My colleague’s blog entries

Tilt Brush Gallery by Google

Website: www.tiltbrush.com

This is a site that I saw on another blog from a student in my class. Tilt brush is a Virtual reality drawing application that allows the user to draw everywhere they can see. This is great for art students and designers. This is something that I would definitely try to use in a graphic design adult education setting.

Discovery VR

Website: www.discoveryvr.com

Virtual reality is the new “it” technology. Discovery VR allows the teacher to show the students a new perspective on education. This is better than simply reading a book about an island or a specific place. This website allows you to visit those places and look around as if you were there. This is a great website to use in the classroom for any age.

Educational Games for Kids

Website: https://www.education.com/games/

This is a great site for kids that are at an elementary level. This site has worksheets, lesson plans, songs, and lots of creative ideas to teach K-5th grades. For students this is a great site because it will allow them to have fun while they learn. Even though it can’t be used in an adult education setting, it still is a site to look at.

Digital citizenship, ethics, netiquette

Behance

Website: https://www.behance.net/

Behance is a social networking portfolio site. It allows people to connect with other artist and employers that are looking for a specific art style. This is great for artist or people that just want to keep track of a portfolio and connect with other people. It does this by making it easy for users to assemble an attractive portfolio of their work, organized by project, which is then available for visitors to browse.

 

Facebook

Website: http://www.facebook.com

Facebook allows user to learn about digital citizenship, ethics and netiquette. There are so many people that interact with the site there is no reason for a person to not learn how to act on the internet. There is so much wrong and so much right on facebook. People learn to use emoji’s correctly and how to say everyday words in internet slang. People can send personal messages if they do not want everyone in their conversations. This can be useful in the class because you can create private pages that only the teacher and students can see.

 

Distance Education Technologies

Moodle

Website: https://moodle.org/

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) that is great for educators. Many higher education schools use Moodle. You can set up online classes, gradebooks and more. It is user friendly to the host and the participants. You can make quizzes that automatically grade themselves as well as set the percentage for each project given. Moodle allows the user to embed videos from other sites for your students. This is a great tool to use in an online environment. It is also a great way to keep up with students because it allows a person to send emails through Moodle directly or instant message.

Blackboard

 

Website: http://www.blackboard.com/

Blackboard is one of the first course management systems that I have had the pleasure working with in an online environment. It is easy to use and works similar to Moodle. I do find Moodle a little more user friendly probably because that is what I use now in my online classes and I have gotten used to it. I use it now in the graduate school that I attend and it is very user friendly and has videos and modules for me to go through each week. This is a good tool to use for online learning.

 

Games, simulations and virtual environments

The Bezier Game

Website: http://bezier.method.ac/

The Bezier game is a great game to use for adult learners in the field of graphic design. I use this in my class to allow students to practice programs such as Photoshop and illustrator without actually having the program. The pen tool is one of the most difficult for students to learn how to use because of the mechanics of the tool. The Bezier game allows you to practice using the pen tool in a fun way for first time users. The program is like a tutorial that you follow and each time a student completes a task then a harder task will open. This is a great way to get familiar with one of the hardest tools to use in Photoshop and illustrator. Please click on the website to try for yourself (Photoshop not needed and no downloading necessary).

 

 

OSMO (pizza Co.)

Website: https://playosmo.com/en/pizza-co/

Osmo is a kit that is for IPad that allows the user to play specific apps made for osmo. One of the games is called Pizza Company and it allows the user to run his/her own pizza company. The game is for kids but as an adult I find myself enjoying the programs with my daughter. This is something that can be used in an adult education setting for business or math. This is because some adults still have trouble counting money.

Pizza Company allows you to become a store owner that makes pizza for your clients. When clients finish eating you try your best to check them out while processing another order. Like real life some customers get angry and leave if you do not serve them in time. The goal is to make a profit each day and upgrade your store. Osmo has many apps to help anyone get creative with drawing, counting, and puzzles.

