Hi, this blogg has been moved to.......

Hi, this blogg has been moved over to http://teachtechy.wordpress.com/

Old School Going, Going gone.

Sad as on friday the last bit of the old school, next door to the new one, was finally pulversied into rubble. It was one of our workshops which had some electrical supplies for the street. Spent 12yrs happily teaching there.

Advanced Higher Graphics Visuals

Took photos of these before we moved school, forgot how cool the renders were. These are from 2000, so they don't exactly match the latest Marking Scheme, however they are still used to show the expected standard. Scary to think all the pupils are over 25 now !

Hong Kong Style Graphic Novels

A colleague lent me a Hong Kong style GN. Interesting convention for reading, back to front but also not always right top- down- back up- down. Quite a few pages with very little text.

Should we be creating 'Transition' Comics for ESL pupils joining us ?

Visualiser Example Videos

After getting the IT guy to setup the drivers, I have been using the Webcam, £14.99, with an old angle poise lamp, in classes. It is amazing ! Both myself and the pupils thought it was much better for them to see the demos of skills etc. If I raise my voice to talk to the whole class, it automatically records video. S3 to AdvHGC both thought it was much better when I taught with it. They could see from the back of the room. There are still shots of the projector screen image, poor phone quality pic, below. My S4CD were sketch/card/plastic junk modelling their final projects so the wee ergonome was useful for passing on the scale concept.

There are some uploaded videos below, impressive quality. It is really easy to click the software and it automatically records the video as you show/demo/explain something. Ideally I change the video path to the network so the pupils can then re-visit any of the clips. This could be for reinforcement, absence, for reference, for next years class etc. Although this will involve checking the video for errors or unwanted noise, behaviour etc.

Some of the videos have one way dialogue, you can't hear the class and questions, others have pupil-teacher dialogue. Then that pupil can have that personal dialogue replayed as a video.

The £46 HD webcam Microsoft have brought out today, will have much better quality due to an autofocus lens and much better resolution than the clips below. The angle poise lamp stand is good as you can lift it up - zoom out to A3+ - or pull it down - zoom in- on small detail.

Adv Higher Graphics

DTP Page Analysis


An example of how to pick the right page for analysis.




Graphics Standard Grade

S3 Pencil Rendering Practice - outlining with a glow effect

Visualiser in Class -£14.99

I was chatting to my nephew, 8yrs old, who had done podcasts in p3. Shocked by this, I asked more questions and learnt they used a webcam for looking at discovery Items, eg they bring in any dead insects and flowers etc and show them to the class using the webcam.

We have two £1000 visualisers, not in the room I use, they are ok, they can't move and don't fit A3 paper so have limited use. I have a new school but a small interactive whiteboard sized space for projection, whereas in the old school I had a full size, 10ft by 8ft roller blind that was a huge area for projecting on. I don't want an interactive board, casts shadows when touching, small image, small buttons when teaching software etc.

My laptops built in webcam has poor focussing and video, so a £14.99 webcam from logitech was a good test option. Me, and my AdvHGC class, were blown away by the image quality. The pupil sat at the back of the room saw my normal handwriting appear on the projector screen clearly. It is slightly slow-mo when rendering fast eg ,markers but has great potential. Ideally I get the HD Logitech £50 webcam with 3000pixels resolution and 30fps video. Ideally I can get a bluetooth camera for using in the workshop as well. Pupils could take the camera to their desk as well to interact/show.

Here is a link to Tom Barrets 13 ways to use a visualiser

Here is a link to a free website that shows the image and you can snapshot, capture video and right over the image. It can be made to go fullscreen in IE.