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Drawing of the Day: Character Design Using Illustrator
The internet is full of learning resources. If you are a complete beginner, I highly recommend Gareth David’s free Complete Beginner’ Guide to Adobe Illustrator. With more practice under my belt, I’ve been able to draw these characters faster. Never give up practising and learning. P.S. The concept for this picture came from Nataliya Dolotko — I am merely the student. Please check her out on Envato Tutsplus.
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Media Authoring Skills: How I Made a Lyric Video
I know the question in your head. Would I need to be able to make lyric videos as an instructional designer? Not usually. But should you have video editing skills? I would say yes. In some organizations, you need to be able to do everything. In the corporate sector, you need to be more of an all-rounder, that is, you need to not just be able to design, but to build out your concept as well. I made a lyric video to polish up my media and video editing…
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Restorative Times: Drawing & Painting on the iPad with Procreate
Update, December 26, 2020: It’s been 7 months since I last did anything creative, or made anything. Work took up all my time, with a thousand and one things I personally have to attend to (without some Graduate Assistant help I used to have in my previous job). As I wrap up the few courses on my list, I took time to relearn and learn new design tricks with Procreate, After Effects, Illustrator and Captivate. My favorite way to unwind and relax is to create something with a design software.…
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PD Musings: The Importance of Community and Value for Money
I’m enrolled in another online course to brush up my ASL skills and to learn more accurately the structure of ASL as opposed to SEE (Signed Exact English), which I had learned in Singapore. SEE is not ASL as it follows the syntax of English. It has messed up my communication with my American Deaf friends and I want to get it right, once and for all. Once again, when I’m inside this course, what frustrates me—about this and some online courses—is the lack of community. It’s a dated pedagogical…
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I’m a Certified Mental Health First Aider
I spent eight hours yesterday at a Mental Health First Aid USA course arranged by my institution to learn the following: how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. The training gives you the skills you need to reach out and provide initial help and support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use problem or experiencing a crisis. Mental Health First Aid Indeed, such information is useful. Michelle Obama, Chirlane McCray and Patrick Kennedy think so too. They…
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Reconstruction [Draft]
Kevin, Terry and Wendy are teaching me how to remix and reconstruct inspiration and ideas we find on the web. I read through their poems and makes tonight. This is my first pass at reconstruction. I’ve translated Terry’s poem, “Let Go. Explore” into Chinese. Since it’s late, I’m going to add more layers tomorrow. Our words Are not lies Any more than a metaphor is NoWe have sailed to And landed onThe shore of An undiscoveredCountry Let GoExplore! 我们的话不是谎言就如隐喻也同样的不是 没有我们已经航行到了已经落地了到达一个未被发现的土地 摊开双手走去探索!
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The Lady at the Gym
I went to a new gym today, not new-new, but one I don’t usually go to because it’s further from my apartment. I was not familiar with the machines. The elliptical machine was similar enough to the ones I used before. Checked. Leg extensions, done. I moved to the other areas for arm, back and upper torso work. It was here that I was stumped. A lady with a waist-bag walked into the area. I sat at the torso twister and observed her stealthily, all the while trying to swing…
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Magical Five, Plus Minus 2
EdSurge has a monthly newsletter, The Top Five, and CNN has a daily 5 Things. I love reading them both. Both curate for me interesting articles I don’t have the time to comb the internet for myself. There is something magical about not going beyond that number 5, it seems. Maybe you have heard of or read George Miller’s seminal article, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information; and that due to the limits of our short-term memory (“the span of immediate…
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How Do I Know My Students Are Actually Learning in an Online Class? [draft]
[This is a first draft of some of my preliminary thoughts] I was asked this question during a consultation with a new online instructor. Sounds simple but I was somewhat stumped. I recall recovering in time to furnish a response. In hindsight, I want to put together a more thoughtful response. Essentially, this concern confounds most first-time instructors of online courses. They fear that they can’t engage with their learners and will not know whether these learners are keeping up with the class. The gap in space and place, the asynchronous…
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How to Turn Off Subtitles or Closed Captioning in Amazon Fire TV
Recently, I have been watching French movies on Amazon TV as part of my self-directed French studies. I turned on Closed Captioning (CC) for one of the movies last week because it didn’t have English subtitles. When I watched the French movie (Roman de Gare) today, I was saddled with both the movie’s subtitles and Amazon’s CC texts. Figuring out how to remove CC (or Subtitles) from the movie drove me crazy. I googled and didn’t find any “solution” I could understand or that worked. Amazon’s instructions were of no help.…
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SXSWEDU 2018: Building a Higher Ed Movement
[Me: Scrolling through the sessions I had selected on my conference mobile app] There is a pattern in the things I was interested in. I had checked a lot of sessions that dealt with narrowing inequity and addressing social injustice on My Favorites list. And my favoritest of favorites is the one by the President of Paul Quinn College, Michael Sorrell. He delivered a moving keynote address that wrenched my gut. Live your life wisely; use your education and experience to fight for a cause bigger than yourself.” So-o-o, Yin, what are you doing to bring…
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3 Favorite Things I Saw This Week (and Last)
[Note: I wrote this post during the last week of 2017] This was last week’s selections but is just as blog-worthy to note. So here they are: Mirai Nagasu’s Redemption Skate: How to Fail Forward Figure-skating was a huge part of my life when I newly relocated to the USA. How “huge”? A rough measurement would be to take a count of the number of Winter Olympics’ women’s berets I own. Thus, when the US Figure-Skating (FS) Championships came on TV last Friday, I was riveted to the screen; although I…
