CITEd Toolkit

My experience with creating a CITEd Toolkit was frustrating. That may have something to do with me not being in the target demographic for the site. I tried to think of it as a resource that I could share with future colleagues (I currently do not have any colleagues that I could share it with), but even then I found it to be very limiting. At first, I went through the site looking for resources that I recognized and would feel comfortable recommending to others. I found only one. Then, I thought of other resources that I would like to include, but they were not available. So, I went through all of the roles and any category that I felt might be relevant to my goals. I feel like most of the resources were geared toward K-12, so they were not appropriate for me.

While I can see CITEd's potential, I can't help but wonder if it is early in its development. I think that there are better ways to share resources with colleagues that allow for much more flexibility. I am reminded of a social bookmarking tool that I once used. I am also thinking about how I could list links to resources on my website in the future and how that would allow me to choose resources that are much more relevant to my experience.

In thinking about how my toolkit might differ if I were sending it to an administrator as opposed to a technophobic teacher, I think that I might create a different toolkit for each of those scenarios. In considering the website again, maybe creating a list of links for each would be appropriate. Overall, I think the concept is great, and I can see the value in that concept, but for me it is not really relevant. There are some alternatives that could serve the same purpose, though.

Copyright and Fair Use

I started out by watching the Copyright on Campus video by the Copyright Clearance Center. I liked the animation, and found the content to be interesting. As I watched, I was reminded of my own experience with regard to attempting to properly use copyrighted material over the years. Then I watched Understanding "Fair Use" in a Digital World by Common Sense Media and the Teaching Channel. I found myself feeling less interested as I do not see myself in a middle school setting. Then I watched Should "Happy Birthday" by Protected by Copyright by the PBS IdeaChannel. I decided to watch it because I had recently heard something about this. I thought that I had heard an announcement about the copyright having expired, but the video states that that has not happened yet, so I must have been mistaken.

Then I watched YouTube Copyright Basics with Glove and Boots. I was trying to watch quietly, listening to the audio through my headphones so as to avoid disturbing anyone around me and found myself fighting back laughter. At first, I chose the video from the list because I though it might be relevant to something that I might do in the near future. I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining the video was. I especially appreciated them calling their own video boring, which I found to be hilarious. While I did appreciate the text that was included in the video, for me, the thing that made it most digestible was the incorporation of humor and I am making a mental note to remind myself to try to include humor in my own work.

When it came to the text resources, I found myself wishing that there was a resource similar to The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), which I frequently refer to for help with formatting my papers. So, when I saw the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center at the top of the list, I was immediately drawn to that. Though I found the site to be a bit dense, I have feeling that I will be referring back to it frequently. Being an "astronomer", I couldn't help but also notice the last entry in the list, "How does copyright work in space?" from the Economist. While I found the article to be interesting, it is not exactly the kind of resource that I was looking for.

As for copyright law in general, I find it to be cumbersome at best. My own personal policy has always been to find explicit mention of permissions at the source of whatever I am trying to use. If I can't find explicit mention, then I contact the source and request permission, in writing. This is what I have done with regard to reproducing content for newsletters, planetarium shows, etc. Now, though, I am not sure if that is proper procedure, not even after having viewed the resources mentioned above. And I am even more concerned about my MMP project. What is okay to post on my website, and what is not? Going forward, I think I will be spending more time on attempting to better understand my rights and the creators' rights, at very least.

Mini Art School: Working with Videos and Moving Images

I have to admit... I struggled with the idea of a storyboard for my website. To me, a storyboard is very linear and a website is not. I see a website as having something more like a tree structure. Also, when I am creating, I have a general outline in my head from which I work everything else out through experimentation. I find the idea of a storyboard for creating a website to be very confining. So, after talking it over with our professor, I decided to do something more like an org chart. I started to create it in Google Docs, but then I realized that the structure I was seeing in my head would be easier to create and edit in a spreadsheet, so I switched it over. I understand that the idea of the first half of this assignment was to create a visual representation of our project. However, my visualization of my completed website is not in terms of pictures, but rather structural organization. My brain is very much like a PC, as opposed to a Mac, so the structure looks something like what you would see if you went to a website's "site map". Here is my rough draft, which will be modified as I work through the project:

