Update!
Well I've been rethinking my strategy.. I'm having a hard time understanding the exact assignment. So I think I might change my stretch project just a little. I'm still doing it in Adobe® Photoshop, but I'm going to change the way it looks and the "theme" and all of that. I think what i was doing before didn't apply.. so it looks like I'll be doing even more work this weekend!

Progress Report

Well, I've been working hard on my stretch project whenever I have time, which isn't often lately. I'm making a picture/sign thing in Adobe® Photoshop 7.0 and some of the stuff gets fairly complicated to get things to look how I want them to. I'd say so far I have put somewhere between two and four hours of work into it. To someone else, it probably would look like I've put about 10 minutes into it. I have an idea of what I want it to look like, although I think a lot of it is going to be really tough to do. Basically, my picture is going to say "THE FUTURE OF LITERACY" across the top, and there will be a picture of a computer.. from that will extend internet and other applications, and from those will extend different things that will be done within each application (i.e. computer=>internet=>weblogs). I think it's going to take a LOT of time to finish this, but I'm finally done with most of my busy work for the week so I can hopefully have it done pretty soon.

MONDAY

Good ol' Monday again.. I just polished off a couple left-over slices of pizza from last night. I actually made it to math lecture this morning. That's a break through. I went to english too,b ut there was no class. Then I had a psychology quiz and forgot to go to chemistry after that. It's not even noon and I'm done with school for the day! The real reason I'm typing this is for part of my stretch project, I wanted a screen shot while I was typing so I went ahead and did that. I'll post a picture (if I can figure out how) when I'm done iwth my thingy on here so ALL of my viewers (all of me) can see it. hoepfully it'll be nice. That's all I have to say about Monday.

Stretch Plan

1. What are you going to try?
I'm going to try to make a visual representation of this whole New Literacy idea using Adobe® Photoshop 7.0.

2. Why are you going to try it? What relevance does it have to your needs or desires?
I'm trying it because I think it'd be fun to learn some skills in Photoshop and it'll be something I can put a lot of time into without getting bored. As far as relevance to my own needs or desires, learning techniques in Photoshop can help me if I need to use it for a project in the future, and also it'll help me to become more visual, as I am used to a word-based style of learning from my educational experiences.

3. How are you going to learn it?
I found a couple sites that have tutorials. I will continue to search for similar sites and I will try to incorporate these skills into my project. I also have a friend who is good at using photoshop to make graphics so I can ask him to help me out if I need to.

4. How should the instructor evaluate it? What are your aims? What will constitute success, failure, a "reasonable" effort, etc.?
There are a few different ways to evaluate this project. One way of evaluation would be to decide what the audience thinks when they look at my work, and compare it to what I wanted them to see. I will try to display my defintion of New Literacy through a picture, and hopefully the viewers of my picture will be able to understand and predict my definition. Another method of evaluation could simply be to look at the time spent doing the project. I have some skills in Photoshop now, but they're minimal. The time it will take for me to learn skills sufficient enough to create a quality product as well as the time put into the project will probably add up to several hours, in addition to the time I will have already put into doing research, deciding what my definition is, and deciding how to put it into grahpics.

5. How will I get my project to my instructor?
I can simply save the file as a jpeg when I'm finished with it and attach it in an email, or else I can save it to a disk, as it probably won't be an incredibly large file, depending on how big I make the picture.

Source #6

VWVortex guide to photoshop

Well I hit some f***ing button agian so I get to re-type this damn paragraph AGAIN. Basically this thread on VWVortex forums tells readers how to lower cars, change wheels, and change colors of cars using adobe photoshop. Although it seems like this has nothing to do with my assignment, I think these skills will be useful when I'm doing my stretch project in photoshop. The people who use photoshop to modify pictures of cars on this site have amazing skills and hopefully i can learn some of them through this project.

Source #5

enGauge

This site was put together with some research and it tells that literacy is definitely changing, and for the up and coming generation there must be new ways of teaching skills necessary to become an effective part of the work force. The four main skills, of course, each with sub-divisions, listed here are: Digital-age literacy, Inventive thinking, Effective communication, and high productivity. This essay brings up a strong argument in saying that children nowadays need training much different than those of past generations to become an effective part of the work force.

Source #4

Tools for Reading the World

This site has loads of links to several different categories that might be placed under the new literacy heading. The literacies it lists as headings, each with at least two (usually more) sub-categories are: basic language, visual, historical, cultural, information, political/news media, scientific, and mathematic. In these links it has information about the sub-category and gives information on what it's about, how it can be taught/learned, and so on. There are really starting to be a lot of different definitions and sub-divisions of new literacy.

Source #3

21st Century Literacy

Found under the same search as the previous source, this site has valuable information for students hoping to learn the new literacy. It uses four categories: information, media, multicultural, and visual. The site provides links to these four categories and in those links it has tips and strategies to help in teaching students that category as well as helping students to learn it. This looks to be another fairly valuable source in my quest to define the new literacy.

Source #2

What is New Literacy?

I found this site when I searched on google.com for +literacy +"21st century" .. I'm not sure if it's the most efficient way to search, but what the heck... this site talks about the "new literacy" and what must new things must be incorporated to improve critical thinking skills in students. The five new things listed are technology literacy, information literacy, media creativity, global literacy, and literacy with responsibility. It goes on to discuss the three main areas of change in our lives: education, workplace skills, and civic management. This site will be a very useful source in my research because it tells how the new literacy will change education as well as other things.

POOP!

well ah, I had this whole nice thing typed up and I CLICKED THE WRONG F***ING BUTTON so I have to redo the whole friggin thing. I basically said that last Friday went well.. and then I did a filter of a site, which is below.. probably not as good as the first one though. Friggin Blogger dot com.

Photoshop Cafe

I found this site a while ago. The writer of the web site does a lot of stuff on adobe photoshop and other adobe programs, and he's amazing. He gives a lot of tutorials on how to do all kinds of cool stuff, I have gone thoguh and done two of them. One of them was a diamond faced letter and gold outline, and the other was how to make a three-dimensional looking cone. Both turned out pretty well.. I haven't tried any others though. I would recomment looking through his galleries on what he has done and there are also some desktop backgrounds you can get. Check out Photoshop Cafe if this sounds interesting at all!

Snow sucks.





.......Snow sucks.

Huatt

well I just realized it's 9:00 PM. it should be about.. 3 PM I think, today kinda flew by without me noticing. I'm going to try to do homework now. I know you don't care, but I felt like typing something anyhow. so screw off, buddy.