El Camino High School's Digital Media Pathway is a series of career technical education (CTE) classes that focus on digital media arts. The program features graphic design (marketing and advertising through images that have been digitally produced and enhanced), and web design (production of online content aimed at selling or promoting products or services).

The sequence of courses forms what's called a "pathway" which, when completed, shows you how to become a freelance designer capable of starting your own business or working at a professional design agency. Either way, it has the potential to start you on a very successful and lucrative career.

Grading Policy

Each assignment has clear expectations and a defined due date. If the student does not turn in the assignment by that date, the highest possible grade that you could get on that assignment goes down one letter grade each business day. If a student has excused absences for days that we worked on the project in class, they have that many days to make up the assignment with no penalty.

For example: If something is due on a Thursday and you turn it in on a Monday, the best you can get on it is a "C" because it is two business days late (weekends don't count).

If you are missing an assignment and believe that you already completed it, it is your responsibility to contact me via email ([email protected]) to get that fixed.

Google classroom is a useful tool for organizing your classes, viewing your assignments, interacting with each other and the teacher and turning in your work digitally. The district gives you unlimited space on their Google Drive but that goes away after your senior year. At that time, you'll need to find a way to migrate your information to your own Google Drive if you want to keep it.

This is the process for working with Google Classroom:

  1. Make sure you're logged in to your school Google Drive.
  2. Click on the green Google Classroom to the left or click here
  3. Sign in, using your school email (your student ID plus "@oside.us")
  4. Your password is your eight-digit birthdate (for example, January 1st, 2022 would be 01012022)
  5. Sign up for classes using the codes I give you in class.
  6. Use this portal to view, complete and turn in assignments

Success tip: go to your student calendar (while logged in as a student) by clicking here and you'll see all your due dates for all your Classroom classes!

Note: If you don't plan on checking your district email ([email protected]), you should set it up so those emails forward to your personal account.

If your password is not working and you'd like me to reset it, please click on the button to the right and fill out the form. I'll get notified and I'll reset it to a default that you can then change. If it's not reset in 24 hours, send me a reminder email.

Schedule for Graphic Design:

(year-to-date schedule here, district schedule here, bell schedule here, goal for the day here)

Portfolio: addresses here, form to submit your address here.

Short for the week: Watermelon

11/27: Talk about holiday extra credit opportunity. Intro brochure unit (step 1), slight twist, and talk about the design concepts we're covering. Start research (basically steps 2 and 3); you get link for next step after research is done and turned in.

11/28: Work on step 4 of brochure, very specific requirements, explained at link. Should take two periods.

11/29: Step 4 done by end of period. Only after you finish step 5 can you move on to the creation phase of the brochure. Very specific instructions for setting up the structure of the brochure given as a link when you're done with previous step.

11/30: Look at instructions and examples for step 6, begin going through the steps, tutorials as needed.

12/1: Quiz over design concepts and brochure setup, continue step 6.

Next week: Work on outside (front) of brochure

Resources:

Schedule for Web Design:

(year-to-date schedule here, district schedule here, bell schedule here, goal for the day here)

Portfolio: addresses here, form to submit your address here.

Short for the week: Watermelon

11/27: Intro business idea, talk about toolkits, determine how we're going to attack them. Start JS "Flappy Bird" game, due by Friday! Must blog about it as well, so do a little each day. Set up HTML/CSS and talk about JS.

11/28: Set up scene, "pipes", and "bird". Experiment with gravity. Define boundaries.

11/29: Define what happens when the "bird" hits things. Point system? What happens when you "die"?

11/30: Finishing up and fine-tuning

12/1: Game due as a compressed folder by end of period.

Next week: Create business "canvas", work on scouting for new clients

Resources:

Revise your work:

In an actual studio, your work is not final until the customer is satisfied with its quality. When I grade items, my thinking is the same: if you produce work that is below the quality that I feel you're capable of, you have a chance to revise it and resubmit. Though the resubmitted work won't be worth the full amount of the original assignment, it will increase your grade significantly.

If you received a four, this is superior work. No need for revision. You've shown you understand the concept we're practicing and have even put some extra effort into making it perfect. You should be proud to show this off.

If you received a three, this work is adequate. You completed the assignment and though you didn't put extra effort into it, the finished product is "good".

If you received a two, this work is not as good as I know you're capable of. You may have misunderstood the assignment, chosen not to complete it, or rushed through it. The finished product is not something I would feel comfortable showing to others.

If you received a one, you have the option to re-do the assignment, incorporating my suggestions, one time. Though the resubmitted work will not get a perfect score (that would be unfair to those that turned it in on time), it will be rescored and the higher score will be put in the gradebook.