foolfillment: the blog

is you you get told all the pitfalls to avoid, like talking for hours on end without bothering to try and engage the pupils, like making sure you’ve got all your resources working before you let the kids use them, like letting your class know what they’re supposed to be doing before you try to mark their work. And then you see all your lecturers demonstrating these things. I’m sure it’s all deliberate, to make us learn why we should avoid them. Maybe in later years they show what to do when things start to go wrong.

It’s not likely that the people I’m writing about will find this site, but there’s a link from my profile on the faculty’s notes database thingy to here so I should make it clear that on the whole the staff are very good, but you do get occasions when things aren’t exactly what you might expect from those who teach how to teach.

and lots of them. Good for beating off fresher’s flu you see. Every new term without fail I feel bunged up with rubbish germs. It wouldn’t bee so bad but it’s never a proper cold or illness, just enough to make me struggle to concentrate and make me cough and sniffle but not really enough to justify taking a day off. Bah!

However things to cheer me up:

• the man from orange trying to say Sauchiehall Street (I should have known he’d struggle as soon as he said Saint Ehnock Centre)
• The new album by the Delgados
• That I’m going to see the Delgados on Saturday

My first design project this year is to design a wet shave razor for French Connection UK’s (fictional) entry into that market, it’s supposed to reflect the sort of other products they already sell and appeal to a similar market which is where my sticking point is.

You see I’m stupid closed minded enough to have a blanket dislike of people who are stupid enough to be taken in by how cool it is to wear something almost rude and I’m going to find it hard to not design a product that has features like nicks in the blades that fashion designers scars across your cheeks (as is eternally popular in Glasgow) because I’m sure that it would sell, with the right marketing that is.

When the rest of my group said ‘I’ll see you on Friday’ was I wrong to take that to mean that I’d see them on Friday? With a project to hand in on Tuesday and no sign of anybody else’s work it’s fair to say I’m getting a little anxious.

This is one of the things that have been driving me mad slowly tonight, a rendered representation of our final design in the current project at uni - a clock design task, as usual click for a bigger image:

Tablets are great things though and one thing that has kept me from getting too angry at my pc, along with this story : BBC | Polar bears turn green

For two weeks starting tomorrow morning I’m following a programme of school experince at my old grammar school in Dunbar, it’s a bit scary but definitely something I’m looking foward to.

In terms of workload it shouldn’t be very taxing at all, the only preperation I’ve had to do is get a whole load of new shirts and a few ties - the only ones I had before where to fit the uniform and I’m going to be recognised by a fair few of the pupils as it is. It’s all observation with the chance to do some small group teaching and it should be a lot of fun.

I’m going to set up a separate (hidden) weblog to jot down any thoughts - some may migrate here - because I’m sure blogging has a huge potential in education, be it for planning lessons or orgainising drafts of work or collating people’s thoughts during group work.

As part of my course I have to go out and do a placement at a school for two weeks after Christmas. I found out that I’m going to Dunbar Grammar School, where I was a pupil. I’m not sure what to expect, I don’t have a problem about seeing the teachers again but there will be some pupils there who were there at the same time as I was. Two thirds of them in fact. I don’t know how that will affect how things go. As yet I don’t even know what the placement involves so it might be I only see 1st and 2nd years which would be fine and dandy but if I have to take charge in a class of 4th years say, then what reason do they have for taking any attention f me, after all, as far as they’re concerned I’m not a teacher, I’m just someone who used to get to push infront of them in the dinner queue.

We’ll see.

As I have said before, I had to write an essay. It’s all done and handed in now, so it’ time to post it up here.
(more…)

The latest piece of work I have to do is a short essay on 20^th Century Design History with the brief :

‘ “No matter what things you study, you will always find that those which are good and useful are also graced with beauty” - Baldassare Castiglione, 1528.
Discuss the influence of aesthetics on the success anf failure of two examples of the same product within the context of 20^th century design and consumer trends.’

The 2 examples I’ve chosen are the Lloyds Building in London and the Sydney Opera House. When I’ve got it written I’ll hand it in and then post it up here, but till then how about a discussion about that sort of thing?

I assume Lordy went to the Opera House when he was in Oz but I can’t remember, Big Bruv usually has something to say about any subject and I know from log reorts that there are people out there who read this site quite often but never comment so, for a starting point, the Opera House has become something of an icon that everyone recognises and brings millions to the Austrailian economy. Does Scotland need a similar sort of thing to boost it’s economy? The Falkirk Wheel is a good start isn’t it, but who outside the UK, Scotland even, has heard of it?

Come on what do you think?