Primary Literacy Scheme

I am very pleased to announce that my application onto the Primary Literacy Scheme was successful. I am really excited to start on my placement, I feel it will give me some additional experience for my application onto the Primary PGCE next year and also help me with my projects I am doing this year that look into different ways of promoting learning and understanding. I have been to the training sessions for the past couple of days and I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about different aspects of schools and what will be required from me. I have been given a school in Sneinton and which is quite a small infant school so I am really pleased and can't wait to get started.

Evaluation

I started work on this project straight away after being given the brief; this made me more confident at the start about what I was going to be doing and how I was going to do it. I defined a clear objective from the beginning and because of this I was able to organize my time effectively for the production of the product.

The website I created was kept simple but not plain in design. After looking at other websites I decided that colour coding would be a good way to make the website easy to navigate round for young children. Each button that linked to another page was a different colour that matched the colour of a picture that represented the topic without words. I felt this was an important aspect to the website because it makes the website accessible to the young target audience I was aiming for.

In the website I used bold and bright colours to attract attention, large text that is easy to read, and big images that clearly represent the topic of each page. There is a clear sense of continuity throughout the web pages which important so the children know they are staying on the same website and have not accidentally navigated away.

Throughout the production of the website I received peer feedback and made adjustments to design and function, for example I added a simple logo to the pages which doubled up as a second homepage button which made the navigation even simpler. If I had more time I would have liked to test my website on my target audience but as I found out that primary school children are a vulnerable age group I would have needed permission from both the schools and parents and this was not feasible in the time frame given.

Overall I am very pleased with the product I have produced to fulfill the brief given. I feel that it is an effective use of multimedia to support a public information campaign about climate change. I would have liked to make the site slightly more interactive but due to a lack of skills in that area it was not possible in the time given. The website could easily be used in schools as it complies with the key stage one national curriculum, at the same time it is not too complicated for a child to use at home. I am hoping to continue with this website in my own time to experiment and possibly add more interactive elements.

Adjustment

I decided to make the pictures on the homepage, that are colour coded to the buttons alongside, alson link to the appropriate paes as this will make the website even easier to use and navigate around.

Final Page Designs

I'm really pleased with these designs, the site is easy to use and not too overcrowded. The pages have a good sense on continuity between them and are kept simple. The large writing and colour coding makes it suitable for the young target audience.

Live Client Project

When we were first told about the live stage of the client project I was really anxious as I didn't have a clue where to start looking for a client. I am also not very confident in my abilities as a multimedia designer so I was concerned about finding a client and letting them down along the way by not meeting their expectations. I recently spoke to Deborah about this and she made me feel so much better about it and together we came up with the idea of asking a head teacher in Newcastle, whom I had worked with over the summer, to be my client. I decided I would really like to design a website for the parents of primary school children to help them help their children outside of school and when I spoke to the head teacher about she was very excited by this idea. It turns out that there is a lack of information available to parents to guide them through helping at home, especially for parents of children with special needs. I am now really looking forward to starting the next stage of the client project and also feeling a lot more confident rather than dreading it.

Further design adjustments

I adjusted my original home button slightly so it would tie in better with the other buttons, i did this by adding a layer of yellow under the picture.



I think adding this simple logo to the all the pages apart from the homepage would increase the sense of continuity through the site. I then decide that this button should also link to the homepage as some children may be click on this one rather than the home button at the bottom of the page and this way they can use either option.

Design adjustments

I decided the title on the homepage didn't really tie in very well with the rest of the homepage or the other pages so i thought putting it in it's own box similar to the buttons would make it look better. I also thought the other titles would look better if they looked like larger versions of the buttons they had linked from.

The background on my pages seemed a bit too simplistic and plain so I decided to add a series of footprints across the page.

Research

I have been looking at some research in preparation for writing my review and I'm starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. I need to learn how to to be able to skim read things because I seem to be spending too much time reading through some very lengthy documents and then finding out that they aren't much help. I have not always found research difficult but I think that because it has been quite a while since I have written any sort of research document I am finding it quite challenging to get back into it. I have also never written such a formal research document and I am worried that I may not be able to word it correctly or write it in the right format. I think that by looking at other research documents whilst carrying out research for my own is not only giving me information but is alos helping me lear more about the style of writing that is required.

Website design

I have started to design and create my website and it's going pretty well. I have decided to use bold bright colours and a colour coding system for the buttons. Here are the mock ups of the first couple of pages.