Monday, January 21, 2019

New Activity Pack, Revived Newsletter

Last week I said I was only going to blog every other week, yet here it is a week later and I'm blogging. Go figure.

Over the weekend I got my graphic tablet and ArtRage software up and running again with the new laptop. Did you know that I completely BLISS OUT when I am sketching on my Wacom Intuos Draw? I do. And it was the perfect weekend to stay inside and create materials. When I stepped out just to the store for soup ingredients, I instantly regretted it. Once I had the soup stuff, I was content to sit by the window and work on the Andres Needs Gas activity pack.

I'm not planning to make worksheets in MS Word anymore. I've noticed that older activity packs in Word do not maintain their formatting well when opened in subsequent versions of Word. Also, there can be an issue with fonts, particularly KG Primary Penmanship font, required for penmanship lines. A document created in Google Drawing, on the other hand, is very easy to set up and save as a PDF. Every once in a while, I'll get a request from a teacher somewhere out there in the world who wants me to open the Google doc for editing. In that case, I just point out that it's not necessary for me to share editing privileges with them. Anyone can go to FILE - Make a Copy. I learned all of this from Tony Vincent.

How many of you are enrolled now in Tony's spring course, Classy Graphics? I still use what he taught me weekly if not daily.

Not only am I having second thoughts about limiting my blogging to biweekly, I'm also thinking I may continue the newsletter. When I sent out a farewell edition, I got feedback encouraging me to continue. It doesn't take much for me to reconsider. A little positive feedback goes a long way.

With that said, here is what I worked on this weekend. You will notice I am not as stuck in perfectionist mode as before. Once upon a time, I felt that all images had to be in the same style. I would never mix clip art with photos with my own sketches. This time I did. I don't like it, but I'm going to live with it this once because a) I needed the activity pack this week and couldn't wait for perfectionist Kelly to spend an hour on every sketch; b) do the uncomfortable until it feels comfortable.

You can download the Andres Needs Gas reader from Bow Valley College School of Global Access website. You can grab my activity pack from www.kellymorrissey.com - Literacy - Transportation. I also linked to it under Literacy - Community because Andres visits many places around town: the library, bank, grocery store, etc. In fact I think I will follow this reader with my "Around Town" unit.

If you know someone who would like to receive the monthly round up and reminders of free resources created that month, point them to the SUBSCRIBE link in the sidebar. ---->

I guess I'm getting a second wind!

4 comments:

  1. Testing a different comment box setting to resolve a technical issue. --KM

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  2. Claudie Graner1/27/2019 12:20 PM

    But now I can’t see the comments IN blog form ON your blog. Only on Blogger. Is anyone else affected?

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  3. Yes, it's the same for me, Claudie. A pop-up opened in Blogger. And I am a faithful reader of the Joy of ESL, even if I don't always comment.

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  4. I changed the comment box setting from "embedded" to "pop-up." Now I'm testing "full page" comment box format. Let me know if that's better. KM

    ReplyDelete

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