go to application for much of my work with graphics, including photos. But, it's good to know there's another application with a different approach available.

Do you use PicMonkey or Canva to design graphics pages? Or do you have a different tool that you use?

What Color is Your World Website?

This week (February 2, 2014) I am sharing several useful ideas and resources that I discovered through my PLN. The topics are:

• free photos you can use

• using color appropriately on a website

• facilitating online courses and

• an introductory video for mobile learning.

Each of the four topics is in an individual post.

Cuadros / Natalie de Frutos / The Pattern Library

eLearning Design – Choosing the Right Color
http://www.knowledgedirectweb.com/elearning-design-choosing-color/#

When we design websites or put together online courses or activities the content, of course, is most important. However, our reaction to the content is colored (pun intended) by the colors used.

Do you know…

• Do we need to use a little or a lot of a warm color for it to make an impact?
• Are there any rules for what colors should be used for text?
• Which colors work well for colorblind students?
• What is the most liked color?
• What colors work well with children?
• Do those same colors work well with adults?

Check the eLearning website for answers to these questions and additional information. (Hint: an answer to one of these questions is blue.)