Thursday, February 16, 2017

Not sweating the small stuff....

Today, I had both of my Design and Visual Communication senior classes. On of them is a mix of NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3 and the other is a mix of NCEA Level 2 and 3. So... lots of fun to be had (!!!)

The double session this morning was Level 1, 2 and 3.
Level 1 were producing thumbnail sketches of possible poster layouts to showcase the work of a chosen architect. We went over the 3 elements they were going to worry about for these thumbnails - the image (just draw boxes), the title (rough where it is going) and the written information (a series of lines in the pace where the writing would go).
Level 2 were working in small teams to produce mood boards about design eras to show to their client. They had started this yesterday so the first thing we had to do was sort out the students who were absent yesterday and didn't have a team. We ran a little auction to see who was going where. Cue printing off loads of pictures, cutting and sticking and mess everywhere.
Level 3 are drawing from observation from their chosen starting point for the first external standard.

During all of this, one of my Level 1 girls decided to show everyone what a good magician she was and started poking pencils through a bag of water.
Here is a shot of one of the boys posing with the masterpiece....


I decided to take a walk round the room with my phone to make a short video.

What you might see is level 1 and 2 students wandering round looking like they are off task and the Level 3 student on his phone. 
You might think this video looks bad. 

What you don't see is the fact that Level 2 students are working in teams and need to move round the room to get resources and use equipment. They are also really good at supporting each other with tasks that they get stuck with.
The Level 3 student has been working practically solidly without a break at his drawings for nearly a double period. He was taking a very short break at the time.
I had just changed the focus for the Level 1 students so they had to think about the shapes and forms form their architect in the poster layouts. This disrupted their flow and they were getting back down to it.



This afternoon, the Level 2 boys went to see their client with their final mood board. Feedback is to be shared with all of them when they got back. Emphasis was made on them being  TEAM mood boards and not personal ones. The same with the feedback write ups.

When the boys first went to their client for the initial interview, we decided to do an audio recording instead of everyone frantically scribbling notes.
We then got very excited when we discovered that my phone made a text file that goes with the audio recording. That was until that file was shared in the class community and it made absolutely no sence at all!!
Example :-

OK so they pulled read the free but the phone .... For Go to tell you right good good question to stop What kind of products cause we got a big list of products ....

So.. that plan went out the window today.

We then discovered that the audio files could be uploaded to Google Drive, but not embedded onto their portfolio sites.
The students then had the good idea of SoundCloud. This then rang a bell in my head that I had a SoundCloud account from a while ago...




 


So...the take out from today's seniors lessons ?

When elements in the lesson go a bit custard coloured, the students are really good at suggesting ideas if you keep them in the loop about what you were planning and what had gone wrong.

Just because it looks like chaos, well.. it probably is a bit, but the back story is a good one and needs to be made clear to anyone who wants to judge at first glance.

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