Homework for Week 5

HW 4/1: 3D model through Tinkercad in class.

I printed out a memorial tolkein for the victims of Orlando. The simple phrase was the last line from Marie Howe's poem, "What the Living Do": The full line is as follows: "I am living;/I remember you." I chose just to print out the last line, "I remember you." 

HW 4/2: basic circuit project with paper/craft materials Document/Photograph the basic steps that were involved in the making and put them up as a step-by-step guide (see: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Create-a-Feature-Worthy-Instructable/?ALLSTEPS) on your blog or, if you prefer, publish it on instructables.com (the login should be the same as your tinkercad account).

HW 4/3: Continue working on your final project, due for presentation on Day 5.

Final Project:  This is a short film, title Buttons at Night, with incorporates the three modes of making dictated by the roll of the dice.  They are Mapping, Sculpture, and Stop Animation.

Mapping: I used Google maps and screen captures to deliver the effect of an establishing aerial shot in cinema.  I had over 100 frames which I edited and cropped to create this sequence to establish the front of the Button shop. 

Sculpture: I create a Button sculpture using buttons of various sizes, shapes and colors.  The narrative effect was that the loose Buttons in the button shop gather together at night to form a decorate object.  At first I thought they might be trying to escape, but I then decided that they just like to spend the evening clustered together decoratively. 

Stop Motion: I had used this technique before, but this time it was more difficult, as I had many objects to move. The film is short, sort of a one off joke, and I spent a great deal of time making the sculpture and the set.  I chose to place the work in black and white since it made the set look more real and reminded me more of The Brothers Quay.  Though the sculpture is rather beautiful in color, as are the Google slides (I had manipulated the color of these as well), I thought it best for continuity to make the entire film in Black and White. 

As a result, I enjoyed the shared geometries of the street and the shop.  Thought the first section is a bit top heavy, I view it structurally as a joke with three components.  The first two, the set up are in the overblown intro sequence, the last and abrupt, short punchline. 

Music Credits: 

Brion, John, "Forward Motion," Music from the Film Synecdote, New York

Reich, Steve, (1972). "Clapping Music." Early Works.

Buttons at Night

or

Bedtime for Buttons

 

HW 4/4: Readings: see Moodle. Share two take-aways. HW 4/3: Continue working on your final project, due for presentation on Day 5.

HW 4/4: Readings: see Moodle. Share two take-aways. 

Takeaway #1: Paper's work in 1971 is nothing if not predictive and prescient.  It astonishes me how technology -- even in the past 10 years -- has made the arduous easy, the laborious, playful.  In fact, since the assembly line is programmed, since repetitive tasks can be managed with one keystroke, might we once again experience the joy of play?  Are we now in a renaissance of dream and play?

Or has technology cuffed us with the weight of its bytes, strangled us with cords and adapters?  

Kid makers may possess inherently different skill than their teachers.  Kids may be self-reliant and adaptable, while many of their teachers stay fixed in their ways, growing weary of technology and obsolete.  

What struck me in the reading is the energetic excitement of the role of technology in the classrooms, with Wired and Make magazines featuring cover stories on children makers.  But who is inspiring and teaching the teachers?  Further, will students born of this making spirit become teachers? Or will they work in digital design?  

So will there ultimately be a gap between the makers and the teachers?  And who shall bridge this gap? 

Takeaway #2: The maker is always an outsider in academe.  If academics centers on the published article, where is there space for the maker-practioner?  It may be that this hearkens back to a separation of the laborer from the thinker.  The craft and guildsman from the poet.  Yet the maker today, at least from what I am coming to understand, is the dreamer  and designer of the 21st century.  It may take some time to shift public perception on this, the same way we began to realize that a kid on a skateboard could actually have sold his shares in the Silicon Valley and made millions.  

HW 4/5: Write 2 paragraphs about the place of technology in the curriculum. Use this as a device to revisit and synthesize some of the learning you have been engaged with.

I have long been interested in the mind and education. For years as an English teacher, I encouraged students to do creative projects. Mostly I had them do film. Each year I would produce a Coffeehouse, which was my way of doing experimental performance art with students. It was democratic, as any student who wanted to be involved, could. But it was curated, as I helped and mentored students with their projects. I worked with plays, poems, staging fiction, philosophical excerpts, elevated skit comedy, dance, set design, film, performance, music, and sound design. Technically, I didn't always know what I was doing, but the kids could typically future out the rest. I had one student who mixed and edited a wonderful audio project on Deevolution.  