As for the video portion of this assignment, I was confused. I couldn't get past the word "text" in the instructions. I feel as though I may have missed something in the reading. Admittedly, I did go through the reading rather quickly so that I could get to creating the video as soon as possible. I was worried that I would not have enough time to finish it. So, I'm not sure that this is what our professor had in mind, but it was a useful activity nonetheless. I used Kizoa, which made it easy to create, but not so easy to download. In order to download it, I would have to pay for the service, which I found out after the fact through a pop-up message. So, I chose to export it to YouTube. That's when I received a pop-up message telling me that I would receive and e-mail message when my video was ready. After waiting rather impatiently for quite some time, I decided to choose another option, the best of which was a link. Here is what I came up with:

http://www.kizoa.com/Video-Maker/d25625037k4564864o1l1/mission-statement

Did I interpret the instructions correctly, or did I miss something?

Mini Art School: Working with Digital Images

When I was young, I loved to capture memories by taking pictures. This was before digital cameras, so I went through a lot of film. I didn't start playing with composition until years later. For me, considering composition became a part of the process of taking a picture, but I still enjoyed editing the images afterward. It was great to be able to change the composition after the fact, especially if I didn't get it right the first time.

This assignment served as a reinforcement for me. Not only did it make me more conscious of how I consider composition when I take a picture, but it also reminded me of the art classes that I have taken over the years. Composition was a huge consideration, especially when setting up a still life.

When I searched my collection of digital images for photos to edit for this exercise, I became aware of how I already set up a composition for a photograph. I tried to keep our Multimedia Montage Project in mind too, trying to find photos that I might like to include on my website. My first thought was to find a picture of Rutgers. This one is one of my favorites:

I used Pixlr Express to play with cropping and ended up with the following composition:

What I find interesting about this composition is that it makes me feel like I am there, breathing the cold air. Before I cropped it, the sidewalk was the focus instead of the air. It was not my intent to generate a sense memory of an experience, but that is what happened for me when I changed the composition, which is really interesting to me.

One of the other photographs that I chose was one of Columbia University:

 The columns inspired me to explore the vertical, as the instructions for this exercise suggested. I came up with the following composition:

I also added a filter which made the image a little bluer, which enhanced the feeling of winter from my perspective. I also like that it made the photo seem older. However, since the focus of this assignment was cropping, I should mention that I like how this composition emphasizes the columns. And I am looking forward to seeing how considering composition influences my projects for the rest of the semester and beyond.

I also chose the color echo and border variation exercises. Here are my two favorite results:

I enjoyed learning to use the dropper tool in a new way. I had never used it to change the color on the fly. As I dragged the dropper around, it changed the color of the item that I was working on at the time in a sort of continuum, so I just kept moving it until the text, for example, became a color that looked visually pleasing against the background that I had colored in the same way. The result of the border exercise is a bit comical to me. I find a lace border on an astronomical image to be hilarious for some reason. I suppose it is the contrast between the traditional and the scientific. It certainly made for a fun exercise, though.

Mini Art School: Effective Graphic Design and Design Layout

In the past, when creating a document, I have had some intuitive sense of what fonts are best to use for any given situation. Well, in my opinion, at least. When the document allowed for some creativity, unlike most of the stark professional documents I had to create, I have always enjoyed experimenting with different fonts. While I didn't necessarily analyze the details associated with my choices, I would often type my text and then change the font until I found one that felt right. The Word Portraits Exercise reminded me of this process.

I am not sure if my peers would come up with similar words that might be amplified or contrasted by a particular font, I did, however, enjoy experimenting with different combinations. Do you agree with the words that I have chosen to amplify and contrast with each font? What words would you have chosen?

