Progression over the week had been varied on different tasks and it really bought to light my strengths and weaknesses which I will elaborate on now;
Humdrum
At the age I’m at I’m quite aware of ‘what makes me tick’ and equally ‘what makes me zzzzzz’, unfortunately an awareness is not a cure! Written tasks which involve repetition of a writing structure have never been a pleasure for me. Even though I know I’m capable of completing them the left and right side of my brain have an on-going battle about discipline and having fun! The competitive analysis fell into this category and a task which should of only taken a couple of hours filled the expanse (on and off) over a week purely due to my Id dominating my Ego. After 27 years I still haven’t managed to win this battle and with nearly any task I undertake I have great pains in sticking at it till the end, so instead I live in the world of ‘half-finishedness’ which is very exciting and interesting but not very constructive! Any strategies for over coming this I’m all ears!
Merriment
At the opposite end of the scale I rediscovered one of my strengths which I had missed greatly over the last two years in my teaching career, Creativity! Transforming my screen design from a sketch to a screen was a joy, from taking the photographs, manipulating them and then placing them in my design. Sadly as with all good things it was quickly over and I was surprised at what little time it actually took, lucky it did really as things took a turn for the worst..
Unforeseen Circumstances
As always the monster of ‘unforeseen circumstances’ reared its ugly head as I opened up Page Maker and tried to import parts of my screen design. My beautiful photographs transformed into pixelated monstrosities and my heart sank. After spending considerable time trying to place the down sized jpeg files in a variety of ways into the programme I retreated and decided to re-think. I then spent at least 3 hours down-loading a trial version of ‘InDesign’, learning how to use the programme, re-drawing the site structure diagram and tables. Finally I got around to attempting to transfer the screen design. The results were a considerable improvement but more than 4 hours on it had been a costly realisation.
Sketchbooktastic!
Finally the invented word ‘sketchbooktastic’ must be mentioned. Although my sketch book and now books are becoming journals discovery of enlightenment they are also falling awkwardly between the categories of ‘Humdrum’ and ‘Merriment’. I have discovered I just love printing (especially screen shots!), cutting, sticking, drawing, doodling and drawing the odd arrow but that’s about as far as the fun goes! So I must make a concerted effort not to move onto the next pages until I’ve added all the annotation, otherwise ‘sketchbooktastic’ could transform into ‘sketchbooktragic’ which doesn’t bear thinking about.
So in conclusion the state of play is good, I’ve now formatted all of my written work into the InDesign template have left pages for the screen designs (which still need a lot of work to transfer) and added all of the other components to the document. Over this week I need to do the following to meet the deadline;
- Write a detailed Evaluation
- Complete the screen designs using InDesign
- Make minor edits to the ‘Delivery Requirements’ section
- Add all references and align
- Document Merit and Distinction evidence
- Index my sketchbooks
- Print and proof read
- Buy CD labels and create the CD
4 comments:
It will be interesting to see if 'sketchbooktastic' becomes the next word to spread throughout first year posts. I know we had many (task bombs for example), and if it will be the next 'bouncebackability'.
On a course related note, it sounds like your well on your way to completing the assignment. The biggest task you seem to have is your evaluation which although time consuming to write, doesn't require much in the ways of research and I wouldn't worry about meeting the deadline.
Good luck for next week (and to the rest of the first years).
You seem to be at a point where you are almost ready for submission... glad you don't have much to worry about!
The evaluation is tough to write but shouldn't take a massive amount of time as you've got all the evidence you need already!
Glad to hear that you are on track to be ready for the hand in Tuesday after your problems with Pagemaker.
Like Tom said the evaluation shouldn't take to long as your blog is full of everything you need to complete it.
I don't know if you know this but when you put images into Pagemaker they automatically pixelate them to save memory and reproducing it when it refreshes the document. There is an option to changet this so images show as High Resolution so it may not have made a problem. It should have printed off okay if this was the problem.
I know what you mean about the "half-finishedness" its annoyng when you have good ideas but cant seem to finish them.
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