Creative Commons and Public Domain Photos

Hancock, J. (Photographer). Flickr: Creative Commons (2014, July 22). There's No Place Like The Death Star [Web Photo]. CC by 2.0 (no changes made).

Hancock, J. (Photographer). Flickr: Creative Commons (2014, July 22). 

          The New Girl [Web Photo]. CC by 2.0 (original changed to 

          trading card).

On Big Huge Labs, I used the Trading Card creator to make a trading card for a fictional character. This would be a fun project for students when we are studying characterization.  We could also create an entire set of cards that represented the characters, setting, conflicts, and themes of our stories or novels.  Big Huge Labs also has a Magazine Cover creator that I could use with my students to personalize covers for our writing portfolios. Finally, I enjoyed playing around with the FX filters.  I was able to convert a photograph to drawing students could actually color on paper.  

ImageChef: This website has many fun framing options.  I could easily see myself using this to create writing prompt graphics for my students.  Students could use these to create exit tickets.  I especially liked the beach frame and Grumpy Cat.

Tuxpi: I am going to use this website with my students next week.  We are in the middle of creating our writing portfolios where we are publishing the best pieces of our writing from the school year to put in a special booklet to carry home.  My middle school students will enjoy all of the theming options for their photos!

Design Matters and Type Choices

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog, the Sunny Side of Life.  I decided to name my blog after song lyrics from one of my favorite songs, "Look for the Silver Lining," which is also featured in my Tagxedo. For the past eleven years, I have been teaching 6th grade English at Short Pump Middle School in Henrico County.  While I love my job and my students, my passions are changing.  My favorite part of the day is reading picture books to my two year old daughter at bed time. I am very interested in becoming an elementary school librarian. I am a natural optimist who loves old movies, picture books, sewing,and graphic design.

Design Matters
For my blog, I tried to create a sense of balance. I created a dark wooden background that would contrast with the light background where my text is placed. I love to decorate, and my designer eye is always drawn to light text on dark backgrounds; however, I recognize how hard that can be on a user's eyes when reading lengthy text, so, I am practicing restraint and keeping my focus on communication rather than decoration. In my blog's banner, I wanted to create a visual representation of my personality so visitors would get a sense of who I am in one, short glance. I selected a sunflower field as my background to represent optimism and used a public domain photo of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz to symbolize my love of classic children's literature. I added the blue banner behind my text so my title would be easier to read.  All three of these elements feature the same color blue (#65b0f2), which I also included in my Tagxedo as well.

Type Choices
My web banner features two different styles of text from two different families.  For my title, I wanted to grab readers' attention, so I used a larger font called Phosphate Inline.  My title features all capital letters, but this will be the only place I use all caps on my blog. I also spaced the letters out a little more on my blog so it would be easier to read.  The second group uses the font BrushScriptSTD, which is a script font. This line is not as important as the title, and I used the script font for decorative purposes only.  The font is small so as not to pull attention away from the title.  The primary text of my blog is Trebuchet, a sans-serif font, which our text book recommended for computer screens.