However, for my own ePortfolio I will use iWeb, and in fact I actually started this over the weekend. I now have extra sections I want to add and areas where I will enhance what's already there. Hopefully it will print nicely, I don't think it should be too hard. The screens I've used aren't all that big.
We started our session today with a discussion of what sections are in an ePortfolio, and then about the actual application and interview itself.
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| Diving in California - 20 mins worth of Brochure Design |
Using MS Publisher, we first created a brochure of "the ideal holiday destination". I chose scuba diving in California, and with the clunky controls of Publisher managed to get something knocked out. Obviously in 20 minutes, not much actual design went into it. I just find Publisher really clunky to use, and user-unfriendly even to the point where the "print preview" displayed in black & white, with the "colour" button disabled. Their clip-art hasn't changed since the 80's and it's always horribly ugly. The seriously unattractive templates don't give children any examples of a well-designed layout, and they look daggy and unprofessional. Compare to a piece of software called Pages, which runs on the Mac. It's equally supported in industry (ie, not at all) but you can certainly export PDF files for printing. It's user-friendly, easy and quick to learn, and things just work the way they should, intuitively. If you add a circle and start typing, text will appear in the circle. Sounds simple but try doing that with Publisher. I actually even think that teaching children page layout on PowerPoint would be better than Publisher as it's far easier to use.
I feel that if you want children to learn more about creating publishing documents, either you'd find a user-friendly software product, or go all-out and teach them inDesign which is the industry standard. MS Publisher is not a cheap product, so why not spend that money on something that is actually going to be useful going forward?
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| Screenshot of the sample website created with Publisher |
Our second task was to create a website using Publisher. Again, same thing. iWeb and countless Windows software products will do a far better job at creating a website than Publisher, and will be easier to actually upload and support across multiple platforms and browsers.
This is just so basic. The lecture was good, about the student ePortfolio, but I feel like today's workshop time has been wasted. There's no way I'm using MS Publisher for my assignment, and while I understand that other people don't know how to use it, I would have loved to be given an extension task that actually challenged me. I feel like for most of this Dip Ed course, my brain doesn't even get engaged and I spend nearly all of my time waiting.
We are in a computer lab, and yet we spent 50 minutes listening to Interview techniques which could have been covered in a lecture, or better yet in one of our Issues workshops. It's not that the material isn't worth covering, it's just that we have so little time in the computer lab as it is, and wasting that time not using computers is, well... wasting time.
