The Color Conundrum

I’m summary blogging on this topic because I find it fascinating. I also find I’m at a loss for what to do! The discussion did help, but I think there is so much more to it than what we touched on in the discussion.
Helpful contributions to the discussion:
First, I want to acknowledge the contributions of David S. (cohort) and Dan (instructor). They helped me with RBG and CMYK. David added to my understanding of printers and how they operate. Thank goodness someone in the printing world created drivers that convert RBG to CMYK, one less detail to work out. There were lots of helpful tips for me in that thread; printing professionally -use CMYK; working in photo shop advice to save image file in CMYK, RBG is default. I don’t know if I can count David S. twice, but here I go…. I appreciated David S. question about link colors. I did not realize that web links used to be a standard blue.
For application, I would recognize contributions of Phil H.. He wrote that he had decided upon two color schemes, one for each of his two edweb audiences. This is great application of what we are learning. I also found his statement that he was struggling to justify why he chose the colors he chose outside of the fact that he liked them to be very honest. I’m not sure it is a bad thing that we are each attracted to certain colors or color palettes. But, I do recognize that we are being challenged to think about colors and their applications for an audience, and what associations are being conveyed by color.

I see the value in my contributions to this discussion being my ability to be painfully honest in acknowledging my lack of knowledge on the topic (so what are RBG and CMYK?), and in sharing this site with the group. The site is good at breaking down the RBG colors and allowing the user to experiment with each. As you select a color a scheme of other complementary colors is presented. The site provided a helpful starting point. Another source I found this week that was a blog, that had samples of web pages by color. Each web site is monochromatic but paradoxically, incredibly diverse. By the end of week two I had visited all the sites in this color series! Not that I’m any more secure in selecting a color scheme, but it was addictive, a bit like trying to pick out a yarn combination in knitting.

In the end I think I’m going to need to keep revisiting color in my edweb design, as well as navigation and I can’t imagine how unsettled I’m going to feel after we delve into fonts!
January 20th, 2008 | Tags: | No Comments »

Web Conference Discussion, Wk 1 Developing eLearning Instruction

First, I to acknowledge the contributions of another person. This semester we were asked to select a minimum of two people whose contributions to discussions influenced us and to explain why or how. I’m going to select Stephenie B. for my first person to acknowledge. What I appreciated about Stephenie was not so much any one particular contribution, but rather her overall leadership of the discussion. I thought it was terrific that she listed out for the discussion group the format for discussion right off the bat. She did this by creating a separate thread for each question to be considered. She also jumped in near the end of week one with a summary that we could all respond to, and work off before submitting our group’s final questions to Dave and Dan. I admire her assured leadership style.

The discussion on what steps should be taken in response to feedback the formative run of the Web Conference was quite robust, lots of people contributed. We spent much of the discussion on the length of the conference and possibilities for combining groups in the future. There were also concerns about how to give the conference a more unified feel, by requiring all groups to list objectives, creating opening and closing for the conference, a program of events especially synchronous events. Overall, I think we were all looking to create a less overwhelming feel to the conference for ourselves, as facilitators and for future participants.

My most valuable contribution was trying to bring the group some new ideas about how the conference might be organized. Individuals were thinking of one week, two weeks or three weeks with arguments being made for each of these options. I tried to present a compromise idea between one and two weeks at nine days and gave a suggestion of what that might look like. I hope the idea will gain some traction in the final evaluation as I think we do need to edit ourselves and shorten the conference.

Finally, Linda G. provided insights that I think were helpful in having the group think about the best way to present synchronous sessions. This topic had not come up until that point and you could tell that Linda had gone over the threads of our group discussion and reviewed the feedback a second) time before noting that we had missed addressing how to make the synchronous sessions more effective

January 20th, 2008 | Tags: | No Comments »