“Design Matters” Main Points

November3

What we do should have utility (function, form, and purpose) and significance (something that makes it stand out). These were the over arching principals of his presentation. There were five sections, or strands to the presentation. He touched on the two principles in each of these sections.

Planning: You may not know about technology, but you know what a good lesson and a good plan for students looks like. You wouldn’t have them write without a plan or organizer, don’t let them do visual projects that way either. You should give students guidelines, rubrics, etc.

There are elements of good imagery, just like there are elements of good writing (example: rule of thirds). Don’t use text when you can use imagery, PowerPoint is a visual tool, not a text tool. He tells people to avoid clip art. In general and especially with my older students (9-12 year olds), I do. Cartoons however, work better with primary, so I use clip art images with them more often. I would like to have them with a more “mature” visual sense, but they understand, and respond better to clip art or cartoon-type images.

Whitespace adds emphasis. Here is an example of space (not just white) making the photo:

layoutdesign.jpg The picture on the left is too cropped. There is no space for the action to continue. The photo on the right has space of the ball to move to giving a great sense of action, instead of cramped and crowded space.

Constraints mean that less can be more. Start with small projects (30 seconds, not 5 minutes on video projects). Mr. Shareski talks about the “Four Slide” contest which I participated in. I’m having my oldest students make movies (PSAs on perseverance). Rather than have them do something long, I ask for just 30-60 seconds because I not only do constraints make you condense your ideas, the length means that you aren’t overwhelmed in the production of material.

Innovation: start with a blank slate, not the template. The best analogy I can give for this is the scene in “Searching for Bobby Fisher” where he’s being asked to figure out a series of moves, and the chess teacher tells him to clear the board, and he has to visualize the chess board with no other pieces but the two that are critical, and to help them the teacher sweeps all the other pieces off the board, so they don’t clutter his thinking. I’ve given my students blank or heading only templates a lot this year because the ideas or the design just doesn’t fit the canned templates from Microsoft.

Next, what are my plans for the future?

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