Category: EDCI 336 Page 2 of 3

On October 31, 2022

I decided to do some testing this week with colour, procreate brushes and printing! Last week, I determined the pixels, DPI, and dimensions I needed for a print on 11″ x 17 ” paper for the final book. I illustrated on those set numbers from last week and printed it out on a 8.5″ x 11″ paper because that’s all I had, but I’m hoping to do another test with 11″ x 17″ when I get the chance. The colours came out great and the quality was crisp. I’m hoping my numbers are correct so that it comes out clear on the larger paper too.

My test illustration is of a still shot from the movie My Neighbor Totoro from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, which is my laptop screensaver. I chose this because I really liked the colour palette of the original still and I wanted to see it printed. It turned out so perfect for what I envisioned the picture book to look like and feel like. I was dabbling between realism and a imaginitive with my illustration style and I think I’ve landed on an in between. I feel like total realism might take away from the readers’ opportunity to use their imagination. Also I think in general, drawing unrealistically is always so much more fun because you as the artist get to choose the bounds of reality!

The colour palette below is set for the final illustrations and was inspired by the original still shot I drew and from all Studio Ghibli movies in general. I’ve grown up with these movies, which emit a certain warm energy through the stories and the beautiful animation. Other movies I was inspired by and will continue to use as a reference are, Ponyo, Castle in the Sky, and Howl’s Moving Castle.

What kind of mood does the colour palette that I chose give off to you?

One thing you might notice about my illustration above, is that I have my spread outlined, but I’ve drawn over the outline. I learned to do this with my first picture book experience for a seamless look in the final book and also to create wiggle room for editing or adjustments. This is especially helpful when the illustrations are done traditionally on paper.

To go back to the talk on colour palette and illustration style, my goal is to create this book as engaging as possible and in that, colours and style make a big impact. When I think of the Fancy Nancy books by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser, I remember the glitz and glam of the illustration style and with Robert Munsch’s books, Michael Martchenko’s iconic style that perfectly illustrate the wildness of Munshch’s stories. I’m hoping to experiment and build my own, one of a kind, and iconic illustration style through this project.

Online Emergency Sub Bag

On October 27, 2022

https://www.geoguessr.com/

I had never heard of EdCamps before until this week’s class. Having an event like EdCamps to have meaningful discussions on areas of education that I’m interested in, sounds amazing. Furthermore, these discussions provide differing perspectives from a variety of people in the field of education. From our own sample EdCamp in class, I joined the Gender Identity, Classroom Management, and ELL Learning Support discussions. All of these conversations were really enlightenting, but in the Classroom Management talk, the discussion on TOC preparation stood out to me the most.

Just in the past 2 months, my cohort has been told on multiple occasions that as substitutes, we could be called to high schools too, despite having graduated from the Elementary BEd program. This definitely scares me, but the emergency sub bag idea from Joanna, made me think of possibly creating an online emergency sub bag with tech ed resources for all grade levels including high school grades. With this thought (which I also wrote about in my comment on Nova’s “Week 7: The Tactical TOC” blog post), I thought I should actually try starting an emergency online resource collection. Below, I’ve curated a list of possible resources for the grade 10-12 level, which are the most daunting grades to me. I’ve tried to select resources that could be used in any class of any subject.

HIGH SCHOOL TechEd RESOURCES (Grades 10-12)

1. Kahoot: Trivia Kahoots to use for a whole class activity

2. Countries of the World Quiz: Students challenge themselves to name as many countries as possible within the time limit. This can be done as a class as well (no internet help allowed).

https://www.jetpunk.com/quizzes/how-many-countries-can-you-name

3. Films

The Pursuit of Happyness (Movie 2006)
- Accessible through Netflix

Dead Poets Society (Movie 1989)
- Accessible through Disney Plus

The Rescue (Documentary 2021)
- Accessible through Disney Plus

My Octopus Teacher (Documentary 2020)
- Accessible through Netflix

4. GeoGuessr: Students can play individually or as a class to find the location of 360 image on a map.

These are just a few resource options, but I’m sure there are so many more! Comment on this post with more ideas for a high school class or add onto the ones I’ve mentioned with more movies or documentaries, kahoot games and online games. Thanks for reading!

Setting the Foundation

On October 23, 2022

Finally! My rough storyboard is finished and you can check it out in the video below! Feel free to pause and read through the story and enjoy the imovie background music. This has taken me a good 3 weeks, but I’m glad I took my time with it in order to start the good copies with a strong foundation. There is still room for improvement though, so give me any feedback or suggestions you have, to make the illustrations and writing better (especially the writing)!

P.S. Thanks for all the feedback on my last free inquiry post! The majority of readers chose option 2 for pages 3 & 4 on spread 2. Option 2 is now solidified for the final rough storyboard!

The next step to this picture book journey comes with… some more storyboarding. But but but, this time it’s for the real deal. The new offical storyboards are going to be my actual guide layers for the final illustrations on procreate. The current drafts I’ve made are more so rough guidelines. Also, the writing placements will be made more official (no more random lines). In order to start the more offical processes, I need to set a few important pieces of information straight.

