Week VII: Storytelling and Job Aid

In this class, we have been introduced to two new concepts "storytelling" and "Job Aid".Both of the concepts have clear literal meaning, but how about their implication in instructional design?
First, story telling contains some major elements,"what is the story"and"the way of telling".However, it cares more about the latter, which means the way of telling can change more of the effect of the story telling. Usually, a less formal, humorous way of story telling is generally welcomed and for different age group, different way should be used accordingly. For example, a Shakespeare story can be displayed with animated figure for the characters in the story and they might look smaller and cuter while the narration and lines can be more spoken.
We received a on class task to use ipad to "sell" our project with proper storytelling.Since not all of us had much trust to use some fancy video, BGM to design the performance in such short 30 minutes,we used the ipad in the least modern way, a writing pad for the narrator but the rest part was performed by body language. The truth was, the decision was wise because the technology was really time consuming and less reliable. Though you have a good story, fanciness still can not assure you a good performance.A good story telling still needs a suitable way of telling rather than a fancy way.

The second part of the class, we were introduced to "Job Aid".Actually, from my perspective, "job aid" is a broad category.Anything can be a job aid, depending on how would you use of it.But usually, for the sake of convenience,one piece of the mixture of graphic and text is the major type of job aid we are talking about.Then, we can't avoid the discussion of its overlapping with "infographic" As far as I know, infographic is a way of display, but job aid is kind of function-oriented calling. So I believe a job aid can be an infographic, and something else while infographic can be used as a job aid or for other purpose.
Hopefully I can find my interested job aid as soon as possible.

Week VI: Smaller Scope and the evaluation

Unusual Week.
Only 3hrs blended lesson but tons of group meetings. Week VI is the one we use to check whether we are on the right track...or not. For R541, we as a group interviewed Dr.Haynes and two second-year master students and started to write our literal project proposal not just the fuzzy ideas.

Now we have defined our project to be a "Process Performance" issued informational project, which is not a typical instructional project.We can not operate assessment for learners.Our objective is to clarify the career plan process and difficulties for the audience, give proper intervention or recommendation and help them to maximum their performance in the end, to get more satisfactory in pursuing their goals(further study or to find a job). Isn't that clear or not?

However the major bottleneck for our team is the scope. As Dr. G mentioned several times, she doesn't want to see 3 separated projects from our team but a whole project. We are still exploring to collaborate different part of information. Maybe we would not instruct the audience with the extreme details but give out a well-organized web which could connect each parts very tightly.

Though we can not assess our audiences in terms of their achievement or what they have learnt because it is just too personal to make standards for it, we still want to evaluate how much do they believe the adventure on our website helps their career plan.Do they feel more clear about their career plan or just more confused(We don't hope so)? You can call it "service satisfactory evaluation" if you think so. To achieve this goal, we must tailor the information for as individual need as possible . We would operate more interviews with alumini of IST masters to hear their voice and give more personalized solutions.

Week V: Retrospect of the infographic work

5 weeks are gone.1/3 of the semester is gone.I don't want to make people sad but time is flying!

Last week, after 8 hours editing of my infographic, I suddenly realize what I should do here in IST. I could not call myself a tech-person, who can not even use photoshop, illustrator to express my idea.

Yes, I change my topic twice and stopped at a most familiar with but never touched in the latest 10 years-- National College Entrance Examination of China. I was a candidate of that test 10 years ago. I spent the most unforgettable 2 days and a half there(now the test is only for 2 days)that changed my life totally.I decided on this topic finally around 9 pm Sunday night. I turned to PS first but I quitted because the layers drove me crazy, then I turned to use microsoft word, the text editing software. When I started to work on the topic, I found I had been back to the day as early as I was learning Office 97.It was until 3:30 that I realized I should leave the uncompleted "graphic" to the morning...

Several things about the drawing. 1)You need more than enough information before you started 2)Use the font which looks great in most styles. 3)Don't make the canvas too big to fill up 4)Check your typos(I found some typos after the submission and the submission channel was closed.)

I can not share the infographic here because it does not look gorgeous in a glance(too crowded and too stunning(black & Red))-view and it is in .pdf format(I would find the solution).

Think about the lecture in class. I agree with some of others'  opinions as we should narrow down our "helping IST M students with career planning" to several do-able columns or we may not be able to finish before May.

I like the motivation work. My group was doing the animation. I should say we are doing great with the xtranormal.com cuties!Hey, here comes Week 6 and Lunar New Year(Chinese New Year),Happy new year,everyone!

Week IV: Reflection on R541 learning: Hands on Infographic

For this week's lecture, the class reviewed our personal infographic storyboard. I felt excited to share the story with and from peers. However, some fellow-up questions came along.

1) Who is your stakeholder?
For my topic, I can't find any primary stakeholder, who would care about the length of the airlines? Who would have a chance to explorer those long and tiring airlines? Then, who would be interested and really care the infographic? After sharing my ideas with my peers, Dr.G and Jean, they gave me such opinions: first, to recall the motivation of choosing this topic;second, think over who would be stakeholders; third, it is fine to keep it personal but convert part of its function to public purpose; fourth,change a topic if you feel hard to fulfill the above things...

Actually I'm thinking about a new topic. I would change to "how much the eurail global pass save your expense on european train tickets?" Since I have used the eurail pass and experienced a lot of its process and policy, I thought it would be a good idea.But other considerations would stop me doing so as it may lead to a complicated graphic, and I have limits of using some technology...Or I would find a third topic before it is too late.

2)How to draw the infographic?
I surfed the website Dr. G provided us in the class, then I would say though I found them too simple to fulfill some desired effects, I would have to use them because last night,I found Photoshop CS6 was just too gigantic a monster to conquer it in 3 days and make my job done...I would give up and turn to the magic gadgets for infographic newbies.And I find powerpoint is even easier to use than the adobe things to make clip art...

I would properly mixed the use of tools to realize the topic I can come up with. Let's wait and see.