While I have used the arts for specialized projects like coffeehouse, I think it can be useful in the classroom as well. Teacher Training is essential, which is why I am grateful for a course that pushes me to practice each technique of making. You learn by doing and by doing I am better able to help others do the same. 
Pedagogically, I think that the making arts pull from so many different parts of the brain: the sequential, logical part and the abstract, metaphor making part. It teaches students to refine their aesthetics; it teachers students patients. I learned both of those and was sometime experience flow in my projects since I would often have to work for 6-8 hours to complete a segment.

HW 4/5: Write 2 paragraphs about the place of technology in the curriculum. Use this as a device to revisit and synthesize some of the learning you have been engaged with.

I have long been interested in the mind and education. For years as an English teacher, I encouraged students to do creative projects. Mostly I had them do film. Each year I would produce a Coffeehouse, which was my way of doing experimental performance art with students. It was democratic, as any student who wanted to be involved, could. But it was curated, as I helped and mentored students with their projects. I worked with plays, poems, staging fiction, philosophical excerpts, elevated skit comedy, dance, set design, film, performance, music, and sound design. Technically, I didn't always know what I was doing, but the kids could typically future out the rest. I had one student who mixed and edited a wonderful audio project on Deevolution.  

While I have used the arts for specialized projects like coffeehouse, I think it can be useful in the classroom as well. Teacher Training is essential, which is why I am grateful for a course that pushes me to practice each technique of making. You learn by doing and by doing I am better able to help others do the same. 
Pedagogically, I think that the making arts pull from so many different parts of the brain: the sequential, logical part and the abstract, metaphor making part. It teaches students to refine their aesthetics; it teachers students patients. I learned both of those and was sometime experience flow in my projects since I would often have to work for 6-8 hours to complete a segment. 

HW 4/6: Revisit your blog and the learning that took place in the course. Take a short selfie (see attachment) and assess your own learning. Use your personal learning objective as a point of reference.

Showed  my Process:  I think many times both on my blog and in my class recaps, I wrote and spoke about the genesis, revision, and process of making various works.  Certainly this was true of the Impact 25 piece, which I published as an e-book

Explained my Outcome: I think each post I made in the blog is fairly thorough about my outcome.  At times I did a greater presentation of the work in class.  I even had the opportunity to return to some work and edit and revise it.  For each e-book I wrote an artist's statement or some for of explanatory text. 

Linked to Vocabulary: I don't have all the terms down, but I did learn some new tricks with the terminology of making.  Not only did I learn technical terms, such as the "extractor" on the 3-D printer, but also a vocabulary for speaking about art.  For example, CJ mentioned that one of my scans had a diffused prism effect (or something to that effect).  Listening to other students talk about their work had a great influence on how I learned to think about and describe my work. 

I preserved through the work: I learned that any project has multiple steps and each step takes patience and energy.  I create three films alone and setting the camera and the objects filmed took a great deal of energy and time.  Often, I broke the projects up so that I would have time to rethink and revise the work, as I did with "Pulse." Often I would work for 6-8 hours straight, burning my fingers with the glue gun, resetting my set before the shoot, repairing details that had become frayed with use. 

Eliminate carelessness: None of the work is perfect, but I did learn a great deal through trial and error.  And I made many errors.  Some of the set pieces for my last film (the wall of button drawers) seemed inauthentic in color.  In B&W, all the errors, glitches, and shadows went away.  That was nice.  The effect is a more realistic set piece. 

Personal Learning Objective. 

1) To gather fluency in relation to the various tools of new media

Practicing the techniques in class was greatly helpful with this

2) To develop ideas as to how to creatively integrate new media into classes in humanities
My Audacity assignment is one I used in a class I am currently teaching. 

3) To develop sample lesson plans that involve video, sound design, stop animation as they may support the study of literature

I think I found creative ways to use literature and my own writing with video and stop animation ("Bedtime for Buttons"; "Pulse")

4) To conceive of ways in which students can begin to work collaboratively on projects in new media, as per the New London Group.

I need to give more thought to group projects with this work.  It helped that we were often making work together in class. 

5) To challenge myself to acquaint myself with media with which I have not engaged, such as stop motion animation.

I learned a great deal from doing stop motion animation, particularly patience. 

6) To extend the ways in which I use my current fluency with film and audio in the classroom.

I extended the audacity project with my students to include video.