This year staff at ICHK Secondary started the school year with a great PD session lead by one of our new team members, Phil Morgan. A deep thinker around creativity and education, Phil brought us up to speed on some ideas around creative thinking, and …
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Tag: creativity
Our School As A Box
Epic Wallpers
In Year 7, my students undertake a short unit of work called Epic Wallpaper, in which they attempt to make a glossy wallpaper using Acorn and some graphic design techniques. This is the first year I have run this unit, and it went very …
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Half Old Portrait
This morning I was approached by a teacher (Megan from HLY) whose students have been asked to draw split portraits of themselves, half their current age, and half when they are older. Megan asked if we could use some software to age the students, and …
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Ultra-Cheap Flying Camera
A few of my Year 9s had been away, missing the first lesson of a two-part assignment in which students had to film a creative shot of some kind. Trying to think of how to get these students engaged and up to speed, I came up with the idea of trying to set up a flying camera, which, launched from the first floor, would fly down a cable, filming the action on the playground below.
The students quickly got into the idea, and I called in another teacher (thanks Ben!) to help keep the kids safe whilst I worked with the other groups. There was some creative thinking, problem solving, a few test runs and some iteration in the design. In the end, we launched from the 3rd floor, and got the following shot. The kids stayed into break (thanks Harry, George, Alex & Damien), and we ended up with a crowd of curious students trying to work out what we were doing. Best of all, the final shot was produced using only materials we found around school. So, here it is, our Ultra-Cheap Flying Camera shot:
ICHK Zombiefest
My Year 9 ICT & Media students are currently learning some of the foundational skills that will help them make movies towards the end of term. Having looked at narrative structure, we have now moved on to creative shooting techniques. Originally, each class (I teach all three groups in a row on a Thursday) was going to create a simple low rolling shot using a delivery trolley instead of a professional dolly. The aim was for students to use ingenuity to overcome a lack of expensive, professional equipment. The first class decided to do a hallway scene showing typical break time behaviour. At some point a student suggested we do it zombie style, and all of a sudden we had a trailer on our hands. I then asked the following two classes to come up with their own version of the trailer for the same film (now called ICHK Zombiefest in honour of our school). Students took on different roles in the shooting, and the aim was for every student to contribute. Decisions were collaborative, and guided by the director (sometimes me, sometimes a student). The video below is the end result of the three lessons' work.
This was one of those magical days in teaching, where it was a lot fun, but totally draining. Well done to all of the students, especially to those who really jumped on board, got excited and had a lot of fun. Thanks also to Ms. Long for leaving her paperwork to play the role of "Zombie Teacher".Google Forms Choose Your Own Adventure
Do you remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 80s and 90s? I used to love reading them at school, and recently I have been wondering if students could write their own using a Google Drive Form. This is a proof-of-concept for this idea...sorry if my creative writing is not amazingly griping.
Note: you might find this works better as a stand-alone form, rather than viewing it within this site.
QR Code Madness
QR codes are square barcodes, which are quick to read and can contain more information than older linear barcodes. More importantly, QR codes can contains links which take scanners directly to a location on the Internet, and can be scanned by almost any phone or …
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Your Work: Dead or Alive?
The following tweet landed on my feed this morning, and it really got me thinking. I so often try to tackle printing as an environmental issue, that I forget the fact that it is, in many ways, simply an inferior way to work.
Don't tell me a policy is a "living document" that is being constantly reviewed if you then go and print it on paper. Sigh. — Chris Betcher (@betchaboy) January 28, 2013This led me to compose the following email to my colleagues, as an opening salvo in a new offensive against the poor practice of printing:
Colleagues, you all know that I am opposed to printing. But there is more to it than just environmentalism.
If you want to think of your work as "living" (eg actively used, collaborative, flexible, responsive, meaningful) then why consign it to static paper? Why not share your work online, build an audience and set your work free. Put it in a blog, or an online document, invite commentary, make everyone an owner.
This is the future of knowledge for our students. Lead by example. Paper is a dead end. Isn't it time to upgrade?
Fortunately Chris Betcher put his thoughts down in a shared, digital environment, and so we are all able to make use of them. Imagine if he just printing them out, and filed them away.
On Creativity
I’ve got creativity on the brain at the moment, and the more I think about it, the more interesting it is, the more nuances I find. This morning I had 15 minutes with some Year 8 students I know well. I told them that I …
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Twine
http://supermechanical.com/twine
Twine fits into a seemingly new product category that I am sure will take off as competition arises and costs drop: small, configurable Internet-enabled sensors. Housed in a small and robust casing and powered by internal batteries, Twine can sense the world around it …
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