foolfillment: the blog

If people are going to keep moving the goalposts like this then The Shire will never get promoted!

Free OS maps for 11 year olds

This is an excellent sceme where every 11 year old in the UK is entitled to a free map, as long as their school signs up, I wonder how many schools don’t bother.

from today’s Scotsman

So that was the first day back after the break. I was in a really grumpy mood at first, it seemed as though none of them could understand that only one person can drill at once. By the time it got to after lunch though I was feeling much better. I had my third year graphics class for the first of a series of lessons that I have put together completely myself from scratch - with a gradual build up towards my final crit next Wednesday. We had about half a period of discussion on colour theory and emotions associated with colour (a really abstract concept for most kids that age), for all it was very worthwhile it was a bit chaotic and there was far too much shouting out. I couldn’t quite find the right balance between open discussion and everyone shouting. The main disappointment though was when I was trying to get across the idea of receding colours one boy pipes up ‘is that like receding hairlines’ which on it’s own is fine but then the ‘orrible bunch chose to make it personal: ‘like yours sir!’ Little blighters, I’ll get them back for that.

I’ve been playing with this idea for t-shirts for the caving club and I have to say I’m fairly chuffed so I’m putting it here as well as on the GUPA site. The chances are it won’t get made because it doesn’t work well on shirts and the idea is a little obscure unless you have lived in Glasgow.
Here it is though, click for bigger:

(or how it would be on a t-shirt)

I spent most of today putting together a short film I might use in school next week, I’ve been thinking about using something similar for my last ever crit in two weeks. I’ve said before but Camtasia is incredibly easy to use, the only barrier I faced was having to use a webcam to capture the video - it meant the quality isn’t great and setting up a way to hold the webcam on the scene was the nightmare in the photo here.

Anyway, go and watch it and let me know what you think, I’d really appreciate any feedback.

(Unfortunately the quality on this youtube version isn’t as good as the original but it gives a fair representation)

Graphic Communication, You Tube, Camtasia, Rendering

I don’t really know what to say about this story. What an idiot.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Tories shrug off Cameron send-up

My third year Graphics class are sitting a test tomorrow morning on Sectional drawings. It’s a bit of a milestone for me - this is the first topic I have taught to a class from start to finish with no, or little, input from the regular teacher. The drawing they’ll be doing tomorrow is really quite complicated but I think I’ve prepared them well for it.

Graphics is a good subject for assessment most of the time - doing a drawing is something that is hard to make entirely quantitatively (is that actually a word or have I just made it up?) assessable, and it certainly isn’t a regurgitation of facts. In this case it is a very good drawing for prompting thought and building up in a mind how the rules fit together. It will also be a good drawing to see how well the pupils have progressed as it contains a number of tricky things that they should be able to do now.

I’m quite excited to see how they get on.

Nowadays when I read blogs I spend most of my time reading them through bloglines without actually looking at people’s designs, this is a real shame as I used to enjoy seeing pages evolve over time and I know I’ve put a lot of though over the years putting together designs for foolfillment so that it looked good for everyone. To think that nobody actually looks at anything other than the content is disheartening especially for someone who likes to think of himself as a designer.

Using nothing but an aggregator means that all the pages look the same, the only difference being the content. My site just blends into one step on your walk through the blogosphere and I lose identity. One way to change this would be to only offer up an excerpt in the feeds (Ewan did this until recently) but is this a bit rude - forcing people to see the world through my eyes? Is it better to put the effort into making content stand out as my identity?

While trying to avoid a navel-gazing ‘why do I blog’ post of circa 2002, it does make me ask if keeping a regular blog is worth it unless people read it?

While I know that the degree I am studying for is worth very little as a degree, I am really happy to be taking what I know into schools - for the simple reason that I will be able to teach 5 subjects* which have a huge range of skills and knowledge needed. There is a great balance between vocational skill and more academic theory. The problem that goes along with having such a range in one department though is having to fit all these different subjects into a relatively small number of rooms.

My pet hate at the moment is people sitting down to do practical work - it isn’t safe and it makes too easy to mess up the work - but the stools are an evil nescessity in the craft rooms because a lot of the time there is written work to be done. Gone are the days of having huge departments with enough rooms to take your class to either writing desks or to benches. The school I’m at currently doesn’t have the space to keep them out the way all the time so time is spent at the start of every lesson getting the stools moved to one side, then all through the lesson you have to go round howking them from underneath the lazier pupils, it gets pretty tiring. Any suggestions out there? Also, Chris wrote a very interesting post about PTs versus Faculty Heads today.

* Craft and Design, Graphic Communication, Technological Studies, Product Design, and Practical Craft Skills

Another day, not much to write about here unfortunately. I’m tending towards only writing when there I have some insights, as this series of posts have been a bit of a dull diary recently.

I have nothing of note to write about today, other than to say that somedays you just can’t win with certain individuals. There was one pupil who is a good worker but always has a bit of a chat. Today though he was in hyperdrive and nothing I, or the other teacher, could say to make him behave better, in the end being sent to work on his own next door. There must be better solutions. It wasn’t too bad here because he at least has a good grasp of what he is doing, when it is a pupil who is playing up because he doesn’t engage with the work it is a harder problem to solve.