Filed under: Uncategorized — Patrick @ 9:53 pm, February 26, 2010.
I have started to learn how to use blender, which is free to download (http://www.blender.org/) for the new 3D Project I am doing with my freshman. We are making old school analglyph videos - but I am also starting to learn some 3D Modeling/game software (cause it is cool!) I got the idea from Indymogul.com’s web show “4 Minute Film School” which is a truly amazing DIY show put on to give people like me tips on how to create movie magic and whatnot at a reasonable price.
Filed under: Uncategorized — Patrick @ 2:17 pm, January 24, 2010.
1/24/10 - 10:42am
Reading “Deschooling Society” by Ivan Illich. Trying out Ian’s suggestion of a new approach to reading, non-linear. Letting myself see the page as a whole and focus where my attention gets grabbed. It is interesting.
Page 5 - “For instance, the U.S. poor can count on a truant officer to return their children to school until they reach seventeen, or on a doctor to assign them to a hospital bed that costs them sixty dollars a day - the equivalent of three months income to a majority of people in the world. But such care only makes them dependent on more treatment, and renders them increasingly incapable of organizing their own lives around their own experiences and resources within their communities.”
The idea of a system that creates more symptoms. Always creating value structures which inflate and need to be fixed. We are taught that someday we will be ok if we keep moving forward in the system. That the system itself is fine, shit just happens. I see the correlations in health care and schooling. When are we innovating? What is innovation? I believe that innovation can occur alone, but is much more rewarding when shared. I know it is not repetitive. When I learn, when I start to connect things - my head gets a little fuzzy in the front lobe portion of my brain. I am creating connections and I can literally feel it. Learning can be memorization - but what is the good of memorization without application? What is the good of application without meaning?
Understanding seems to be unquantifiable - yet we quantify it. Just how is reality experienced? Ian talking to me about challenging my system of reading is interesting - his approach easily correlates with London’s views in “Drawing Closer to Nature”. There isn’t an exact method to teaching - just the knowing that room needs to be given, space needs to be made, for a method to occur that fits the situation as the situation manifests itself. I cannot teach each group of students the same way. Each group is different and based on those differences each group calls for different needs to be filled. How can I examine those differences if a clinical prescription is given to each group? Workflow needs a change in management when interacting group that has dexterous thumbs versus a group that has none.
On the other hand plans must be made and reflected upon. Reflection during practice is wholly different that reflection through post-practice conversation or journaling. As Ian and London’s logics go though - let the nature of the situation dictate the response. Look at the entire composition as a whole and draw into what grabs. Do (act) as needed, not as prescribed. Use prescribed when it works, reinvent the wheel while using spare parts from the old wheel - if needed. Try and build a new wheel with materials that don’t work sometime. See how that works, compare, blend and there - somewhere in between all that occurrence you find innovation.
To move like a dancer through reality is to experience a reality through joy, determination, concentration, light-heartedness, elation, beauty, peace, chaos, and order.
Many schools block youtube.com, including my school. While there are many terrific educational videos on youtube, many are inappropriate for education. What we need is a secure portal into an educational version of youtube, call it “youtubeforschool.com”.
Here are my thoughts on how to do this:
Create a team of teachers that are willing to preview videos submitted to them for placement into “youtubeforschool.com”.
Video viewers on youtube.com can click on a link recommending the video for placement into “youtubeforschool.com”.
Schools can allow access to “youtubeforschool.com” while maintaining security for youtube.com.
My Response:
Is this conducive for living as a tech literate citizen in 21st century America? Do we want to teach censorship to our students?
I would propose that we as teachers need to understand why we are using teaching tools such as youtube before we can address how we are going to use it in the classroom. We are not using you tube to put cute videos in front of our students are we? As I see it Youtube is a conduit for up to date information. I can jump on an learn a guitar chord I have been struggling with, and actually see various versions of it. I can use it to help me understand a new program, or build a rocket ship. At home almost all students have complete access to You tube - why not teach to critical awareness of source information? Why not design curriculum to help students see you tube as a tool for skill building?
Youtube, and other internet resources, are starting to supersede the role that books as informational resources - but with the accumulation of mass data - youtube in the classroom needs to be approached, not with censorship - but with a curriculum designed to forage out useful and valid information for skill building.
I do, however, wish that youtube had sectors where communities with distinct interests could build dynamic channels that pertain to the selected interest. For instance, I instruct an after school comic creation course called the High Tech High Graphic Novel Project and since my school switched over to Gmail my students are finding TONS of resources regarding comics and their creation, from blogs to a plethora of youtube videos - wouldn’t it be a great app if they could be, as part of their gmail, hooked into a community that had its own youtube channel with all of those skill building videos and blogs - with the opportunity for them to comment and collaborate outside of the classroom to work on this project? A kind of wiki/blog/community that was aimed at this particular group with hooks into resources from groups all around it.
Filed under: Uncategorized — Patrick @ 10:44 am, October 16, 2009.
Objective: Students will work in groups to create a two minute film collage that creates a “mood” or “emotion” in their audience using HDV Cameras, Adobe Premiere, and sound.
Example Moods:
Anxiety
Fear
Paranoia
Loneliness
Isolation
Requirements
Students will work in groups of 3 (Some exceptions)
Films are 2 minutes long in length
Moods will be assigned randomly
Films consist of three shots (2 Cuts)
Each shot will be part of a different “story” or “setup” that works to support the assigned “Mood”
Filed under: Uncategorized — Patrick @ 2:58 pm, August 11, 2009.
Chair Painting from the digital painting class at the HTH Summer Academy I taught at
I drew this on the back of a plate during the span of a crazy strange short story thing called dime stories in Northpark. Ian read. I drew in the back. It was pretty awesome actually.
New HP Elitebook I got for my new school computer. It has pressure sensitive tablet screen! (I am kind of in love.) Its for an HP Grant my school is involved in. Apparently I may save the environment with my amazing abilities to rangle young people into artistic experiences. I don’t know how I am supposed to do this… But I will…
And the most exciting thing of all:
Page 1 Panel 1 - Headcomics Presents: “This is Where Things Start to get Weird” By Ian Pike and Patrick Yurick
