Monday, April 28, 2008

Mini-Course: The "Look"

Here's a bit of a teaser for my upcoming mini-course. It defines the "look" I'm giving to my slides and notes and such. What do you think? Will the 13 year old girls like it?

(I should note that I would have made the controller in the background lighter, but I know the projector I will be using doesn't display light gray very well, so I just wanted to ensure it actually showed up!)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks professional and cute. However, one could argue that the super skinny girl is very much akin to how some fashion magazines are illustrated, and how such "role models" may cause problems for young girls (and increasingly boys too).

- Rob

leonsp said...

I think the figure is fine -- one has to choose one's battles, and one can't win them all at the same time. The core message is what's important

I'm more concerned about the "Not just for boys" slogan. Recent research that I am entirely failing to locate indicates that the brain is not very good at remembering the "not" part of "not" clauses.

And, rhetoric-wise, one generally wants to state things in one's own point of view rather than as a negation of someone else's point of view. The last thing they need is free publicity.

Gail Carmichael said...

Hmm, interesting points in terms of the slogan. Unfortunately, the course title has been set in stone, so to speak, for some time now, so I can't really change that. But if I do the same course next year, perhaps I will try to rework it to not include the negative. This one just sounded the most catchy at the time (important to grab the attention of teenagers!).

I know what you mean about the skinny looking girl; I chose her because of the attitude she had ;) I think because it's pretty stylistic rather than realistic that the stick-ness won't matter as much...?

Chris said...

I polled my "expert panel" of teenage girls (my daughter). lol

She's an avid gamer and artist.

Here are some of her comments:

"It's the thing about the computer science that bugs me.it just looks like one of those things where you show up and build a computer or something like that"

"some more color would help. its kind of... Blank"


My suggestions? I might put more color into the text and move it down a bit to fill in the white space. I think girls that age like more girly colors and "bling", though I understand it can't be so complicated that it looks bad on the overhead.

Just my $.02.

Gail Carmichael said...

Hey Chris - thanks for the comment! Who could be a better critic than a teenaged girl ;) It's definitely hard to find a balance between being to cluttered and yet having some of that so called bling. I think I'll play with it some more and see what I can do. :)

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