Lockdown Drawing and Giving Feedback

 We are onto the drawing stage with my Y11 and Y12 classes now. Even though we are on lockdown, the show must go on. 

I have written a few blog posts about setting this up

• Setting Up for Teaching Drawing Online
• Using Lego for Cross Sectional Visual Aids

The school has sent out sketch books, pencils and coloured pencils, So I know that the students have some basics that we can be. using to move on with.

Yesterday and today, I have had a few students through my Year 12 class, who are all working on slightly different projects so I have been drawing with them individually or in small groups, targeting their specific project ideas. 

I have been uploading my examples that I do with them online into a folder so that they have access to them and can get a better close up view rather than just seeing them on a Google Meet. Link to folder here.

When it comes to feedback, it proved to be difficult for me to see their work clearly enough when they held it up to the camera during a meet. To overcome this, the students have been photographing their work and sending it to me so I can give them more detailed feedback as I can see it clearly.

I then used my camera set up to record me drawing for them so I can give them ideas on how to improve their work. This is what I would do if we were in the class. I would sit next to them and draw on a different piece of paper and give them ideas for improvement.

I have shared this with them on a Google presentation with some notes. My initial idea was to share a Google Drawing with them so I could annotate their photograph (Google Drawing is always my first thought!!). This was not a good option, however, as you can not embed a video directly onto a drawing (please sort this out Google!). I decided to go with a Google Presentation for feedback and have decided that this is a better option anyway as I can embed videos, give annotated feedback and we are able to keep the same presentation for all drawing feedback as we do it.

Here are two examples of feedback given today. I have shared these with the individual students. 

Using Lego for Cross Sectional Visual Aids

Some of my Year 12 class are ready to continue with their design work. We are onto design development and they need to include details like cross sectional views. When we are on site, I get the students to make shapes in 3D with plasticine to cut in half, so they have a visual understanding of where the cut surfaces are so they can draw them on paper.

I have set up my drawing area for online teaching, Blog post here, but I needed to find a way of explaining cross sectional. views in 3D for them.

I made some blocks out of Lego. One was a solid cube, one was a solid cube made in two sections and one was a hollow cube in two sections. I made them all the same size so i could relate them back to the original one that is not cut in two.

Here is a brief section from the lesson today. It was great to hear the students drawing and then showing me their drawings on the camera so we could see that everything was being undserstood.

Setting Up for Teaching Drawing Online

 We have been on lockdown for getting on for 5 weeks now and my students need to get on with their drawing work. We have done loads of work that can be done online on Google docs etc but it is time for a few of them to move on. 

I had a chat with a couple of them last week about getting some drawing done in the next week and they are keen so it was time to get my set up sorted out.

On my desk I have arranged it so that I can draw live on a Google Meet with the students and also record my drawings for them to try in their own time.

I know being able to draw with the students next week will make me feel so much better.

Making a Drawing Projector

I have seen drawing projectors in a couple of other schools and I really rather wanted one but didn't like the price of them.
I liked the way the whole class could see what was being explained / demo'd / shown by the teacher as it was projected onto the board via the class projector. I also thought I could use one to record drawing skills to add to the online "mooc" style that I have been using to set up my class website.

I decided to recycle one of the class drawing boards and with the help of part of a wooden handle and a small piece of scrap wood, I managed to spend less than $20. This was spent on a webcam to transfer the video across to a computer.

This worked really well using Quicktime. I chose "Mew Movie Recording", then this works for both uses. It shows on the computer screen what the webcam is seeing, so this can be projected onto the board via the class projector. There is also a record button so you can record what you do with the students or prepare one earlier to put on the class website.

Here are some very quick experiments I made today to test it out.

Test 1 - normal quality with no extra lighting.

Test 2 - normal quality with extra lighting from a clip on lamp.

Test 3 - high quality with extra light.


Test 4 - high quality with no extra light and drawn in pen

The file size is noticeably larger on the high quality recording. This was evident when saving the file and most evident when uploading the file to the web. Is the difference in quality worth a 3 hour upload time? This as only a test so it was very short. The real ones will be a lot longer.
This "creation" has definite possibilities and I am looking foreword to giving it a go in class next week. I will also be testing if it works with Screencastify, as this is on all the student's chrome browsers. If it does, then they can make some too on their chromebooks. !!