Adobe Illustrator 10 is a Beneficial Program for Educational Purposes

In order to experience a new form of technology that could be beneficial to my education career I chose to try Adobe Illustrator 10.0. This program is very interesting to me, and I have wanted to learn how to use it for a while now. I plan on becoming an art teacher and I believe this program will be helpful to me for many reasons. I created a weekly schedule with Adobe Illustrator, and I was able to make it very attractive and nice to look at. If I had more time with the program I would be able to link certain images in the schedule, so that they would do different things when the student clicked on them.

When first starting out with Adobe Illustrator I was very confused; I am still somewhat confused by the program, and I must spend more time to learn how to use the entire program. After reading a tutorial on the Internet I started to get the hang of Adobe Illustrator, and it started to become exciting and fun for me. Adobe Illustrator 10 is one of the newest illustrating and designing programs from Microsoft. This program is extremely effective at designing web graphics and artwork. Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphic drawing program that focuses extremely on color, light, effects, filters, and web graphics. It can be use to make posters, banners, artwork, and web pages, and it is very similar to Adobe Photoshop. I designed a weekly schedule with this program that would be informative to the students.

Using this program satisfies some of the "ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers" (Johnson, Musial, & Hall, 2005, p.450). Adobe Illustrator meets the requirement that "teachers plan and design effective learning environments and experiences supported by technology" (Johnson, Musial, & Hall, 2005, p.450). This program helps a teacher plan and design a successful learning environment by making it possible to design interactive programs. These programs are fun for the class and help organize the teacher's plans. This program can also help maximize student learning by using technology because it can make the information available at the click of a mouse. The links on the schedule can give the student examples of the projected assignment, among other valuable information, and this will help maximize the student's ability to learn. Adobe Illustrator 10 is also beneficial because it can help teachers "enhance their productivity and professional practice" by helping incorporate many elements of an assignment into a series of pages on the web (Johnson, Musial, & Hall, 2005, p.450). This program can be amazing for educational purposes because it makes planning lessons, informing students of assignments, and executing projects easy and enjoyable.

I believe it is important to incorporate technology into the classroom because it can bring so much information to the student's finger tips. The possibilities for learning are endless. There is also a lot of information that students may learn from technology that is not so beneficial, and I think that school is an excellent place to monitor the student's intake of information. I believe that if teachers are familiar with technology they can steer students to websites and technology that is beneficial and interesting to them. It is also important to integrate technology into the classroom because it appeals to many different learning styles. Technology, especially the internet, effectively reaches different learning styles because it is stimulating to the senses. Technology has gotten to the point where it reaches students who are visual, audio, and hands-on learners. There is music, talking, videos, art, and many other interactive devices on the web that can keep students involved while still learning. Technology can be beneficial in the classroom and should be implemented by teachers.

I found that Adobe Illustrator can be a very positive in an educational environment. The project I completed was a schedule that would contain links. By adding links to the schedule much more information can be provided to the students. The links can provide more information on the projects and ideas on completing the projects. These links can also provide examples of the completed assignment, which may make it easier for students to understand what is being asked of them. Technology is vast and has so many wonderful programs and applications that are beneficial to students.

Reference
Johnson, J.A., Musial, D., & Hall, G.E. (2005) . Introduction to the Foundations of American Education, (13th ed.) : Allan and Bacon.