One of the Make and Share activities I did was a little slideshow using Adobe Spark. The goal of the assignment was to create something non-textual so I went the slideshow route. Creating something beyond text is a second nature to me as I have been tinkering with visual arts for as long as I remember myself, so for this assignment I decided to concentrate on trying-out a piece of technology I have never used before. My goal was to investigate how it works and the level of difficulty in achieving the end result — the non-textual something.

I found that Adobe Spark is incredibly easy to use and so intuitive that if I were to suggest this tool to my students it would not require a development of an extensive tutorial on how to use it. I am always on a look-out for new and easy to use web-based tools to incorporate into students’ projects as I believe that there are many benefits in teaching students new technology along with any course content. Among many things it is a great opportunity to give students a tangible transferable skill for the life outside of college. Adobe Spark did not disappoint. It did not hinder the creative process. Because of the ease of use I found myself forgetting my original goal of investigating the application and instead concentrating more on creative process– planning the show, selecting pictures, soundtrack, etc.

One of the reasons this assignment belongs in this course is…
Educational content delivery is still very much predominately text-based. Although the text is here to stay, visual literacy is just as important and requires higher-order cognition skills (from the creator and the spectator) for “encoding,” “reading” and interpreting. Plus, images are just fun!