Journal Entry 1

           Wow! What a difference it is to be a second timer in the 6190 class. This time last year, I was extremely stressed out. I had no idea what the adobe tools were or what they did. I struggled at first to find a project to complete. I felt completely lost and overwhelmed! This year, I feel more comfortable about this class and the tools I will use for my project. I feel much more like a designer now than before. I also know what I want to create for a project this semester already. This past week I held library orientations at the school I work at. As I taught the same lesson over and over I thought, there has to be a better and more interesting way to do this. Also, students have come to the library this week that were absent during their orientation. I think it would be neat to create an interactive orientation that I could use in my lesson, as well as post on a site for students to access.

            Andrew Gibbons wrote an article about the different phases that designers go through.  The article “What and How to Designers Design?” was a great article for putting where I am and should be into perspective. As a designer, I feel that I am in the message-centrism stage. According to Gibbons (2003), “Message-centric design places primary importance on message-related constructs and employs media constructs secondarily, according to the demands of the message” (p. 22). I feel that last year, I was more focused on what tool I wanted to use and made my project to fit the tool. I think I was in the media-centrism stage. I saw the technology for what it was and did not think past that. Now I feel that I have grown to understanding the importance of my project and finding a tool to fit my project; not the project to fit the tool. I think it is important as a designer to eventually progress through the centrisms to show growth and understanding of design. “With each move to a new viewpoint the designer gains the use of the new design constructs without giving up the old ones, so this change results in the accumulation of fundamental design and building blocks” (Gibbons, Nelson, & Richards, 2000, p. 19). I would like to see myself continue to move through the centrisms and grow as a designer. I am looking forward to learning more about each stage and its importance.

References

Gibbons, A. S. (2003). What and how do designers design? TechTrends, 47(5), 22-25.

Gibbons, A. S., Nelson, J. & Richards, R. (2000). The nature and origin of instructional objects. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects: Online Version. Retrieved August 6, 2011 from the World Wide Web: http://reusability.org/read/chapters/gibbons.doc