There are many factors to providing critical prehospital care. EMTs must gain the skills necessary to quickly determine if a patient is in immediate need of advanced care. I wanted the design of the critical care page to be comprehensive, yet clean. As students enter their practical skills, they need to easily remember the information presented. There is a lot to remember in this section, so the design demands that a lot of information is concentrated in each section. I enhanced the text with contrasting colors for cohesiveness, but the sheer volume of text still needed something more to make the steps more concrete. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, I am seeking representative images to further solidify the different steps.
References
Lohr, L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy. (Second.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
EDTECH 506: CARP is not a fish
CARP design elements are used to better communicate a lesson or message through visual representation. Contrast. Alignment. Repetition. Proximity. Each of these elements impacts learning, and a good design will improve the course content. I chose grey-scale for my design, planning a contrast punch with black and white text and graphics. I chose the organized feel of rectangle shapes and symmetrical rows and columns they create, while using repetition to lighten the tense lines in the image. Each row a different color, but the proximity of clone like text boxes reveals the concepts therein are connected. In the end, I’m pleased with that decision feeling like I have met the first course goal – “to apply principles of visual literacy o the design of instructional messages.”
EDTECH597: Tour de Paris
I think I finally had fun with the blocks editor today. In fact, the process went so smoothly that I spent more time dreaming about (or was that researching) what I would do given the opportunity to travel to Paris than I did actually building the app. I am ready to create all sorts of map apps. My students could do this – identifying historical or significant land marks in math and photography. Viva le Apps!
ED TECH 597: Working out the Bugs
This past week, the ladybug app left me with a few bugs of my own to work out. Developing an android app by following directions is challenging, but even more challenging is how I will apply my new knowledge to education. Of course there is the possibility of opening the MIT site up to my students, but what more? Will my experience in this course and my new found skills make an impact on the way I teach and learn? Will it make an impact on the way others learn?
I continue to be inspired by my peers as we struggle to extend the lessons and create something uniquely ours. Ego is thrown out the door as we post the difficulties that detain our progress. We voice our reasoning and words of encouragement flow. It’s a refreshing change from the scoffs and muttered name calling in secondary classrooms when a student attempts to clarify an answer, suppressing the natural desire to learn. I have a plan to help teach those students to react to one another with respect and compassion. Although I’m not a “gamer” I am inspired to use this app building process to encourage my students to collaborate and “work out the bugs” of education.
EDTECH597 Squeak & Buzz
Moles and Apps have two things in common – they can be found just about anywhere and they are always popping up in new places. This week’s design project is a spin-off of the classic children’s arcade game where the player tries to keep rodents from popping up in a given area. After putting together the initial game, I put it to the test with my resident expert – my teenage daughter. She picked up the phone, clicked on a mole, and got a runtime error. “That’s strange, let me reload it.” Again it threw the same error. “Let me know when you get the bugs out” she said as she left the room. Much searching revealed that a block had inadvertently been slid over to the far reaches of the Blocks Editor window. Calling my daughter back, she assessed, tried, and mastered it in 8 seconds. “What did you think?” “BORing” After interrogating her, she admitted the “hit” vibration was okay, but complained catching the mole was too easy, and she lost interest with the plain background and lack of sounds.
Sounds were easy. I quickly found a few .mp3s that I liked at Sound FX Now and quickly incorporated them. I decided to let the user choose the difficulty level with star-ranked buttons. My mental design was progressing quickly toward reality, but I knew I was out of my league. I felt like a middle school student looking at a spreadsheet for the first time. APPrehension struck. How would I add the faster sprites without affecting the original? I am a problem solver. Using my experience with web design, I decided to create duplicate screens – each having successively complex images to distract the player, and each having a faster image sprite. Two hours later, I could not figure out how to get the star buttons to navigate to their respective screens. I consulted the text/tutorial again. This was not going to work. I reluctantly removed the Screens and the time they represented. Back to the blocks editor and the answer was there…all along.
My time spent developing screens 2 and 3 reinforced developing concepts. Figuring out how to get the levels I wanted on my own was victorious. Hearing my daughter’s “That’s cool, mom”…priceless.
ED TECH 597 – Stop&Go
App development might have seemed easy, but tonight Faith and Buffy knocked me out of my complacent attitude and geared me for a whole new paradigm of what is considered progress. The green light is on to proceed in this class and extend the tutorials to create apps with educational or instructional purposes. This past week I spent little time constructing and publishing my app. I feel hesitant of and clumsy with my new Android while I learn to navigate the basic functions of the device. The blocks editor refused to launch and I would turn my attention to another class or household chore. Finally, I could put off the task no longer. and I worked with the developer tools until I got the blocks editor running. From that point it only took about an hour to follow the tutorial and modify the app for my own purpose. I don’t use a lot of apps, so I am not creative in developing them yet. But thanks to these two pioneers, I do recognize that I am on the threshold of discovery.
EDTECH 597 Passport to AppDevelopment
(Originally Posted September 15, 2012) Apple or Android? After four years of using an iPhone, I recently entered the Android world and, like the iWorld I had just left behind, found tens of thousands of apps promising myriad ways to entertain, invest, organize,educate, and change my life. The difference is that in this world, I am a successful designer with my very own QR code leading to my very own Pocket-Kitty app . After an easy setup on my phone and computer, I was able to develop the original app in 15 minutes. Not satisfied with that, I envisioned an animated app – and I had the two pictures to make it happen. Several hours and coffees later, I determined that I don’t yet have the necessary skill set to do what I want it to, but persistence and dedication will smile on me and I will push out my first app upgrade.
Once I completed the app assignment, I began thinking of ways I could create an app for my adult Emergency Medical Technician Course. Would it be an app that provides normal vital sign ranges for different age and body sizes or might it be a complex app that records all the activities performed in a certain time frame. No matter what I choose, one thing remains. I use Android.