Justification Paper

Continents, Countries & Cultures Unit

EDTECH 506 Graphic Design for Learning

User Assumptions
The unit I am creating for this 506 course is titled Continents, Countries and Cultures.
The students that this unit is intended for are Kindergarten students learning English as a
second language in Japan. My students have basic reading skills and limited English
vocabulary, but posses good English listening and understanding. I assume that they all have
an idea of the world, Continents, Countries and Cultures in their native language.

Graphic Description
Home
The first image you see on the home page is a world map with 18 countries highlighted and
the corresponding flag and name of the Country next to it. This graphic was created to help
introduce countries, country flags and their locations to my Japanese Kindergarten class.
While going through the Analyze phase I decided that the purpose of this instructional
graphic was to provide an idea of the size and proximity of each country from another. I
also felt that adding the color representation of the flag, country color and text would help
make the information more concrete (Clark & Lyons, 2004).
The next image on the home page is of the homework sheet for the students. The objective
of this homework sheet is to teach the students the 7 continents and 18 popular countries
from around the world. Because this image is going to be used for a kindergarten class, I
thought one of the most important things I read about color is that children prefer bright
primary colors and red and orange are associated with excitement (Pett & Wilson, 1997). I
used many bright primary and other colors to represent each continent and matched each
color to the continents in The World image.

Continents
The first image seen on the Continents page is a graphic representing The World, Continent,
Country, Prefecture, and City. My intention is to teach the connection between these words
and that our city is very small when compared to the world. I designed images that would
be easy for my students to understand and know. When deciding how to organize these
images I used the simple shape of a square which is used to show unity, imply harmony,
show processes, focus attention, and show elements of a system or subsystem. Another
shape element I used is the common shape of an arrow which provides direction, implies
motion, organizes, unifies and makes a connection for each word in the graphic (Hansen,
1999)

.
The next images seen on the Continents page are images of each Continent. My idea behind
the images I created for the White space project is to provide a more concrete visual for
my students to see what continent each country is in. Knowing that these images will be
used for young children, I decided to lay them out in an asymmetrical way to create more
visual interest (Lohr, 2008). I added the flags of a few countries to each continent but felt
that they blended into the continent, so I added a drop shadow to provide the image with
dimension and to make the flags standout.

Countries
The only new image introduced on the Countries page is of the worksheet at the bottom of
the page. In this writing worksheet I used the world map graphic with images of country
flags. I asked 3 questions created lines for the students to write their answers. To help
them understand what to do I wrote in the first answer with a low opacity so they can trace
the first sentence.

Cultures
The graphics of food from different countries were created to show the students where
food comes from. I decided to use images of each food item paired with the name of the
food in big bold letters and also added an image of the flag and name of the Country it
comes from.
The last image on this page is of the worksheet, Where is it from? This worksheet was
designed to help the students learn where different foods are from. While reading about
Selection and Figure-Ground, I decided to base the design of my worksheet on three
characteristics Concentrated, Concise, and Concrete, which relate to the cognitive task of
Selection. Because my students are learning English as a second language, images combined
with the word is important at this stage for their understanding so I concentrated on using
concrete easy to understand images on the page paired with clear bold text for each image.
I originally thought to add some kind of graphic to the title of the page, but decided against
it when I read that learning improves when extraneous information is removed. (Tufte,
1983).

Design Process
When thinking of how to start creating this unit and the website, it was difficult to decide
where to start. I knew that I wanted to connect everything as much as possible to help with
understanding. I decided to start by teaching from big to small. I started by introducing the
World and connected it to the Continents and so on. I used many bright primary and other
colors to represent each continent and matched each color to the continents in The World
image. Showing each continent separately with matching colors to The World image helps
achieve gestalt and connects parts (continents) to a whole (The World) (Lohr, 2008).

In the website, I decided to use an easy to read font like Comic Sans to make it easier to
follow for my students. I used words I felt they and their parents can read and understand. I
added navigation to the top menu of the site as well as at the bottom of each page to
ensure the student knows what to do next. I feel the repetition of the same font and layout
through out the site is key for the students understanding.
On the Continents page I introduced the 7 Continents followed by the Continent song.
Finally I added an assignment at the bottom of the page. I think the flow of connecting
these activities will help the students in learning. The idea behind the Countries page was
the same. First I introduced the Countries, then the students play a learning game and
finally they use what they learned on the worksheet. Again with the Cultures page,
introducing the different foods and using what was learned in a worksheet. Finally all the
documentation for teachers can be found on the 'For Educators Page'.
Upon completion of this Unit, the students will have a better understanding of the World,
Continents and Countries. They will also have learned new English vocabulary and new
sentence structure and phrases.

References
Clark, R., & Lyons, C. (2004). Graphics for learning: Proven guidelines for planning,
designing, and evaluating visuals in training materials. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Pett, D., & Wilson, T. (1997). Effective presentations. Washington, D.C.: Association for
Educational Communications and Technology.
Hansen, M. (1999). Visualization tools for thinking, planning, and problem solving.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lohr, L.L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy
(2nd ed.). Upper Saddle, NJ:Pearson
Tufte, E. (1983). The visual display of quantitative information. Cheshire, Conn. (Box 430,
Cheshire 06410): Graphics Press.