1. Dimensions: I’ve already set rough dimensions for my spreads with the rough drafts, but I need to decide on specific dimensions for the final book so that I know what size paper I should print on and what paper size I should set on procreate. The dimensions I have solidifed are 15″W x 9″H for each spread and 7.5″W x 9″H for each page.

2. Pixels: Pixels are a digital image’s displayable units. My intention is to print the spreads on 11″ x 17″ paper for the final book so with some research on DocuCopies and Bardot Brush I found that the pixels needed for good results are 3300px x 5100px and for the best image resolution, I should choose 4400px x 6800px on procreate.

3. DPI: The DPI is also key for the printing process. It stands for dots per inch and determines dot density. I really don’t have much knowledge on DPI so I went to ProcreateFolio, where there is Porcreate’s official forum for discussion amongst Procreate users. There, I found that the majority suggested 300 DPI for printing on 11″ x 17″ paper. Apparently 500 DPI is ideal, but is too much for the app itself to handle and not all printers are capable of printing 500 DPI.

How to Play Wordle

On October 17, 2022

In this week’s class, we had a great workshop class with guest speaker Rich McCue. The speaker went over numerous EdTech resources to use within educational videos such as, timelapses, slow motion, 360º cameras, GIFs, and virtual reality. With Rich, we learned how to make our own interactive screen recorded educational video using Screencastify and the H5P program! I chose to create a video explaining how to play the online game Wordle with multiple choice questions embedded throughout. Check it out below!

I’ll definitely be using H5P tools for my own class projects and in my own future classrooms! I want to teach more intermediate elementary classes so I think students would be able to learn indepentantly with H5P tools like the tutorial videos we made in class. My Link2Practice partner and I actually had the chance to lead a picture book art activity in our grade 4/5 class and the picture book I wanted to use was not available to us in hard copy. Thankfully, there were a lot of youtube videos online of teachers and students reading the book so all was well and lesson went great! Despite the book being read to the students from a video, the students were really engaged. The book was called The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt by Riel Nason.

In the future, I could incorporate H5P tools to embed interactivity in my own picture book reading video. The video would include questions that pertain to the activity planned around the book. For example, our art activity about The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt, was for the class to create their own quilt ghost by creating many square patches with different patterns with a cool tone focus. These art elements and the acitivty itself can be introduced, hinted at, and or highlighted through interactive questions throughout the book reading video. There could be questions such as, “What kinds of colours do you see on the quilt ghost?” or “What shape is the quilt made up of?”.

According to the Multimedia Learning Theory, including interactivity to a video should increase longterm understanding. Having multiple mediums within our learning and teaching tools engages students by requring multiple senses and active minds. In the case of the picture book video with interactive questions, there is incentive to listen in order to answer questions correctly and the questions embedded in the video are preparing students for the activity that will follow. I’m so glad I got to learn how to use this amazing H5P tool! I know it’s going to come in handy in the future and even right now as I go into practicums and work as a tutor.

Bye Bye Creative Block

On October 16, 2022

Last week I wrote about being stuck on repetetive illustrations, but I think I’ve finally gotten myself out of the rut. In fact, I need help narrowing down on an illustration for spread 2 in my picture book. (I want to say this sudden boost of creativity came from the fact that that I worked outside in the sun today, but I can’t say for sure.)

Out of the options below, comment which illustration you think best represents the writing above in a creative and engaging way?

Option 1: This was my first draft for the illustration, but I thought that maybe a birds-eye perspective would better capture the busyness of the planting process that I envisioned when writing.

Option 2: I also thought it might be interesting if the desks in this classroom were different, so I wanted to try a layout where the whole spread was the desk in birds-eye view.

Option 3: Circle tables are another idea I had in mind for this spread, but since the spread can’t be circle shaped, there would be a few tables scattered around the spread.

To move on from spread 2… While working out how I should format a page in spread 6, I was inspired by comic books! The way these books manipulate fonts, size, and colours of words (especially onomatopoeias), enhances its stories by illustrating sounds, movements, and even smells. Some of my favourite comics growing up were, Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson and the Archie Comics.

On the left page of spread 6, I’m going to try using the lines of writing to mimic momentum in my character’s run! I not only want to show a physical movement, but I also want to show the character’s mental and emotional drive to learn and apply her learning. In this case, my character is excited to use what new knowledge she’s gained in order to help her plant grow.

For next week, I still have four more spreads to work on! This portion of my picture book development process is taking longer than I thought, but it’ll be so much easier to complete the final illustrations with a solidifed storyboard that I’ve taken my time with. Stay tuned!

Rough Storyboarding

On October 11, 2022

I’m having a harder time storyboarding this picture book compared to the one I had worked on previously. The last one was a lot less story driven and more of a conceptual poetry picture book, but with the one I’m working on now, I need to illustrate a specific story and consider the younger student audience that may rely heavily on the illustrations to understand the book.

