Blog Activity #1

Locate and modify a MS Word template

           The template I chose to modify is called "Teacher's Syllabus." The reason this template stood out to me is because as an emerging teacher I am still learning how to create a successful syllabus. I will be honest right now and say that I do not have Word on my computer as I normally use Google Docs for my documents, both personal and professional. Thus, the modifications that I was able to do on the template using the online version of Word was limited. 

This is what the original document looked like: 

And this is what the document looked like after being modified: 

 There are a lot of things that one as a teacher can add to a syllabus which leads to showering the students with, at times, pointless information.This is one of the reasons I chose this template, because I liked the simplicity of the layout yet how thorough it was, as far as what criteria the template was suggesting. 

As far as what modifications I made to the original template I feel like the biggest one was the one I made to the font color. It was a deep red which felt too aggressive for me, I am not sure how to describe the feeling it gave me but I thought the softer blue worked better with what I wanted my students to perceive of me, and the class, through the syllabus. Blue and white are also the colors of the school I currently work at and so I chose to go that route. I did also modify the Exam and Additional Information/Resources portion of the syllabus by omitting both sections. It was more prudent to add the course weighting section since that is the section most students would look for when they first get a syllabus. Under the class weight section I included I also added colored table.

I did not add any images or logos to the syllabus because I feel that when teachers do that it takes away from the content, which is really what I would want my students to focus on. There have been times, even in college, where I have received a syllabus that was so busy I did not know what was what. If I were to apply this syllabus to my classroom I may consider adding the Spanish flag or something to indicate what class the syllabus is for, but I am still debating on that front. The conversion from a document to an image made me think that if I were using this syllabus in class I could text the image to my students, since they are more likely to keep that picture on their phone than the actual paper copy.