ass 5

emdwt 23/5/08

emdt230508

Friday heading back down the hill thinking about assignment 5 and thinking about it in relation to what I do over the summer which is obviously going to be adobe stuff and particularly building my website for the art department creative arts and thinking that the main task as part of that relates to the adobe thing and the other teaching that I am doing later on this term is to get my examples of digital artwork up on the web in an up to date format as a flash file in the way that I have been doing the assignments for the term so that I can just hand people a card with the address on it and that is where they can go to link into all sorts of information but also resources resources like perhaps the information about the software that I use or the art department website itself whatever

emdwt2205083

emdwt2205081

Heading up the hill Thursday just before half term thinking about other things to include in assignment 5 thinking about getting the software list together up to date useful for the animation day anyway and in a sense my bibliography the software list is certainly a tool for the work that I do maybe there are other resources that I could get together as well getting hold of Adobe to get the work packs for the teachers ready for Newcastle thinking about the blogs, blogging going through all the adobe blogs and finding the ones that are most relevant looking at Tom's blog as well doing that as he will be teaching me next term make a start on that assignment on narrative I was thinking about other things to include in terms of research the clappy thing that I did last year in flash get that up on to the web site some how and see if it works over the internet because that is sort of related to what I would be doing in Newcastle. In terms of how I present assignment 5 I am thinking that possibly it is not going to be a slide show it would perhaps be an idea to do something with the pulp motion advanced that I have just started on get that into the website somehow the book one in particular or maybe two or three examples but I am running out of things to show I don't want to show a great deal more of my work I don't know what else I would put up there but a few example of aquafadas could go up but in terms of the actual talk I was thinking of literally doing it as a talk just explaining what I am doing the bids maybe have them there actually printed out and the other resource material and do more of a sort of show and tell but I shall wait to see what others have done today this afternoon and adjust what I do accordingly right I didn't want to do too much talking this morning the one that I did from last week took me 20 minutes or so to type up I can say that my typing has improved hugely my touch typing during this exercise and it has been a very interesting way of working using skype for recording my thoughts definitely has to be in there as part of assignment 5 maybe a sort of you know evaluation of the term would be part of it as well it is certainly how - because doing the journal has all been part of my exploration into the media as I have said many times i am sure and working with the skype in thing that came from the Arnolphini exhibition a year ago and thinking about how I can use that in the future thinking more actually about how to get students relating to me over the internet getting a back and forth dialogue going I really do need to get into some of the adobe connect things probably because the software will all be there for me except that of course got to have it all on poor machines and have to have to software on the machines I am far more interested in doing the whole process through the web so that students are responding to me writing in set up sessions for particular projects so that they have to send in their project briefs on line from home from wherever so they have to work in groups rather thank bringing in paper copies they have to do typed copies but copies that can go back and forth so they can improve on them over two or three sessions and then have that to back up their practical work I think that that is very definitely the way that I want to go taking sketchbooks more and more on line part of the reason that I am doing what I am doing here talk about their ideas but going back to how and what I was saying about transcribing because on the website last week pages and pages and pages of my transcriptions now and too much really to go through the thought come out quite slowly as I walk up the hill in some ways the process of writing I find very definitely not like writing a blog where you can get a specific thought down where as the walking up the hill bit is very definitely a ramble so it's just a tool for trying to get thoughts out of my brain and occasionally over this term it has worked extraordinarily well have reached about this point in the walk and things have been dawning but over the last week or so I have been really pushing the limits getting up very early in the morning with exam marking and interviews an all the gruesome stuff that goes on I really notice that my brain is not working as well as it used to either it was very funny recording thoughts in the middle of the night and then listening back to them and seeing how very slow my brain was working when I was almost asleep so lots of interesting things have come out of it I am not sure to what extent I want to repeat this experiment I am going to have to think about how I am going to take the journal on next term maybe how I change it how I make it more concise or maybe I shall go back to paper I am thinking again that I have loads to type out so I am going to stop and just think a while

middle of night 130508

EMDWT1305082

assignment 5 ideas which I need to dictate in the middle of the night before I forget it seems to be about using the photographs from the upper fourth Holburne trip talking about crazy talk and stuff perhaps web based would be exciting talk about the bids the becta bid and the talk about all the bids the rtc bid the pervasive media bid talk about drag and drop my explorations with drag and drop and my explorations with website I had all this worked out in the middle of the night can't think any more clearly than that