A literary tool I am using in my writing is repetition, which I found to be used in a lot of children’s books including, All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold and The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. However, I don’t want to be too repetitive with my illustrations. I’m hoping to use various angles and formatting to make the images exciting and engaging! I want to avoid redundancy for students.

My Progress: I’ve done some very very rough drawings to lay out a simple storyboard, but I haven’t completed all the pages yet. The spreads above are those that I’m pretty set on and confident in. I’m stuck on a number of pages due to the redundancy issue I want to avoid, but I’m continuing to work through it. However, as you can see, there is some repetition in the illustrations with the row of plants, but I thought for the story, it was an angle that worked best to show the plant growth consistently so I’ll be using that throughout the book.

Also, a key point I need to keep in mind as I begin my illustrations is the importance of representation in children’s books. The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson and All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold are examples of books that directly discuss diversity in schools. Although my story isn’t directly exploring diversity, representation of all different kinds of people with different skin tones and abilities is incredibly important for students to observe as they grow up in order to feel seen and included.

Next week, I’ll continue to storyboard and tackle the issues I’m having with it. Hopefully I have a full rough storyboard by next week, but I’m not expecting to finalize images to start official illustrating just yet!

Images illustrated by Yireh Park

Long Weekend Reflection

On October 11, 2022

For the Thanksgiving long weekend, I went back home to the mainland, where I ate a lot and slept a whole lot. It was so nice to have my mom’s home-cooked meals again after a month and going back to my double bed, it felt so big and comfortable compared to the twin bed I have in Victoria. For our family’s little Thanksgiving meal, I had the pleasure of contributing with bacon wrapped asparagus. It was so easy to make and so tasty that I’m tempted to make myself a whole batch here in Victoria, but my food budget does not have room for that at the moment so I’ll simply have to find joy in my memory of the dish.

I’ve really been loving all the food free inquiry projects and since mine has nothing to do with food, I thought I would take this opportunity to do a food post of my own.

Ingredients:

Asparagus spears
Bacon strips
Olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Cooking:

Preheat oven to 400ºC
Drizzle and coat asparagus with olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste
wrap 3-4 asparagus spears with a strip of bacon
Place the bundles on a baking tray and bake for 22 to 28 minutes.

The recipe I used was from Well Plated By Erin Clarke, but I adjusted the serving size to 12 because that’s how many bacon slices were in my package and also, there were 6 people to feed, which meant everyone got 2 bundles. The recipe is easily adaptable and I used it as more of a guideline for ingredients and cooking method. It was such a simple recipe to make and my whole family loved it so I would 100% recommend!

Overall, I had a great restful weekend and I’m already looking forward to the home-cooked meals that are coming when I go home again for reading break!

Phone Jail Reflection

On October 3, 2022

Giving my phone away for classes was a normal daily pattern in high school. It never felt comfortable to do so, but it also never felt weird to me that teachers would ask us to give them our personal phones. I remember gazing at the shoe hanger or box full of phones during classes, wondering if I got an important notification or just out of discomfort with the fact that my phone was not secure with me. Only recently after Jesse’s talk and our class conversation this week did I come to realize how weird it is that I’m so used to teachers taking my phone.

If I think about it carefully, I should have the right to refuse giving my own personal phone away to a teacher, but I know for a fact that some, if not most teachers wouldn’t have reacted well to a student’s refusal. I’ve never tried it, but I just can’t see it ending well with how serious my teachers were with their phone jails. Also, if I look back on my personal learning experience and learning outcomes from high school, there is no difference in productivity and success between classes where I had my phone or didn’t. However, it’s no lie that devices can be a distraction, so navigating that in my future classes is going to be a learning process that starts now.

Story Building & Writing Drafts

On October 1, 2022

As I mentioned in my last free inquiry post, the picture book, The Name Jar was a big reason for why I chose to do this picture book project. Throughout my time in elementary school and high school, I never encountered The Name Jar, by Yangsook Choi, but I really wish I had. The story follows a young girl from South Korea who is deciding on a new name for her new life in North America. Ultimately she chooses to keep her Korean name, Unhei. It’s a meaningful story that I and many others can relate to or learn from.

I did a lot of story brainstorming and came to a relatively simple story about learning. I want to include the ideas of learning from mistakes, learning in a variety of ways, and overall send the message that learning is a challenge, but a fun one that can take time and effort.

My Progress: Above, I have my writing drafts for 12 spreads! I struggled with how to end the story and I did figure something out, but I’m still not sure if it’s the right way to end it. All of it is really rough and I haven’t gotten anyone else to give me feedback yet so I’ll most likely change a lot of things around during the illustration process, and until the end. Below, I have more illustration experimenting, which is also my website’s main home image.

This coming week, my plan is to continue experimenting and to start working on storyboarding the illustrations on my iPad, which is the exciting part for me!

Digital Citizenship Reflection

On October 1, 2022