foolfillment: the blog

This year at Ross High we’re hoping our Higher Graphics Class will be producing some really cool stuff for their Thematic Presentations (a folio of different types of graphic work based around a single artefact) with a suggested theme of Lego toys. To get them started I’ve modelled a wee man with the intention that they can use him in their own work - with modifications of course.

For the course they will need to do a series of manual and computer generated drawings. One way of doing the computer drawings is to actually model the object in 3D like I’ve done above then get very accurate and detailed drawings generated from that. I’ve used Autodesk Inventor but if you want a shot of doing something similar yourself then Google Sketchup is a free programme that does similar things and comes highly recommended for all abilities.

What you see above is me just going that little bit further so that the class can see what is possible outwith the requirements of the course, animations are a fantastic way of really showing off a piece of work and can be quite good fun to make - unfortunately they aren’t currently assessed/assessable.

This example needs a lot of tidying up, but it is just a little bit of fun and (I think) quite cute.

Incidentally this took me around 2 hours to model and a further 1 at most to set up and tweak the animation. The bit that took the time was rendering the animation, around 450 frames, which took about 60 minutes for 30s of animation.

You might see a theme developing here, I’m basically just asking for people to give me lots of their ideas, under the guise of sharing good practice Today’s theme is how to set up a classroom.

In August I will have the amazing luxury of having my very own classroom, this is something that is almost unheard of for a Tech teacher, and as such it is not something I’ve given much thought to. Since getting the Hawick post I’ve been thinking a little about what I could do to the layout of desks, or what resources I should have out - that sort of thing. Having never had my own room before though I’ve never been through all the practicalities of it and I’m sure I’ll have forgotten or overlooked important things.

So, I’m asking those of you out there who may have something to say to say it. If you were starting from scratch in a new room what 5 things would you do?

I’m looking for your ideas in this post.

A quick summary first: Today saw the final training session for this year’s probationers in East Lothian. Training really isn’t the right word for it as it was more an informal afternoon with the focus being on sharing and exploring our ideas about the Learning and Teaching that is going on in East Lothian. There was another focus - recently all the probationers took part in a sector shadow where secondary teachers watched primary classes for a day then swapped over - so this gave a lead to the discussions.

The final activity we took part in was particularly useful - both for sharing ideas but also to justify what we do to other professionals. This is where I’d really appreciate your comments.

There were two headings under which we had to describe something that we think is great practice and we want to implement or continue to do when we take up our next jobs. We then mingled and shared ideas with each other. It opened up my eyes (even further) as to the variety of things that are going on in Primary schools that are just fantastic.

The first heading was Formative Assessment/Learning Strategies.
I wrote something along the lines of: Peer Assessment - evaluating each others work, pupils are much better at praising/criticising each other’s work than their own.

The second header was Management of Learning.
For this I wrote Starter questions/exercises at start of every lesson.

I’d love to hear you share anything that you consider to be essential to good learning and teaching so please leave a comment. It needn’t be much just a few words describing something that you think works.

( I toyed with the idea of writing this as a meme, so feel free to write up on your own blog and link here, or even to tag someone else.)

I’m pleased to let you know that on Monday I was interviewed for a position at Hawick High School, and subsequently offered the job which I accepted.

I’ll take up my new position in August for the new term, with my own classroom and possibly a workshop to call my very own too, unheard of delights for a techy teacher :-).

I’ll be very sad to leave Ross High as my time there has been very positive and it is a very busy department with a lot of great staff, and a lot of fantastic classes that I will be feeling very guilty about leaving behind. However this is the way things go in the current system.

The situation for probationers this year is looking pretty grim and there aren’t many jobs coming up for teachers of my subjects anywhere in Scotland so I am absolutely delighted to have secured a full-time permanent contract, with the added bonus that this is a school and department that I am really looking forward to working in. It’s a huge relief.

I came across this image via the logoblog today. See how many brands you can identify from just the initial. It’s quite striking how many of these are brands that don’t use the initial as their brand logo, yet are instantly recognisable.

The Brand Alphabet by InThePictureDesign.co.uk

One thing I like my pupils to think about when presenting folios is
consistency throughout the pages with something like this sort of
‘house style’, and this I think shows the impact and penetration that a
strong brand can have upon users/consumers mindset.

