Reflection+on+EDLD+5366+Assignment

**and Desktop Publishing **
Creating the newsletter for the course took quite a bit of planning. I had previously been a contributor to newsletters but had never been responsible for the entire document. Deciding on a topic for the newsletter was the first hurdle, the second being what articles to include, followed by the design. I made the decision to create a newsletter for the parents of senior students. There had been a presentation that day with the final drafts of the graduation announcements. This gave me the idea for the newsletter. After I picked several topics for the articles and wrote some drafts I printed what I had and took it to school. I asked several of the other teachers to look at what I had already done and tell me how it looked; was the format appropriate for the intended audience, was the spacing easy to read, what articles were good for the newsletter? I also asked other members of the faculty for input on what articles or announcements they thought should be included in the newsletter. Several of them critiqued what I had and gave me ideas for articles. Having my colleagues critique the newsletter gave me a fresh perspective and reminded me of the times in these classes we have had to collaborate. One thing I learned new in this course was the CRAP principles. Yearwood (2009) writes, Contrast is the attribute of looking different from something else (p. 8). Repetition means using the same element or attribute in more than one place in the design (p. 11). Alignment is the attribute of arranging every element in a design to conform to some kind of horizontal and vertical visual relationship with other elements in the design (p. 15). Proximity is the principle that things must be placed close to the items they belong with (p. 18). Proximity, repetition, consistency and alignment were not new to me, I use them with my yearbook staff; we choose a theme and include repetitious designs based on that theme. But I have never taught them as a complete set of principles to the students in my Technology Applications classes. Cummings (2009) makes the following observation about using design principles, In unskilled hands, the tools available to us can very quickly produce messy, over-designed documents that are far less readable than the plain typewritten documents of old. Applying a few basic design skills can help avoid those mistakes, instead allowing the features we often regard as “extras” to take their rightful places as means of enhancing the readability and impact of our work (para 2). Using the CRAP principles in my newsletter made me stop and look at the design in a critical way. I had to look at each page, looking for repetition, alignment, and consistency, fix anything that looked like it needed formatting, and then look again for the design principles. I have known for quite some time that I am a visual learner first and an auditory learner second. In creating this newsletter, I struggled with what I consider to be one of my personal problems. I would think OK, I am done, would print it, then see something that could be rearranged, reformatted, edited for better sentence structure, etc. I finally had to say, “DONE! I am not making any more changes.” I was pleased with the final copy of my newsletter. I am not a writer and would not want to have to produce one on a regular basis. After I finish the newsletter I need to decide the best way to distribute it to the intended audience. Since most of the parents have email addresses, I have decided to email a copy of the newsletter to them and only mail it to those parents of seniors that do not have an email address. According to Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski (2007), an email newsletter is a clear alternative to traditional, hard-copy newsletters that students are supposed to take home and deliver (p. 37). Even though I have taught Desktop Design, Web Design, and worked as the yearbook advisor, classes that use design principles, learning about the CRAP principles will make teaching those classes a bit easier. Students of any age will be able to remember that acronym. One thing that I would like to learn more about is the use of color and how to use white space. Convincing the students to leave some white space is difficult, like the example of the business card in the document “Basic Elements of Page Design” by Dr. John Yearwood. As a technology facilitator I could use these design principles to help teachers when they are designing their classroom webpage, creating ebooks for the students and newsletters for their parents. Here is a link to my newsletter:

Cummings, C. (2009). EDLD 5366 Week One Lecture. Retrieved on October 22, 2011from [] Yearwood, J. (2009). Basic design principles; and some observations on how we see. Lamar University. Pitler, h., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.