 

Mobile Learning Technolog

IPad Pro

Website: http://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/?afid=p238%7Cp4YdsWwR-dc_mtid_2092592t39165_pcrid_77927893392147

The apple IPad is great for learning. The IPad pro is an uncompromising vision of personal computing for the modern world (apple.com). It allows you to play games, download educational apps, work apps, and apps fro leisure. Along with the apple pencil that allows you to draw images, take notes, or just maneuver through the device. This is great to use in the classroom. As an art and design teacher this will be very useful in my classroom for student’s sketches and simple quiz assignments for the class. There is also an app for class attendance that can be checked off as students enter the room.

Photoshop for IPAD

As a graphic designer Photoshop is one of the many tools that we use to create. The IPAD allows students to use Photoshop on the go. There is no excuse for not practicing the program needed to succeed as a graphic design. This is a great way to give small practice assignments to students that can be completed in class, at a coffee shop, or a bus stop. This is a great app to use for a growing designer.

Reference

IPad Pro retrieved from: http://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/?afid=p238%7Cp4YdsWwR-dc_mtid_2092592t39165_pcrid_77927893392147

 

Social Networking Technologies

Instagram

 

Website: www.instagram.com

Instagram is a website that allow people to share their photos and videos. You can sign up by email or connect with Facebook. The app can also be downloaded to your phone or tablet. Instagram is different from Facebook because it mostly uses pictures in the news feed instead of useless information like found on Facebook. This is a great tool to use in adult education classes especially for art or design majors. As a designer, I would allow my students to create an account to post their work. They also can follow artist with similar interest and companies. By using the hashtag (#) people can alert companies or people to the post that was sent to the feed.

Pinterest

Website: www.pinterest.com

Pinterest is a wonderful site that is also picture based. The user can sign up through an email account or through Facebook. The user can create what is called “Boards”. Each board can be customized to hold specific pins (pictures). This is a great tool to use in the classroom because students can share creative boards with classmates and have a place to store ideas for themselves for future projects. The user can send a pin to a person to see as well as pin pictures that they love from the internet or websites to their board. The websites listed are the perfect example of how people use social learning in their lives. Social learning is learning from others (Fusion Universal, 2011)

 

Reference

Fusion Universal (Producer). (2011). Social learning—What is it? [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIlwGYY0_AA

Multimedia and applications

Screencast-O-Matic (Multimedia)

 

Site:  https://screencast-o-matic.com/

Screencast-o-matic allows you to record video of your computer screen for fifteen minutes at a time. They give you more time if you pay for it. The site also allows the user to post the video directly to you-tube or save it as a video file. This is great for creating step-by-step videos that instructors can create for students to follow in the classroom. It is great to use in a graphic design class because they have so many programs to learn and remember.

Paper and Pencil by 53 (App and stylus)

https://www.fiftythree.com/

Paper and pencil by 53 is are great tools for artist to use in the classroom or work. Paper is an app that works for many apple devices. It allows you to take notes, draw and share art work with a community of people. Pencil is an added feature that compliments the app and allows you to write directly on your tablet. It has great precision compared to most stylus on the market.

 

Emerging Technology for the classroom

Emerging technology 1: 3-d printing

Site: http://explainingthefuture.com/3dprinting.html

3-d printing is the next big thing. People are printing body parts and organs for people to use that has disabilities. People can create parts for cars, guns, or mini figures of themselves. This is a technology that I would love to use in the classroom. As a graphic designer there are many benefits because we use similar software to create things all the time. It is great for creating 3-d models of characters or just to print pieces for a mixed media art project.

Emerging technology 2: Surface studio

Site: http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13663112/microsoft-surface-studio-review

The surface studio is a game changer in the design field. It comes with a pen so that you can simply draw onto the screen. It has a 28-inch monitor that can be positioned as if it were an easel to allow drawing. For art students this is huge because it allows for a larger drawing screen for students to create digital art. A surface owner can also purchase the surface dial, it allows you to create and use the surface as never before. In the classroom students can take rough sketches of logos or characters that they have created and then scan them to use in the graphic design programs. The pen gives it an added bonus for students that just like to hand draw instead of clicking a mouse.

First blog post

This blog is dedicated to my online technology graduate class. Each week I will be posting emerging technologies based on the material that I read each week in class. Hope you all enjoy!