BTP - Integrated Technology Lesson Plan and Artifact

Hi,  This week it got pretty technical and I ended up doing most of my work in Pages and Numbers (the Mac equivalent of Word and Excel) because of my compulsive need to have things designed and laid out in a certain way.

The overall point of my lesson is that it's the first part in the video classes production: Pre Production.  In Pre Production students create a schedule, write a script, and create a storyboard.

Specifically, this lesson is "Behind the Portrait" (BTP) where the students come up with  a backstory for a famous work of art.  For example how did the Mona Lisa end up being at the place where the portrait is located and what is going on with that smile.  It is the students chance to give that backstory and take a measure personal investment in art work they may not be familiar with.

On a personal note this has been, far and away, the most difficult project thus far in grad school.  I very much seen the need and importance, but these things are very difficult for me to do... I'm quite happy with my work, it just took me a very long time ;-)

Here are some quick links to the resources I used in this lesson:
Celtx
Storyboard That
Google Calendar
Numbers (also for calendar)


My Lesson Plan:


The rubric I created for this assignment:

Finally the student artifact created using Storyboard That:

Font rant and Avatar goodness

One of my first projects for Graduate school is to create my own avatar and incorporate it into the blog.  I figure that while I'm figuring out the ropes of using blogger, I would create this post to see how it looks.

One of the things that has stood out to me about blogger, is the lack of the font "Helvetica" when you are choosing a font in the design of your blog.  I'm happy that I am currently typing in it, But I did end up having to use "Droid Sans" as the main font for the blog design. 

Just seems like an odd choice not to include Helvetica as an option.

Below is the avatar I created using Bitstrips avatar creator.  Making it was a really neat as they allow for a whole lot of customizations down to facial features (important for those with dimples).  I greatly enjoyed being able make it for free, and it turns out Bitstrips is really cool ... when not clogging your Facebook feed :-)