Monday the 14th of April sees the publication of the draft outcomes for Technologies. I’m really looking forward to seeing what is in them and where we may be going, Technologies is such a broad name and it could cover anything we wanted it to, hopefully there won’t be a trap of covering everything - and in the end nothing to a reasonable depth. At the same time I hope we will not be sticking too closely to the ‘traditional’ view of technical where all we teach is how to make sawdust and filings, and instead we are able to position ourselves so we can teach at the forefront of advancing technologies and keep up with the demands of industry - whichever industry that may be at the time.

I also hope deep down that design will feature heavily in a way that will embed design into everything that we as technology teachers do, and also into what every other teacher does.

Awkwardly that date coincides with something else which you may, or may not hear more about later - although that may actually save my skin a little (anyone worked out what I’m on about?)

Image credit: Red Bridge - Originally uploaded by El Fotopakismo

I’ve put together a wee tutorial on using Autodesk Inventor. I’ve been using the Professional 2008 version but most of it transfers across to other versions.

It is based around a series of screenshots hosted in a set on flickr with supporting notes. It works really well if you click through the set image by image. This is the first screen.

Flickr’s slideshow transitions mean that it is pretty slick when you watch it that way, although the notes added on top of the images don’t show - anyone know of a way around this other than editing the images themselves?

I’d love to know what people think of it, it was only a couple of hours work but would be nice to know I’ve not wasted that time.

Castellers by pepesaura [old skool pride]

Robert Jones did me the dubious honour of tagging me for this passion quilt meme. Actually it was a pleasure, most memes are a bit rubbish - just cheap content creation for blogs. This one was a refreshing change. Think of something you are passionate about teaching to your pupils, then find an image to illustrate that.

I love challenging young people to work together and create something remarkable, I first found out about castelling after seeing a a photo taken by my friend Diarmid when he lived in Barcelona, but I thought this photo illustrated this passion better because it is mid-construction and actually involves younsters. I suppose there is a point to be made about usefulness of what is created but, the sense of community that seems to abound castelling has got to count for something doesn’t it?

Now I have to tag 5 new people: Krysia Smyth, Robert Clements, Ollie Bray, Eddie Mack (no blog, yet), and Duncan Smeed.

Here are the rules:
1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

Tomorrow night I’m giving the first of three sessions on Advanced PowerPoint. I’m not entirely sure what I should be covering, as almost all the people coming will have different abilities and requirements. To get around this tomorrow I’m going to miss out most of the actual features and options that the software has and instead talk about why you shouldn’t use PowerPoint!

Because I’m nice I’m making the slides available now for those people who are coming late or not at all. The most useful bits from the file are probably the accompanying notes but you can get away with just looking at the slides. Advanced PowerPoint Session 1. I should make it clear that some of the ideas covered are influenced by a series of posts from the Modern Foreign Languages Environment blog, the first of which can be viewed here.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve managed to snaffle a wee shot on an Asus EeepPC. Tess Watson visited me at Ross today and has kindly loaned me one for the weekend. So far I’m really impressed, it’s is all dead easy to use, the main drawback so far has been the keyboard size. I’m typing this post on it right now and keep making a lot of typos, that said the machine manages to strike a great balance between usability and portability.

As far as the potential for use in a classroom/workshop, things are looking great. It is so lightweight (yet sturdy feeling) that I wouldn’t have too many concerns about giving them to pupils, and the ease with which they could access information would make it incredibly useful - especially if the school had a wireless network. The integrated webcam is a nice touch but is really only useful for phone calls as it doesn’t move, more useful perhaps would be just a USB wired camera that could be pointed at whatever you wanted. The software that runs with the webcam though is great - it is very fast to capture an image or video. With a maneuverable camera it would be very useful for capturing demonstrations of practical tasks in the workshop or graphics room and then making them available for pupils to run in a loop on their own machine at their bench.

I’ll get back to you later in in the weekend on how I get on, but so far things look pretty good for quick use of the basic stuff. One thing it wouldn’t be great for is graphics work, but that isn’t what this machine is aimed at so not a huge problem, but that didn’t stop me having a look at what linux CAD/CAG programs there are