Standards VII

Desktop Publishing

The desktop publishing teacher has the knowledge and skills needed to teach the Foundations, Information Acquisition, Work in Solving Problems, Communication strands of the Technology Applications Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) in desktop publishing, in addition to the content described in Technology Applications Standards I-V.

Being a beginner to all things "technology," I felt that maybe this course of Desktop Publishing would be MY area. After all, I began my adult life as a secretary twenty-odd years ago and had lived with a typewriter at my fingertips for ten years. But, oh, the world of computers and Microsoft Word and Publisher and Pagemaker, etc. have changed all that! (Plus the ten or so years teaching sixth grade had rusted my mind somewhat!) I WAS more comfortable in this course than any, but there is so much more to Desktop Publishing than I ever dreamed. The BEST thing in this entire course had to be Robin Williams' Non-Designer's Design Book. I would love to have a class set of these for my students if we ever get Desktop Publishing to "make" as a class. I learned so much and am glad to know about .rtf and .pdf. The great resourses and discussions offered were very inspiring.

I am used to using a textbook which I am finding out is not usually a reality in TA courses. I plan to use many of the lesson plans developed in this course by my creative classmates. Even if Desktop Publishing as a class is not a reality for Lindsay High, I will use the principles from the Non-Designer's Design Book for Yearbook and BCIS projects. I want my students to know that Desktop Publishing can improve the looks of their final projects for other classes they take in high school and into college. Another goal of mine is to show the students how easy a scanner is to use. I had never used a scanner before a menu project I did in DTP and was amazed what an excellent tool the scanner proved to be.

I am choosing to use only one artifact here. I used my DTP Flyer Lesson Plan as the artifact in Standard IV Communicate Information for good reason and feel the need to mention it here so if you need to see more of my work, check out Standard IV Artifact 10.

Caption 4

Indicators: 7.1s, 7.2s, 7.10s, 7.14s, 7.15s, 7.16s, 7.17s, 7.18s, 7.21s, 7.24s, 7.27s, 7.28s, 7.29s, 7.30s, 7.32s, 7.37s, 7.39s, 7.40s, 7.43s, 7.45s, 7.47s, 8.1s, 8.2s, 8.17s, 8.19s, 8.20s, 8.24s, 8.25s, 8.31s, 8.43s, 8.44s, 8.45s

Artifact #4

Descriptors: Desktop Publishing, Graphics Editing, Font Choice, Page Layout

Title: Sara's Graduation Card

Course: 104 Desktop Publishing

Date Created: January 17, 2003

Source: Module 2

Media: Microsoft Publisher 98, Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Adobe Acrobat

Description: Using step by step instructions from desktoppub.about.com I created a personalized greeting card for my daughter's upcoming graduation. The instructions were very straightforward and I modified them to make the card my own. I tried to use the rule of thirds, font choice information I had gotten from Robin Williams's design book, and other input from this course. The most exciting thing about this card was learning how to use Adobe Acrobat to save it as a .pdf file.

Rationale: This is the first desktop publishing project I did for this course so I thought it would be appropriate to use for my first desktop publishing artifact. I made a greeting card using Microsoft Publisher. I had been reading The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams and was studying the section on fonts, so that is what I focused on. I chose this card as my artifact because its simplicity shows the ease I felt in creating it. It went together well with the limited graphics choices I had in Microsoft Word at the time. (I didn't want to spend hours hunting for graphics, I wanted to learn how to make the card!) Its simple design also reinforces the simplicity of converting to .pdf files. What a treat!

Implications for future: I have enjoyed Desktop Publishing. It makes so much more sense to me than some of the other TAs. Probably because I am a BCIS teacher!!! I enjoyed creating this card and think it will be a great project to use in my classes.

Reviewer's Comments: I love your card. What a milestone for your daughter! The font style you chose is perfect for the occasion. Your text, picture, and white space are balanced nicely. Overall you did an excellent job. I especially liked the mom and pop logo on the back - very clever.

Reviewer's Name: Diane C. Madden

Date Reviewed: January 22, 2003

Title: TATC Graduate, Class of 02', TATC Mentor '03

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