Sunday 31 December 2017

Developing Identity-hub activity

I have been thinking about ideas on how to change the beginning of the year for my hub. Each year has been similar and with having the same students in hub they get bored of the activities.

So, I need to develop a hub Identity. But to do that my students need to show themselves. This has normally been done through words, images, showing themselves on a piece of paper.

However, I am interested in the idea of getting students to communicate an idea through a visual means. The medium, felt.

I think this comes from something I saw when the school started. Plus I think the idea of a craft based activity gets students sharing, showing others how to do various aspects, looking at others work and building on it and problem solving.


I have seen some of these around the school during the past couple of years, and no have one sitting on my desk to save it from being thrown out.

The concept at the beginning of this two yearly cycle is Identity.


https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=identity

Developing the concept of this, Spotlight has felt for sale around $1.50 per size. Some of our school community colours are shown below.

The guidance sheet to go with the materials for the students.


Sunday 17 December 2017

kite photography

Earlier this year a student posted up a photo of their kite aerial photography. This was something that was explored and developed on through the come fly with me project when they were trying to send up a weather balloon with sensors attached.

Through kickstarter this year a balloon mapping kit was made available https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/publiclab/kickstarter-gold-balloon-mapping-kits through the kickstarter also came a kite mapping kit as well. Since I am more likely to be not wandering around with a bottle of helium, the kite mapping kit is more suited.

I finally had time to try this out at our local park. I was amazed at how well it flew as well as how much string I still had on the reel.

I plan on doing a few more of these as time allows.

How might this be used within a project. Getting students to update the changes to our local orienteering map so we can have a map for our school.















Saturday 2 December 2017

end of year thinking

It has come to the time of the year where I have been thinking about ideas for next year.

What type of projects could be offered to students to develop Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes?

Idea One

Thinking of a starter activity for the year, something that get students using vector based programmes to develop ideas. Using open source software, inkscape allows students to develop vector based images.

While I have bene interested in this type of idea for a year now, something around getting students interested in the hobsonville habits. I wish I had taken a photo yesterday of the sleeves of the year 8 students that came to school yesterday. There seems to be a history of badges with intermediate schools in the area.
How could we take this thinking and apply it in a different way.

We have a laser cutter...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/steamcrow/monster-scouts

Also the idea of badges, since we have a sewing machine that can embroider... and 3d printers... opportunities could be developed... this would require students to think broadly.



To be able to get students working towards the badges using an idea around evidence of working towards the habits and goals.

Second idea

The second idea is one around mapping. We have an ever changing point where we need to do some work to enable a physical education activity to take place.

Kite flying capturing of the point using go pro and public lab. https://publiclab.org/

To be able to knit the images together, public lab has a mapknitter website https://mapknitter.org/

This would link into complex digital media techniques to be able to develop this as it would require a range of different capturing methods to be used.
http://www.openorienteering.org/apps/mapper/

Third one

The third one relates to my last post which is around developing the circles, something that I have been thinking about and exploring, through research I have found https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/37823/how-to-place-different-sized-circles-inside-a-shape/37852 which provides some good answers in how this could be developed.