Innovative Inquirers
  • Home
  • Blogs
    • My Professional Blog
    • My COETAIL Journey
    • My MALDT Progress
  • Publications
  • Videos
  • Curations
  • Coaching Stories
  • Connect

My COETAIL Journey

Certificate of Education Technology and Information Literacy

Course 3 Week 1: We Are All Designers

9/11/2020

5 Comments

 
Design. I could sit here and tweak the design of my blog all day. 

But of course, I can't and I won't. I will leave it as a work in progress.

The changes I have made so far are mostly based on micro content and chunking, which you can read more about in Cynthia Mariankos' article "How we read online (and 6 skills every web writer needs to master)." 
Picture
Picture
First I made a smaller header. The only visual you could see when entering my website was the title and the colorful background. Now is a simple black, but you can also see that there is more things below. First up being a video to showcase how I run my classroom with the studio model.

The next major change was taking apart my introduction paragraph and turning it into pointed bullet marks. This has simplified a lot on my homepage.

Some things I still want to change:
  • Keep thinking about the navigation bar. Is it the way I want it to be?
  • Add more small summaries to my home page about my blogs and publications
  • Finish editing what the other pages look like. Particularly to publications page
  • Try to figure out why my title's font will not change
  • Keep in mind the research about reading patterns (F-patterns, etc) in this article. 

Some big inspirations in the EdTech design world are Tanya LeClair and Keri-Lee Beasley. Their resources are awesome to use with students, and are great, simple reminders for educators as well. ​

This CARP playlist from Keri-Lee is one of my favourite resources to use with students. It is so simple and easy to use.
Tanya's ISTE posters are a great example of design principles in practice. Of course they are also a student friendly version of each ISTE standard. They are available fordownload here.
Picture
5 Comments
Keri-Lee Beasley link
9/12/2020 10:19:58 am

Ahhh, thank you so much, Cindy. Glad the playlist has been useful. It’s always good to reflect on your work with the audience in mind. Thanks again!

Reply
Andrea Goodrich
9/13/2020 06:52:11 am

Hi Cindy! I really like your re-design. I always love a more simple, clean look. It makes everything easy to see and find.

I also used resources from Tanya LeClair. I was able to attend a presentation she did at 21CLK on the CARP Design Principles. I always refer back to her resources when creating my own presentations or when teaching my students how to do it well.

The ISTE Action Posters are great too! I just downloaded them. Thanks for sharing that! This reminds me why I love COETAIL. I learn so much just from reading the blog posts each week. It is also fun to see what resources others have.

Andrea

Reply
Joel
9/14/2020 06:26:39 pm

Hi Cindy! Your redesign is really clean and fresh looking. De-cluttering (and applying some CARP) is really helpful to get the most important information out to your audience, and this really works. Thanks for the resources that you share too.

Reply
Simona link
9/18/2020 03:11:00 pm

Hi Cindy!

Nice to see you back after the long summer.
I always appreciated your feeling and "know- how" for design from the beginning of the COETAIL Course.

I like very much how your redesign your website. I looks very easy to explore and visually appealing to read all your interesting ideas and deep content. The video posted right on the left side, is bringing a wonderful dynamic in your blog.

I found very easy to read your post from "We are all designers" as well. The clear example with pictures before and after redesigning your blog and left /right visual parallel makes it easy to read.

I can see that your content is already structured with bullet points and that helps to scan the information quickly.

Thank you for in sharing the Tanya LeClaire's, ISTE Posters. I like how she combines the IB learner profiles/thinking and the design principles. I will use it in the future as well.

Reply
Luiz link
9/25/2020 12:56:34 am

I had a chance to take a workshop with Tanya last year and would also describe her work as inspirational. Look up Sonya terBorg on twiiter, she is also fantastic with her infographics. Looks like we're on the same boat with the menu thing -- I flat out want to get rid of mine. I wish there were more extensive insights on readers.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Cindy Kaardal

    This blog page is specifically for my COETAIL blog posts.

    Archives

    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020

    Categories

    All
    COETAIL
    Course 3
    Course 4
    Course 5
    Final Project
    Introduction Course
    Online 12

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blogs
    • My Professional Blog
    • My COETAIL Journey
    • My MALDT Progress
  • Publications
  • Videos
  • Curations
  • Coaching Stories
  • Connect