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media type="custom" key="6931855" align="right" In this 7th grade activity we will be exploring a few digital tools within the context of design. What does that mean? It means that you will learn how to use a variety of online tools to create visual presentations about an area of design that interests you.

You will begin by choosing a designer to research from the areas of Architecture, Furniture/Product Design, Automobile Design, and Fashion. On each of the pages listed on the left you will find a list of designers with information about each. You will choose one designer, or in some cases a company, as the topic for your project.

Then you will begin to collect digital images (either images on the internet or scanned images from books). While doing that you will need to take some notes on each image (what it is, when it was created, who was the designer and where was he/she from, what makes this distinct). You will be using this information in creating your presentations.

You will first use the Presentation application in Google Docs to create something similar to a PowerPoint. Then you will use Voicethread to create a presentation from basically the same images, but you will narrate this presentation. And finally you will use Animoto to create a video that integrates music into the presentation. Along the way, I want you to publish your presentations to this wiki.

My goal is for you to become more proficient using digital tools for presentations. I hope that you will have the opportunity to use some of these to show what you know in your other classes. But I also want you to learn a little bit about good design, start to pay attention to what you like and why, and to know some history of 20th century design.