Logo

So it took me a little while to design my logo. Part of me thought this was silly and maybe borderline ridiculous. Why do I need a logo?

After asking many of my friends and family to help me by describing me and listing symbols that represent me, well I ended up with two symbols that popped up constantly with multiple meanings, the butterfly and the gavel. The gavel is representative of leadership, debate, and control. The butterfly is for my beliefs both on education and religion, and growth/change. I chose not to incorporate anything tech in my logo simply because technology is something I do, but still does not define me...yes that is a rare trait for anyone in my generation!

Hope you see this as me too!

4 Principals of Design in Ancient Texts

1st Impressions

As with most illumiated texts. I could not help but love and appreciate the beautiful artwork. However, I never thought of them before as graphically designed, rather they were simply pretty pictures. In taking a second look at an exaomple of one of these beautiful texts, I feel that maybe, some design elements were not only intentional, but indeed they were necessary.

4 Principals of Design in the Sherborne Missal

Contrast-As seen in the photograph of a page from the Sherborne Missal, contrast is recognized in several areas. First and most prominent is the use of larger, more graphic letters for the beginning of important sections such as the C and D shown here. You can also see in the picture as well in other places in the text the use of contrasting color for words or numbers that I can only assume are very important.

Repetition-Repetition is seen in not only the design elements along the border of the page, but you can clearly see repetition in the core colors used throughout the page and the book.

Alignment-The text is carefully aligned in a justified manner. The major artwork is intentionally aligned to the edges of the pages. The page we are looking at is a right page. In the book, the major artwork is placed towards the center of the open book.

Proximity-This is harder to judge. Everything is so close together. It makes you wonder what came first, the words or the pictures. There is a part of me that feels that the words are simply a detailed explanation of what is implied in the pictures. This would justify the fact that most pages are mostly pictures, but some seem to be slightly more wordy.

In this text the writer/artist uses the faces of important people from within the text as well as art relevant to the story to describe the text. We have to keep in mind that historically, not all members of the church could read, so the pictures were as important in telling the story as the text.

School Law-EDLD 5344 Reflection

Student Management and Technology
In reviewing the Cyber Law text, I have found it hard to take an individualized approach to the student-management issues it addresses. Rather at my high school it is reasonable that we will need to take a holistic approach to address these issues.
Currently, my high school has a mediocre Acceptable Use Policy that fails to address the some of the major issues addressed in the Cyber Law text. I think creating a more modern and functional policy with good legal writing that uses language that all stakeholders will understand is the most relevant issue to address right now.
My views have not changed in regards to proper policies, rather I feel now that I have the tools to present to my administration and school board the importance of updating our AUP to address the 21st century learner and technology in the classroom. I have had a wonderful opportunity to sit with my principal to discuss some much needed changes to our school policy to meet the needs of our stakeholders today. We are addressing the much needed changes in waves. We are beginning by creating awareness of cyber-bullying in conjunction with our Student Council members. At the same time, we are addressing technology/student management issues with teachers. All this is slowing leading up to an AUP change for next school year.
The knowledge that I have gained is already helping to address the ineffective AUP we currently have. I feel that it will help our staff and students to provide a safer environment for learning.

Personnel Management
So honestly, the PDAS training that I did my very first year of teaching went in many ways above and beyond the information given in this class. My administration at my first school taught us the PDAS evaluation information as if we were sitting in the administrative training. As a technology leader, some of the information may prove useful as it will be important that I work closely with my principal to help them properly evaluate a technology driven classroom. I feel that it will be most important to learn more about personnel management from the perspective of technology. How do we address the way technology is implemented in the classroom in our evaluations? The best way I can think to answer this question is to look at districts that have successfully implemented either a 1:1 computer ratio in every classroom, or at least look at a district with laptop or other lab use of technology.

Improving Professional Practice
The next topic that I feel is necessary to look at is Copyright in the age of technology. So many of our teachers utilize amazing resources, but so much of the time those resources walk a very fine line between fair use and copyright infringement, especially when technology is involved. In all of my classes thus far I have learned that copyright is both a serious legal problem that schools often fail to address, and that is the easiest legal issue to solve.
I know that I can easily do an online lesson that includes a podcast and slide show. I have also already begun to utilize a great video “A Fair(y) Use Tale” from YouTube. Before school is out this year, my principal has asked that I do a training session on copyright. I know that for our teachers the best way to really address this issue is face-to-face and using the materials that they prefer to use the most, which means addressing worksheets, copying books, and the infamous movie. This will also have to be addressed in the classroom. Teachers will have to learn how to effectively address copyright with students, so that will be yet another professional development opportunity.