Blogging can be very useful. Depending on time constraints, it would be a great classroom communication tool. This would be a great place to post artwork from the students. A legal disclaimer may need to be signed.
I’m very glad that AED 398 introduced me to blogging. On a personal note, I would love to use this a communication tool between family members. My sister and I would like to write a book about my mother. This would be a good place to communicate and have other family member weigh in.
Master Pages:
By using the template in my newsletter I was able to work with master pages. I can see why this will be important when building my portfolio.
Managing Pages:
This video was helpful with things such as palette setup, adding additional pages and removing them. It also discussed the ability to copy a style from one page to another. I a large publication the ability to move pages around is very helpful.
Using Layers:
The use of layers would be helpful for a number of reasons. If the text was all on one layer, styles could be changed quickly by applying changes to the entire layer. This video also discussed stacking order, navigating layers and moving objects, text or grids to separate layers. This is incredibly helpful for creating our portfolios.
I think that the master pages could be the most helpful. If the foundation of a house is built well, the house will stand a much better chance of being built well. Layers are also important. I didn’t realize that all text could be put on one layer and how easy it is to create layers from an existing project.
Aziza's blog appealed to me because she always has interesting things to say in our classes. Her blog is no exception. She is fun and creative and incredibly directed. I commented on her self-portrait images. They are not your average images - outside the box and I like that.
The other blog that I commented on was Sara's. She makes fabulous jewelry and I hoped she had some on her blog. I comment on her logo design. I would love to know how it came out.
Blogs could easily be used in the classroom. Artwork that you would like the students could be posted here. Assignments could also be posted. There could be classroom discussions. I wonder if you could have a facebook page link for the art class?
A quick review of three videos from the Adobe Video Workshop
Making Selections Video:
The presenter was fun, well spoken and easy to understand. This video covers the following:
Double clicking will toggle between the direct select and select
Apple click will help you traverse layers that you are working on.
The Selection tool lets you select graphics and text and work with an object using its bounding box.
If you want to move a picture with the box that contains it, you would select the object with the selection tool and drag your picture around your page.
The Direct Selection tool lets you work with the content of a text or graphics frame.
If you wanted to move the picture inside the box, or frame, that contains it, but you want to leave the box itself where it is, you select the object with the Direct Selection Tool.
Working With Text
This presenter was enthusiastic and easy to understand. This video covers the following:
How to apply simple styles such as fonts, sizes, kerning, tracking, and so on.
Using character mode to make changes to the font and adding foreign language to a word to allow proper spell check and hyphenation.
Paragraph formatting – add drop caps, indents, space above and below. Optical margin alignment and style changes.
Working With Text Styles
This presenter was a little boring, but the video was short. This video covers the following:
This video discusses style sheets.
Character style sheets and Paragraph style sheets. Automated formatting tool that simplifies repetitive formatting text, frames and paragraphs. Put simply if you use the same type of formatting on a regular basis, rather than recreate it each time you can set up the equivalent to a macro in Word.
