Gaming, Teaching & Learning

With more and more use of the Internet and interactivity in education, it is easy to forecast an increase in educational gaming. Growing up, gaming in the classroom was mainly used as a supplement to traditional forms of education tools. Today, as technology advances and more and more people take advantage of the Internet, people are using technology for more interesting ways of teaching and learning. Now, games aren't just for "kids in the classroom". Professionals and people coming up in the academia are using educational games in their field. This is quite interesting but I feel that these games are more experience and understanding based, a modified and elevated form of education. It isn't just learning concepts such as math and spelling, it provides and understanding of a concept or real life ideas in the field that traditional academia can't.

Being that these educational games are now advancing in this manner, more around teaching an experience, advertising can and has used this for brands, products and campaigns. Interactive media such as games are very common in the field today. The education part is the twist. In the earlier stages of campaigns, especially those centered around introducing a new product or feature in a product, consumers need information so that's what we as advertisers focus on. These "educational" games can be such an easy way to engage a consumer and teach them what we need to about the product or brand in contrast to traditional media.

This is a great example!

Although it sells less of an experience related directly to what is being sold like I explained before, this particular part of Orbitz has helped to build brand awareness and equity as people have come to love these games. It helps to get impressions on the brand name and drive traffic to the real Web site where the product is actually being showed. Clever and unconventional was to work in the field is always the best way to go.

Social Bookmarking!

Social Bookmarking is a very good innovation. Innovations like this, Google products and even YouTube, people are becoming more and more connected and are able to help each other. Social Bookmarking takes the idea of bookmarking pages you like on your browser but streamlines it through tagging then allows you to share with others. I know my bookmarks bar is practicully rendered useless at this point because it has so much stuff on it. I totally lose sight of sights because I bookmark others, pushing previous bookmarks back out of sight. With Social Bookmarking, tags allow to easily recall sights that you're looking for.

With so many resources, blogs and inspirational sights used be graphic designers like myself in the field, its easily to lose bookmarks or get very unorganized easily. Social Bookmarking can definitely solve this problem. The other thing is the fact that you can share our bookmarks can really help your peers. I could see it being really helpful if one team of designers creates one social bookmarking identity and everyone simply adds to that one account. That could be a great project and can be very helpful for a collaborative group.

This link I found (interestingly enough only opened in a GoogleDoc) from the Educause Learning Initiative. They discuss several topics pertaining to Social Bookmarking and is a good read. One thing I thought was interesting was that they pointed at Social Bookmarking's amateur aspect. There's no mediation so people can easily leave out necessary tags and such. Maybe sights such as Delicious can scan tags and create tags on its on and then allow the bookmarker to add their own personal tags.

Visual Literacy

Visual literacy is communication in its purest form as all forms including alphabets were spawned from it. This led to phonetics and the ability to communicate through verbiage. Visual literacy is one of the most important steps in primary learning. Consider a child. They do not speak first, the begin by understanding what they say and then begin to communicate through that avenue. Children are more inclined to draw as there is an easier route to communication in it. Visual literacy and communication can be broken down into elements that build on each other starting with the dot, going to the line and so on until you reach dimension and motion. Understanding these elements isn't something you can pick up over night and can take a fair amount of brain capacity to understand....but this is visual literacy on the grander scale of humanistic intuition.

Basic visual literacy comes from an academic approach. Advertising depends on visual literacy from consumers. In order to understand an ad, a person must be able to understand both images AND the copy: this is vis. lit. In order to be in the field, the creative side at least, there must be a high degree of visual literacy within that person. I do want to make it clear there is a connection between understand imagery and verbal communication. In order to read and write, one must be able to visually comprehend letters and words. This ties back into the field because people are forced to expand the comprehension boundaries with irregular types and unorthodox type presentations.

Here is an Web site on visual literacy and its learning.

The site presents curriculum for visual literacy but also explains its important and its place in culture. The activities are interesting. Try them out!

Designing Instructional Media

There are four key guidelines when creating materials for instruction or learning: contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. Contrast deals more with color where there should be a contrast of color between your background and your text. Yellow text and blue backgrounds work well but color isn't necessary. White on black or black on white work just fine. Repetition calls for consistency. Our learners should use their cognitive energy towards the content, not navigating through the material. Alignment deals with the alignment of the information. As with Repetition, we don't want to confuse our viewers. Everything should be clear and easy to read. Proximity is a consideration of grouping and associations. We do not want those who are looking at our presentation to have to use cognitive brain power to try and understand what they're seeing. Amongst these guidelines, there are certain design principles that should be followed. for example, using white space especially for young learners, using phrases and key words, organizing with boxes and keeping use of intricate and fancy fonts at a minimum. These elements help to create east reception for viewers to your information.

In advertising, these ideas are extremely important. First of all, there are many presentations and instances to use these guidelines and principles whether it be for clients or fellow coworkers. Not only that, in designing any type of material to be presented to consumers, you should aim to present a clean, efficient and clear presentation of what you want them to take from it. Many times I see ads where people do so much with imagery, text and audio but the consumer can't come away with what the product was or even who the brand is. It's sad but that is the firm's fault. As a designer, I find myself making simple and safe work. After this, I don't mind because I know my viewers aren't struggling to understand what they're seeing and are simply taking the information in.

This presentation goes through key elements of a good powerpoint presentation. They hit on similar points discussed in the class presentation on designing instructional media and even used some of the same terms. My problem is although the information makes a great presentation, the presentation itself isn't following its own advice. Great info. Horrible presentation.

21st Century Skills

21st century skills are a blend of content knowledge, specific skills, expertise and literacies that a essentials to succeed in our world too. There are several core subjects when it comes to 21st century skills as well: English, reading or language arts, World languages, Arts, Mathematics, Economics, Science, Geography, History and Government and Civics. After the general knowledge of these subjects is assessed, students must be able to comprehend and apply them to life, which is what I take as literacy, in terms of 21st century interdisciplinary themes. I feel that the overarching reason we have this skill set is to apply technological advances to problem solving so we can have more comprehensive and intelligent solutions.

These skills are ABSOLUTELY essential to success in the advertising field. A comprehensive tool box of the skills can help a student candidate become an amazing asset to firm's or company's team. To me, the themes become more important than having a grasp on the subjects. For instance, a sense of global awareness is truly imperative to understanding consumers, products and trends as extending your sights to the international level can open and explain so much more. The skills and tools that are also described can surely not only help candidates within my field but candidates in ANY field. I understand why 21st century skills are important and I support a stress being put on them.

Following suit with some of our more intriguing videos we have seen in class, this fairly new YouTube video analyzes 21st century skills, where we stand with it and even where we should go with it (broadly). It uses information presented i class but expands on it to present better understanding of the material. I agree with the video, especially since statistics were shown. School is to prepare students to work. If there are deficiencies in candidates in terms of what employers what, then we have a major problem.