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Welcome to our grade 8 information technology class. This class is all about what we have learned and along with the problems we faced and the solutions for the flash animation in our class. Here, you will also learn about the TDC, (technology design cycle) which is the natural process students go through to complete any piece of work in an organized and efficient way.

Picture Sources: http://twiki.org/p/pub/Codev/TWikiPresentation2006x04x05/investigate.gif http://www.german-business-etiquette.com/img/23-meeting-with-your-boss.jpg http://gbn.glenbrook.k12.il.us/academics/clsKILLS/BUSED/TYPING/images/typing_guy.gif http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y204/m05/abu0119/images/evaluate.GIF

The technology design cycle is a system that moves like a line of dominoes. You have to accomplish the previous task before proceeding to the next. The technology cycle is a few steps that tell you exactly how to do them. If you have done all of the tasks for each stage with efficiency you can surly be confident that your grade will be a high one. The entire 8th grade class thought that the technology design cycle was a very affectionate and effective way of organizing and finishing a lot your work and assignments.

A Brief Explanation about the stages in the technology cycle:

//Investigate: This is the beggining of technology design cycle where you look for other flash animation movies. From here you will be able to see all the different qualities of flash and its pros and cons and what you can do like it or what you can try to avoid when doing a flash. Here is where we also did the brainstorm to make sure we kmow what we want. This part of the technology design cycle also covers the ESLR of being an academic acheiver because you shoud know what is good and bad in a flash animation. Without investigation, you wouldn't be able to know what a good flash woud be and will not do very far.

Plan:// In this part of the cycle, you will plan what are you going to do in create part. For example, if you are making Flash animation, you will plan what is going to happen in the animation. You will use storyboard in this part. It is used to organize your thoughts in easy way. You will plan your thoughts on storyboard, then write description about it. For each scene, you will what you skill you need to use, what is going to move, etc. On this storyboard, you will write everything that you wat to happen in your product. For our grade, it was a flash animation. So we wrote things that we want to be in our flash. (To check out our flash animation, go to Cards.) When you finish planning, you are now ready to move on to the Create section of this cycle.

//Create:// In this part of the cycle you first get to use all the knowledge you have learned through out the other two stages and finally apply all the knowledge learned to create the best flash animation possible. This part of the cycle is nearly impossible to accomplish without going through the plan cycle first. This part of the cycle is my classes’ favorite I think because you get to solve problems that you run into. This section of the cycle improves your self-directing skills and critical thinking skills by using problem solving skills you solve your problems using your knowledge. Academic Achiever is also one of the ESLR's you will improve on especially if you have never learned flash and are learning every thing now. In our particulary class we had used this part of the project to build and accomplish our goal in the plan section. We had lots of troules geting through it but I felt that through the process we leaernd alot more than if our teacher gave us all the information and steps to do. Create as we all know means to buld some thing from sratch but this procedure is not the same you aren't doing it from the beginnnig because you did all the work already in the previous sections.

//Evaluate:// This is the last step of the technology Design Cycle. To me, this is also a very crucial one. I believe that the only way a student can grow from his/her mistakes is by reflecting on his/her own work. This definitely hits the Self-Directed Learner ESLR because it is an individual assessment and requires no help from others. Also, this lands on the Academic Achiever because I strongly think that evaluation is the only way a student can successfully grow. By evaluation, he will not only learn from his mistakes, but learn to criticize and comment on his own work to see what he is capable of.