E-Learning Heroes Challenge #404: Use a Google Doodle for Inspiration
This week’s e-learning challenge was to create a learning example based on inspiration drawn from a Google Doodle. Exactly what to create was left pretty open ended, which I loved! Some suggestions were to animate a static Doodle, to recreate a Doodle, to create your own Doodle, or to use the colors or themes of a Doodle as inspiration. You can read more about the challenge and see others’ entries here:
My Inspiration
I wanted to stick to a topic that I know and love so, I began searching for music-themed Doodles. I also knew that Google had produced a LOT of Doodles about musicians, music genres, and musical instruments so I knew there would be several to choose from in this area.
Ultimately, I decided to use this Doodle from Les Paul’s 96th birthday on June 9, 2011 as my inspiration. I stuck to a black, white, and grey grunge theme to match the style of the Doodle and pulled together a short timeline of the creation of the electric guitar, since that is what the Doodle was about.
The Project
I did a little bit of research and learned that Charlie Christian was the first guitarist to electrify his guitar by playing with a pick-up on his acoustic guitar. In the early 1940s, Les Paul set out to solve distortion problems that happened when you simply added a pick-up to a regular flat-top guitar. He tinkered with a design by creating what he called “the log” out of a 4×4 board and some guitar pieces. He received some criticism for the looks of the instrument when he played it in public, but ultimately other’s started trying to copy and improve upon the idea. Les Paul started working with Gibson to have his design produced in 1941 but it wouldn’t actually be released until 1952. In the meantime, Leo Fender would receive credit for the first electric guitar because the Fender Esquire model was produced and released much faster, coming out in 1949.
If you’d like to read more on the topic yourself, my research came from Guitar.com, Yamaha, and Biography.com.
I really enjoyed learning about this little race between the two famous musicians and pulled the information together in a very simple and concise timeline slide.
I used Canva to source the background image and chose a font that reminded me of the Rock and Roll industry. I used markers to create the points on the timeline and added music notes to them in their initial state to add interest. The markers are also the only color on the screen, which is done purposefully in order to help draw attention to them and to keep with the original color scheme of the Google Doodle as much as possible.
When a user clicks a marker, not only does the information come up in a callout, but an image to represent that particular event also appears below the marker. (This images were all sourced from the Wikimedia Commons.) I did this by adding additional layers that were triggered by clicking the markers. The layers stay visible after they are activated, serving as an indicator of which markers have been visited and adding visual interest to the screen as you explore the timeline.
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