Musings on my DQ (Session 1)
make notes about your thinking and driving question for your capstone website. Is your driving question the same thing that you wrote about in your capstone paper? Or has your focus changed? What is your statement of inquiry? Who is your audience?
My focus has not really changed, although if you read my paper and then look at my final capstone it will look like it had. What really happened was I had a focus, then the paper was off track and so I self-corrected my course back to my initial focus. The paper that I wrote took a detour away from my initial focus. This was largely because I was working with Ex Post Facto data and because I didn't have any access to students or more data my ability to concentrate on my focus was impaired. I ended up with a paper that is a really thorough data analysis, but doesn't much address my DQ which is: How can I use technology to help raise student reading engagement? Now that I have access to students again I can focus on actually performing some research to gather data that is relevant to my DQ.
My audience is my fellow teachers. I want to look into the ways that we as teachers can help reluctant readers make the journey into engaged readers.
My focus has not really changed, although if you read my paper and then look at my final capstone it will look like it had. What really happened was I had a focus, then the paper was off track and so I self-corrected my course back to my initial focus. The paper that I wrote took a detour away from my initial focus. This was largely because I was working with Ex Post Facto data and because I didn't have any access to students or more data my ability to concentrate on my focus was impaired. I ended up with a paper that is a really thorough data analysis, but doesn't much address my DQ which is: How can I use technology to help raise student reading engagement? Now that I have access to students again I can focus on actually performing some research to gather data that is relevant to my DQ.
My audience is my fellow teachers. I want to look into the ways that we as teachers can help reluctant readers make the journey into engaged readers.
Capstone Critical Friends (Session 2)
Preview and critique three capstone projects through the lens of a critical friend. Write a paragraph about each site answering the following questions: Who was their audience? Were they effective in presenting to them on every page? Why or why not? How did the logo relate to their content?
1. Dearborn
I like this logo, it's graphics are simple and clean. It has a two part title, I think that it might even be ok with just the first section of words. The words seem to overshadow the image. Although, maybe if it were larger, that wouldn't be the case. The audience here seems to be other teachers. Overall the pages were well designed, and I think that people (teachers) interested in what she's saying are well presented to. I think that the casual observer would do a lot of scanning and miss details because there is so much information presented in one place. After a full perusal of the website I think my initial impression about the text in the logo was correct; it would be fine without the secondary title portion. She was working with elementary students, but I think the learning outcomes would apply at any grade, and therefore the second part of text in the logo was extraneous.
2. Gottfried
This is a nice clean logo, it actually has quite a few words in it, but they aren't part of a phrase, so they don't appear to overwhelm the logo; they are integrated into it. I think the audience is teachers, this is because of the way that the information is presented. There is a level of assumed knowledge about the world of education that most students wouldn't have. That said, the information is clearly presented and I think that upper level students would also be able to interact with the website as well. The overall effectiveness of each page is excellent. I looked at the webpage intending to skim it, and ended up reading nearly all of it. It was so exciting that it sucked me in and. I think that the logo was perfectly prepared to match the content. It also makes sense that a logo about blogging (an inherently word based platform) might be more word based than others.
3. Vale
Again I feel like the image portion of this logo was dwarfed by the text. I like the image, it included multiple colors in a way that didn't muddle the overall image, and it was cleaver to use colors from the image in the text portion. The audience appears to be adults, but I'm not sure if it is other educators or parents. I'm leaning towards parents because there are many things that are explained that I think most teachers would be familiar with. Perhaps the audience is new teachers? The overall focus isn't clear to me. The logo seems to focus on classroom community (which could mean almost anything) and the information on the page seems to fall into two categories; classroom culture and highlighting achievement gaps. It's not super clear to me where the overlap occurs. I can guess, based on my own personal experiences, but I'm not sure what connections the author wants to make sure I see.
1. Dearborn
I like this logo, it's graphics are simple and clean. It has a two part title, I think that it might even be ok with just the first section of words. The words seem to overshadow the image. Although, maybe if it were larger, that wouldn't be the case. The audience here seems to be other teachers. Overall the pages were well designed, and I think that people (teachers) interested in what she's saying are well presented to. I think that the casual observer would do a lot of scanning and miss details because there is so much information presented in one place. After a full perusal of the website I think my initial impression about the text in the logo was correct; it would be fine without the secondary title portion. She was working with elementary students, but I think the learning outcomes would apply at any grade, and therefore the second part of text in the logo was extraneous.
2. Gottfried
This is a nice clean logo, it actually has quite a few words in it, but they aren't part of a phrase, so they don't appear to overwhelm the logo; they are integrated into it. I think the audience is teachers, this is because of the way that the information is presented. There is a level of assumed knowledge about the world of education that most students wouldn't have. That said, the information is clearly presented and I think that upper level students would also be able to interact with the website as well. The overall effectiveness of each page is excellent. I looked at the webpage intending to skim it, and ended up reading nearly all of it. It was so exciting that it sucked me in and. I think that the logo was perfectly prepared to match the content. It also makes sense that a logo about blogging (an inherently word based platform) might be more word based than others.
3. Vale
Again I feel like the image portion of this logo was dwarfed by the text. I like the image, it included multiple colors in a way that didn't muddle the overall image, and it was cleaver to use colors from the image in the text portion. The audience appears to be adults, but I'm not sure if it is other educators or parents. I'm leaning towards parents because there are many things that are explained that I think most teachers would be familiar with. Perhaps the audience is new teachers? The overall focus isn't clear to me. The logo seems to focus on classroom community (which could mean almost anything) and the information on the page seems to fall into two categories; classroom culture and highlighting achievement gaps. It's not super clear to me where the overlap occurs. I can guess, based on my own personal experiences, but I'm not sure what connections the author wants to make sure I see.