Now that I have some breathing space, I just wanted to share some thoughts on my grade 8 Tech unit on mashups. Students had to create a mashup of existing content following fair use policy and changing the intent of the original. They could decide to use video, audio, still image or a combination. Overall the students worked well with several attempting to be the next powerful DJ.

They encountered some stumbling blocks when trying to mix songs with different bpms. Several students searched for stems of song instead, or looked for instrumentals and a capellas. Software used for this was GarageBand or Audacity. Those using film, simply used iMovie and those with images, used Photoshop.

Overall, I was pleased, as the task is much more difficult than it sounds. Here is an excellent example of my student Ellen, mashing The Lion King with audio from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, resulting in “Rise of the Lion King.”

If you are thinking about developing this type of unit, one thing to keep in mind is that you need to require the students to provide evidence of the source material used, as well as screenshots of the files in their relevant programs. This is simply to provide evidence that they actually created the product themselves. Alan Levine’s ds106 site is awesome with some great project ideas too.

Grade 9 students have begun their graphic design unit and were asked to create a composition using only the letters of their name. They selected whether to use Photoshop or Illustrator. The purpose of the task was for them to become familiar with fonts, layout as well as some of the text editing tools. The task was done without any instruction on the teacher’s part, except for the information below.

Task: What Type Are You? (60mins)
Using Photoshop or Illustrator, create a document/composition using only the letters of your name.
-You should experiment with various fonts.
-You should experiment with size.
-You should experiment with rotation, overlapping and/or mirroring.
-You should experiment with kerning etc.
-You should limit your colour palette, but may use colour in any way you see fit.
-You should consider layout, spacing and/or white space.
-Your composition should have an attractive balance.
-You may use repetition.
-You may play with orientation.
-You may play with opacity.
View the images below or directly through Flickr here. During the next class, we will critique the work.

Our IB Art show just wrapped up over the weekend. It was a smaller affair this year involving only four students and another student that joined half-way through. Congrats to my colleague Richard as well as the students on all their hard work! View some pics below or directly through Flickr here.

This is my first year teaching Middle School Technology using the MYP Design Cycle. It is a rather thorough and demanding programme, both in terms of student work, teaching and evaluating. However, I understand and agree with the goals of the programme and how the focus is on process over product.

Recently my grade 7 class just completed their unit on digital stories. Our significant concept was, “We can communicate our stories in many different ways.” Our unit question was, “How can we use media to communicate our stories?”

I’ll save myself the trouble of summarising the unit on this post. If interested, you can view what we did weekly for about 12 weeks here. Of course, I will be making some necessary changes and improvements to the structure and delivery of the unit, as well as some refinements to the evaluation.

What I would like to do, is showcase some of the efforts these clever 12 and 13 year olds have done. These “stories” were rather flexible in their definition, with some students creating fiction, documentaries and instructional videos. They had only three weeks to actually create the product and some were very successful. To clarify this, some “unsuccessful” efforts were also successful (and probably more direct and efficient) in teaching what is needed to create a piece of work. This is an aspect of the MYP that I like. Some of the applications ranged from iMovie, to Powerpoint/Keynote to VoiceThread, Doozla, Blender, FinalCut and Adobe Flash.

The first one here impresses me. It is a hand drawn comic that was imported into Prezi in order to pan across the panels, which was then screen recorded. Next it was imported into iMovie for further editing. Did I mention this was completed in 3 weeks? I like the mixture between digital and analogue.

The Stone of the Future from Marina Mitsumata on Vimeo.

The next one on “How to Eat an Apple” uses time lapse/stop-motion photography and is filmed with excellent lighting, simply by placing the apple in a plastic container!

How to: Eat an Apple from Connor Harrington on Vimeo.

The next one is a hand drawn animation that has a great scene around the 1min.30sec. mark. Check it out!

Finally, this last one on “How to Eat Toast” is rather silly and humorous. Have a look.

There are several others I can show, but this post would run on forever. If you’d like to see some student reflection/evaluation examples, check out these two here and here. Feel free to leave some of these students comments directly on the video sites.

Grade 9 students have finally completed their first unit on observational drawing. Their goal was to create and draw realistic, interesting compositions in pencil using measured proportions, values and tones. View the slideshow below or directly through Flickr here. You can also see the unit breakdown here if interested.

Forgive me, but I must do a little self-promotion. I’m pleased to announce that two of my artworks have gotten published this year! The first is a children’s colouring book via Doodler’s Anonymous. It features 60 artists from around the world in a collection of drawings. Pre-ordering is available for 12USD making it just in time as a great Christmas gift. I entered 3 drawings and surprisingly, my first choice was not chosen. My selected entry is below. Can’t wait to get my hands on it.

The second is for a book/project entitled Keep/Delete. This book highlights ‘the transformation of digital text-message into physical artefact. Designers were invited to design an artifact of a message that was ‘wanting to be kept’, either from their own personal repository of messages or from their circle of friends and family.’ If you teach art, this would also make an interesting unit of study.

What is even more great is that May T., one of my grade 8 students, was also selected to be included in the book. Huge congrats to her for participating! It is a bit exciting having both of us selected. My piece, as well as hers are below respectively. May’s work roughly translates as “May the future be sunny.” Order the book via Amazon.com here.

One more unit down! Grade 8s have just finished their unit on ceramics where they produced a pinch cup and slab plate(s). You can view the work below or directly via Flickr here. You can view the outline of the unit here.

Unfortunately, I forgot to post the pics from last year. You may view those by going directly to the Flickr page here.

My grade 7s are wrapping up their unit on collage. It was sort of an extension from their line drawing unit, where we looked at how we can represent ideas in different forms and mediums. Overall, I’m pleased with the results. The collages were given a coat of gel medium for extra strength and binding. View via the slideshow below or directly through Flickr here.

My grade 6s have finished their unit on printing. It was a tight squeeze but we managed to get it done. View the slideshow below or via Flickr here. (More will be uploaded from 2 other classes in the near future.)

Grade 9 have finished their unit on graphic design. To become familiar with Photoshop/Illustrator, tasks were set where students created a business card and a magazine cover. Students were encouraged to experiment and explore the different tools on their own. Their final project was to design a cover for the school handbook. View the slideshow below or via Flickr here.