Careers Expo - Art Gallery

 We had our annual careers expo this week, and we decided that the Visual Art and DVC department would put on an art gallery style exhibition of student work as a practice run for our big art exhibition next term.

We had been thinking about how to display the sculpture work for a while. This is the first time Tamaki College has done sculpture at NCEA so we had no prior way of displaying it and we really wanted each piece of student work to have its own plinth. We then had the idea of using concrete building blocks to build our own plinths that can be assembled and disassembled as we need them. Also, they can be built to the height we need.

So we found an Auckland company that could supply and deliver a pallet load of the blocks we needed and my senior class then got the job of moving them off the pallet into the back of the garage. With a piece of plywood as the top, the practice plinth came out looking just how we wanted it.

Our head of careers who was organising the whole event got hold of a load of old political campaign board. These are really big and plain white on the back. She told us to come and take what we wanted. As we wanted to display a lot of the students drawings and artwork, just relying on the wall behind where we were going to be in the sports hall was not going to be enough. We had the idea of taping up three of the boards to make a large free standing triangular structure. This could then be stood anywhere and have loads of space for 2D artwork. White gaffer tape which did the job on the corners really well and they stood up securely.

It was a big job in the days running up to the day, as we had a lot of photographing of student work to do and we then printed it out A3 sized. We used the same burgundy border around everything to link it all together. We made a shared Google presentation to do this and made the page size A3 so there would be no pixelating.

Link to presentation

We printed a couple of posters and one of the Year 12 students sculpture photographs onto A1 so they made an impact on the boards.

It was my lovely senior class on the day of the expo who got the job of moving all the blocks and boards.

We then set everything up. We had been given the area in front of the doors so the gallery was the first thing people saw as they were entering the expo. We took advantage of this and went either side of the door so people had to actually walk through the gallery to enter.

We got lots of good feedback on the night, gave out lots of flyers and hopefully inspired some students to choose Visual Art or DVC next year.

Using the Cricut Machine

 Subsequent to our Manaiakalani Teacher Only day where I presented on how to use the Cricut machine, most of my group have met twice this last week to continue learning.  We will continue over the next couple of weeks.

Designing with a Client

Part of what my senior students have to do as part of their project work is work with a client. This is great experience for them as they are not designing what they want but have to take the needs and wants of someone else into consideration.
I have worked with clients a number of times doing my own design work. It is always an interesting experience, as I tell my students, as the client will never like the design that you do!

Over the last couple of years of being a CoL teacher in the Manaiakalani cluster, I have done a few pieces of design work for them. This experience has been even more interesting as there are viewpoints coming from a number of sources, not just one. I think this is good for me as it means I am walking the talk when I force my kids to do it.

Part of the process of working with a client is the back and forth. You send them ideas. They make decisions. You work on their decisions and send the developments to them. It is a process of developing and receiving feedback then working on that feedback and making changes until the client is happy.

The first one was an overview of Learn / Create / Share to showcase the Manaiakalani inquiry structure.

The second one was to go with the focus on Create last term. This came after input from teachers in the cluster about what they thought create was. We decided to go with just images to represent different aspects of share as there were so many written ideas.

The last one is the most recent, and it is to go with the focus for this term of Share. Again we went with just images as there was a lot of feedback from teachers in the cluster about what they think share is, so there would have been too many words to include.

We stayed with the circular design too with the words around the edge so that they look part of a "set" when used together.

What amused me most about doing this design was the amount of time it took doing a view of the world from the New Zealand side. They are difficult to find.

Cluster Create Staff Meeting

This week we had the Manaiakalani Cluster Create staff meeting. All the teachers from our cluster came to Tamaki College for a massive staff meeting where there was activities on offer to go and participate in. These activities all had to involve making something - a dance, a song, some food,  anything...
This is the introduction session presented by Dorothy Burt.

In session one, I went to Greg's activity, which was Cubic papercraft - Creating paper models.

I made a Tardis model!!!

Great skills can be learned from this type of activity :-

• Patience
• Accuracy
• Spacial awareness of how a flat shape can make a 3D form
• Cutting
• Assembling
• Following instructions
• Putting what you have learned into different situations and product design.

Then for session two, I was co leading a session with Russel Dunn about rocket making.
The whole team managed to get their rockets made and launched in our 45 minute time slot. We had all the rockets pre-cut and scored thanks to the laser cutter.

Year 13 teaching Year 7 and 8

My Year 13 class have visited one of our local primary / intermediate schools this week. Two of them visited Glen Taylor school at the end of last term to talk about effective logo design. Blog post here.

This week the whole class went so they could start to redesign their logos with them.
We had a talk the day before about what we would focus on and how they would do it.
We decided to all work in circles, focus on using guide lines for lettering, simplifying the image of the mountains used and simple font choice.

The Year 13 students did really well. They presented to the whole group of Year 7 and 8 students to start with, asking them questions about what they did during the last visit and reminding them what they talked about.
The Y7 and Y8 students then sat in groups and my senior students worked with groups. They moved around the groups so they could help lots of different students.

On the planning day and as we were travelling there, they were very nervous and two of my students didn't turn up that morning so they could avoid going. The 6 students who went did really really well. Their confidence grew as the students listened to them and followed their instructions as they were demonstrating.

At the end of the session, they didn't want to leave.

Teacher Only Day

All links on the page take you to content from the day.

Senior students present to Year 7 and 8

Two of my lovely NCEA Level 3 students went to Glen Taylor School today to talk to them about logo design. The Year 7 and 8 students have been designing logos for their school houses and they wanted the advice of some Tamaki College design students about the best way to develop their designs.

Vaifoa and Sella were very brave, standing in front of approximately 80 students in the school auditorium and talking to them about logo design all together. They then worked with smaller groups as the students brainstormed their thoughts.
We looked at famous designs and thought about what made them effective. The students then looked at the designs they have produced already and highlighted all the good parts that can be used in the development stage.
The next step is next term when my whole Level 3 class will visit and help them with their design developments.

Very proud graphics teacher today.