emdwt130508

EMDWT130508

Did the A level on Friday last, did I mention this already? I just absolutely loved it I was so proud of them, so proud of the department because there was just such a fantastic variety of stuff going on such a fantastic creative energy really inspiring with the etching the new etching press oil painting ceramics and photography and animation it was just a fantastic energy to the day I thoroughly enjoyed it I want to be teaching they are a real inspiration to me these kids right seriously assignment five I had it all sussed in the night but when I tried to leave my telephone message it didn't come back to me much but I think that I have got to work around pervasive media showing photographs of the upper fourth work and the project that they are doing at the moment particularly in relation to them working in groups and going out working also just thinking about how pervasive media would fit in especially about group work again talk about the animation that i am doing later on this term again it's group work based on the apple thing the apple institute then show some work at adobe which again is group work so that is going to be the basis of my talk I guess so where do I look for bibliography in and around that it is a little bit more tricky I am not sure that that necessarily comes into the talk except for the blogs of course which could I like the one recently from brain freeze about children and technology so maybe I could quote that one that sort of sums it up to an extent in relation to some people in school the system that we have got so what else should I talk about the bids that I have put in the bids that I am putting in especially the RTC bid and I have got to get that together and write it out for the heads conference so that will be a part of it so this final assignment it will be a collection of things really a collection of bits a pieces all put together and it will be a talk about the assignment rather than the assignment itself woh!

EMDWT 9/5/08

EMDWT9508

Friday the 9th of May walking up the hill all sorts of things happening I think that I have just finished the slide show for assignment 3 eventually but i might add a few sounds I am thinking maybe sounds that I make like ........ (thinking of Simon' Allen's 6th form party trick) all sorts of different sounds and thinking about sounds in relation to things that happen on the the screen but this morning I thought some more about the talk that we had yesterday from Paul bout making bids and about the relation of that to assignment 5 and thinking about the bids I have made writing them up and writing stuff up for the Adobe conference and the animation conference which I think will be the bulk of assignment 5 and he was talking about the process of how you go about making bids and I was thinking about really just how important getting your name known is and the route that I took from just doing the digital without thinking about it to being sort of discovered by Huw from Hewlett Packard who was a friend of mine is a friend of mine and how badgering me badgering adobe didn't get anywhere until Huw intervened and then I got on to talking on the Adobe stand at Bett and the HP connection all that also got me on at Bett and because of the bett show i then became an Adobe education leader and also that got me on to the Apple cart as it where but the most interesting set of connections was last summer I think when I went to the Adobe conference in San Francisco and there I talk to Merlin John the IT journalist and I talked to him I already knew him from the Apple connection I guess I had already introduced myself to him so he wrote an article bout what I was doing in San Francisco sitting in the part the central square and because of that article I was actually asked to speak at Bett this January in my own right and I think probably because of that I got the article written (partly) about me in the Guardian newspaper and because of that article there was interest from the states from Adobe doing a case study so they all sort of linked one to another to another to another and it is not necessarily in the least bit remarkable what I do but it is remarkable how the connections being in the right place at the right time and doing something that is interesting and over the last ten years or so digital has taken off in the most extraordinary way and I have always been at the sort of forefront of it and although I am not a programmer and I am not that good at it myself necessarily staying at that leading edge is pretty difficult as well but I do have a particular niche and my particular niche at the moment is being an art teacher who is into digital in the classroom that is sort of actually quite a limited area that makes what I am doing quite particular and it is quite funny in a way for me to be slightly miffed that when I go to give this talk in San Francisco this summer there will be two people sort of talking sort of in a similar area and thinking will they be better than me jealousy creeping in right thinking again about assignment five and the bibliography in particular and serendipity again there is a thread currently on the Adobe chat whatever about all the blogs that people are keeping up with someone posted 300 blogs that she 500 I think that she keeps up with God knows how she does that two or there will do but definitely the bibliography in a sense is not just the news groups that I keep up with the Apple and the Adobe news group the Becta and the Bett b news group but the blogs other people are looking at and the blogs that I am looking at as well as the books in my cupboard that I have to look through so there is my bibliography but also the fact that I have been looking watching a lot of films and animations as well as reading books this is all part of my research part of what I am doing the websites is more difficult because surfing the web you cant sort of well it would be very difficult and rather stupid do keep a trail of all the things that I have been looking at but it is also a bit difficult to forget to remember to keep the main ones but I suppose a few like the Apple the thing from Steve Jobs that I read a couple of days ago Assignment 5 here we go