My next experiment was to look at examples of layouts to determine how many used the rule of thirds and how many used the golden proportion. It seems like everywhere I look, I see the rule of thirds, especially in photographs. Or, maybe I should say, I see it in the majority of the "good" photographs that I come across. I remember hearing about the rule years ago and have since tried to keep it in mind when I take pictures. As for the golden proportion, I have a hard time recognizing it. I do vaguely remember being introduced to it as a kid, and I believe it was pointed out that the size of cereal boxes used the golden proportion. If that is the case, then I would argue that the golden proportion is everywhere around us, from the size of standard sheets of paper to the size of our smartphones, and everything that can be printed therein. What is your interpretation of the golden proportion?

Introduction to Rules of Design

I was excited to see that we would be getting some exposure to graphic design in this course. I have never had any training in this area and have always been curious about it. I have created many documents over the years, from newsletters to presentations, and have only had my instincts to guide me. I suppose that I did learn a few things in the writing courses that I have taken in the past, but I only remember vague references to white space and strict rules about what font can be used and when. And then there are the things that we get reprimanded for through our social circles, like using all caps, for example. Since I am interested in creating a website, I am looking forward to applying what we learn here.

I must admit, I had a hard time choosing something to analyze for this blog entry. I didn't know what to choose. Despite having done the reading, I still feel like a novice. I decided to go to Google and do a search for a flyer, particularly something that would be an example of what not to do, that might also have some obvious flaws that I could pick out. This was the first result, which can be found at http://santamariachambernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/bad-example-of-clip-art23.jpg:

My first thought was that this thing looks awful. Then I thought about how this flyer looked like something I might have created many years ago, when Microsoft Word was in its infancy. Then I began to recall what I had read this week. I noticed the use of several different fonts, which is not recommended. And the placement of each element makes the flyer feel messy. Then I thought about the margins, or rather lack thereof, and the use of bulky borders that was cautioned against in the reading.

It wasn't long before I started to realize why this came up as an example of poor flyer design. It includes so many examples of what we should not do. For example, the use of underlining to create emphasis is not necessary here. I also think that it would have been more effective to choose fewer images and to have utilized the grouping technique. I also think that the author could have chosen a more appropriate use of emphasis on more important elements and that attention should have been paid to the use of color throughout. And it appears that no attention was paid to alignment or trapped space.

I think that any of us, with what we have learned this week, could create a better flyer than this. I think that, if we did, our final product would not only follow the rules, but I also think that we would find a way to choose design elements that would relate to the subject of music. After all, this is a flyer about music lessons. Musically, this flyer sounds like a bunch of band instruments that have been dropped in a pile on the floor. I think we could make something that would sound better than that.

Learning through Online Communities

As part of step one in the procedure for my Multimedia Montage Project, I have joined the "Teach Astronomy" Google group and NASA's Center for Astronomy Education (CAE) Facebook Group. I am interested in developing a website that is in line with my mission, both personal and professional, which is to expand human understanding of the universe. My specific area of interest is cosmology, which is the study of the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe. However, this is a highly specialized area that falls under the broader topic of astrophysics, and even broader topic of astronomy. Since I would like my website to appeal to all ages, but primarily high school and up, I think that it is important to focus on the basics that would be most readily absorbed by the general public. Ideally, as I see it right now, I would like my website to serve not only as a source of learning, but also as a source of inspiration for further study. I envision it as an informal learning source that leads to more formal learning opportunities.

I believe that the communities that I have joined will help me to gain a better understanding of the current state of astronomy education in general. I would, however, like to find more communities to join that will help me with understanding how best to communicate the subject of cosmology with a general audience. (I am thinking that I may have to break the site down into areas that include something like a kids corner and other areas that provide more detail for advanced individuals.) The majority of the resources seem to be in the area of physics education, and there are some with regard to astronomy education, but few related to cosmology education. Also, in my search for astronomy education related communities, I came across some great multimedia resources. I am also wondering if there are communities related to astronomy related multimedia and/or web development. I am looking forward to searching for more communities to join and believe that they will continue to influence my work far beyond this course.