EMDWT 6/5/08

EMDWT95082

The 6th of April (6th of May actually... ed) , heading up the hill wondering how all this stuff is going to be assessed really cause assessment is coming up fairly soon and I wouldn't want to do it thinking about assessment because that is what I am doing at the present as well or will be shortly How do you settle this because in real time you have to go through it all presumably if you were to do it properly and that would take a ridiculous amount of time where as with a sketchbook you can flick through it pretty quick and get a sense of it get a sense of the scale which you simply cannot do with a website or digital media it is much more hidden much more difficult but anyway I am going down this route because it is all about my explorations in digital media and what I do here I have spent a long time over the past two days probably far too long writing up a script for assignment three so that I can experiment with producing it as a podcast umm finding all the umms that I use and actually quite extraordinary writing out a full script it ended up being about 5000 words and then re recording that i was thinking that I might just read it but it is so bloody boring when it is just read so putting it back into conversational style as I re recorded the presentation and I find it incredible how the language is different as I speak it than as I write it the process in some ways would be to read it speak it read it speak it transcribing it each time and you end up with a highly polished bit but I haven't got the time to do that to much to do I still have the first assignment to produce as well I have been playing about this morning with how I put it on the web turn it into a movie getting the size down as much as I can and getting the streaming right or perhaps playing around with putting it up on garage band, not into garage band, you tube put it up , think about web 2 putting it up on you tube I think that that is probably going to be the quickest easiest and best route to go. So what else have I been thinking about in relation to assignment 1 I have a talk coming up soon in San Francisco, it doesn't quite fit the criteria but I have got to prepare that talk to there is not reason why that should not be a part of assignment 5 that is something that I am very definitely doing and I have got to prepare all the stuff for my key stage three ers over the next three weeks so that will be a major part of assignment 5 its all go here is all I can say

EMDWT 1/5/08

EMDWT1508

Thinking about this animation project again and thinking what a good idea it would be firstly for them to write it all down so that they will know exactly what they are doing with a pro-forma so that they can put in their groups they can explain in a paragraph what it is that they are doing and then a prize for the winner and maybe we could do that either by a vote we could put it up on the internet and have a voting system, a five start system so that they vote for their favourite or we could get students at Roehampton university to vote from them or we could get all sorts of people to vote for the best one there will be prize for the best that well provide them with an incentive as to the MA well I am getting wobbly over the next assignment because I am not quite sure what I am doing and I am running out of time again I have got a tutorial this afternoon so I have been scrabbling around with flash and with my website but I really want a lot more content in it having lots of ideas mind the animated people that are all mouth another animation of me that is very simple things that we could so in flash like the press of a door bell that takes you in, the photograph that I took yesterday at the Holburne Museum which was a superbly successful trip and that really is sort of the main part of assignment five form me getting bid so that I have a reason for doing what it is that I am doing the Becta bid that failed the RTC bid that I have got to write out and the pervasive media bid, got three starts not bad but anyway I haven't got any thoughts this morning so I am just going to carry on with my walk.

EMDWT 29/4/08 2

EMDWT294082

Thinking of the animation still the project and thinking of the apple institute and how it's got to be like that really putting them into small groups and they have got three weeks they have got to produce something they have to plan it out i the first lesson they have got to write out not just a story board but it has got to be a re resume of what they are doing to do they have got to tell me who is in the group how they are doing to do it what it is about the technical stuff that they need to do it with and they can go off and work on it in school where has that bloody dog gone they have got to tell me how they are going to do it they have got to have it all planned out and they can work on it in between times it doesn't have to be just in the lesson perhaps it can be still images they could cobble together they can get all those or maybe it could be scans that they do and they bring with them all of those things would be possible they could work on it for homework well they could work on it together they could come and borrow stuff at break times they could use my room second week on and third week if they want to be in rather than out using the equipment in there ahh I have lost this dog where has she gone.

EMDWT 25/4/08

recording25408


er don't know the date Friday I think might be the 23rd of 24th right one more assessment to do and that is about my continuing practice email from Judith this morning about Mediascape so I think that writing out a proposal for funding for the mediascape will be one bit of it I could add the Becta bid what is happening there with Ami and the other schools with another bit of the bid and what is happening with Apple trying to get regional training status that could be part of what I am trying to do in the new build and then what I am trying to do for the animation that could be another aspect to it Roehampton and the Gateshead CLC and developing animation use in school particularly in relation to looking at animators getting resource material together that is actually what I was thinking this part of the methodology would be about very much getting that together for the two conferences and then on the website front all the flash stuff and the website that is now up and running for Sidcot another website so I think that that is all that assignment sorted I have just got to write it now and the sooner the better so maybe that is my task for the weekend but bloody computers garage band won't start up disk won't verify disks keep dying brand new bloody computer two white laptops out because their batteries don't work any more after a year and a half money money money tipped down the drain and then facebook I have lots of past students on my facebook account and last weekend one of these students he wasn't particularly pleasant when he was at school but he sent round a bit of video clip from a security camera of a motorcyclist going under the tires of a truck and getting spread across the road and it really made me feel quite ill all week and thinking a lot about that because it was sort of sent around as a laugh I suppose or that laugh horror gore sort of thing and wondering where that fits in with my freedom not to look at that sort of stuff same with pornography viagra junk email where does my freedom not to look at that stuff what are my rights what are other peoples rights how does that fit in with Tibet I gave a long tirade to my form group yesterday about penis enlargement and people going under tires and the Olympic torch should we have a system like China where google is blocked or do we need it to be totally free mind you google is better than it used to be there was a time when i wouldn't dare let a 10 year old type pussy into google when she was looking for pictures of cats and kittens enough of this rubbish end call.