Monday, January 25, 2010
BP11_2010013_Comment on Robyn Rhyne's Post
Here is the Link to the comment made on Robin's post:
http://robynrhyneetcblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp82010012reflective-media-asset1.html
The following is a painting from my neice Shannon. She paints an amazingly impressive T-Rex for her age. Although I don't think she meant to paint a T-Rex.
http://robynrhyneetcblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp82010012reflective-media-asset1.html
The following is a painting from my neice Shannon. She paints an amazingly impressive T-Rex for her age. Although I don't think she meant to paint a T-Rex.
BP10_2010013_Comment on Jordan Culver's Page
Here is my link to my comment on Jordan Culver's page:
http://jnculver.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp82010012reflective-media-asset_18.html
http://jnculver.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp82010012reflective-media-asset_18.html
BP9_2010013_Web2.0T3_ImageSpark
The latest and greatest choice for web 2.0 that I can use in the classroom and I can also use myself is IMAGE SPARK ( http://www.imgspark.com ). Here you can discover, share, tag and converge images that inspire you and your work. Basically, think of it this way, it's social bookmarking, but instead of links, it revolves around images.
From an artist's standpoint, this is pretty important. There's the kind of artist that simply appreciates. There's also the artist that wants to celebrate. Then, there's the artist that wants to imitate. Personally, while I do have my own style, I am definitely self-admittedly derivative.
To be derivative doesn't mean you're unoriginal. That all depends on how your own artwork is concieved, how much original additional thought goes into this conception, and then of course, the final product.
If I wanted to redesign or simply decorate my living room for example, Imagespark is a good place to start to find ideas. It's also a place where I can keep images that I find that give me good ideas and new directions to go in. There are even browser plug-ins available off the site that allow the user to simply right-click and add images to your account.
Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about:
I want to decorate my living room...
Now, I want to suggest cool ideas for my students to use when they design their dream house in Google Sketchup:
How about when I bid for a freelance web design job and I have artist's block, I search for 'web design' and come up with this:
From an artist's standpoint, this is pretty important. There's the kind of artist that simply appreciates. There's also the artist that wants to celebrate. Then, there's the artist that wants to imitate. Personally, while I do have my own style, I am definitely self-admittedly derivative.
To be derivative doesn't mean you're unoriginal. That all depends on how your own artwork is concieved, how much original additional thought goes into this conception, and then of course, the final product.
If I wanted to redesign or simply decorate my living room for example, Imagespark is a good place to start to find ideas. It's also a place where I can keep images that I find that give me good ideas and new directions to go in. There are even browser plug-ins available off the site that allow the user to simply right-click and add images to your account.
Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about:
I want to decorate my living room...
Now, I want to suggest cool ideas for my students to use when they design their dream house in Google Sketchup:
How about when I bid for a freelance web design job and I have artist's block, I search for 'web design' and come up with this:
Monday, January 18, 2010
BP7_2010012_CommentLink2
Here is the link to the comment I made on Isabel's page:
http://sevenfireflies4edu.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp32010011web20-t1-wix.html
BP6_2010012_CommentLink1
Here is my link to the comment that I put on Ursula's page.
http://ursulajones.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp32010011web-20-t1-businesscard2com.html
BP5_2010012_Web2.0_T2_Innovid
My first web 2.0 tool that I blogged about was Aniboom. the reason why it was special to me and my classroom is because it was a practical, real-world reason that I can offer students for why the subject I'm teaching them is important. It's not just about creating graphics and animations for ME. With Aniboom, they actually have a wider audience, namely the rest of the world. It also offers ways for students to fastrack a career in the digital arts. So, in keeping with real-world applications, I'm going to blog about INNOVID.COM.
You can check out their site which has a demo right on the home page:
http://www.innovid.com
INNOVID.COM integrates and superimposes ads and games with your uploaded videos in a variety of new and interactive ways. These interactivities can inspire students for one. They can come up with unique ideas just to go along with the different superimpositions, like 'pong' or widget-type links for live news. Another thing that Innovid offers is ways to integrate textual information, citations, and hotspots into their videos. They can use Innovid with their other classes too as far as projects go.
Finally, an important motivator for creating new videos and animations is monetization. Innovid offers ways to insert ads into your assets. Ads mean traffic and traffic means money. Making money off of your creativity is the ultimate reason for why a class that creates graphics and animations would be important to my students...or anyone paying attention.
You can check out their site which has a demo right on the home page:
http://www.innovid.com
INNOVID.COM integrates and superimposes ads and games with your uploaded videos in a variety of new and interactive ways. These interactivities can inspire students for one. They can come up with unique ideas just to go along with the different superimpositions, like 'pong' or widget-type links for live news. Another thing that Innovid offers is ways to integrate textual information, citations, and hotspots into their videos. They can use Innovid with their other classes too as far as projects go.
Finally, an important motivator for creating new videos and animations is monetization. Innovid offers ways to insert ads into your assets. Ads mean traffic and traffic means money. Making money off of your creativity is the ultimate reason for why a class that creates graphics and animations would be important to my students...or anyone paying attention.
Monday, January 11, 2010
BP4_2010011_RSSFeeds
I've been experimenting with RSS i suppose for a year now. my website www.rippedandtwisted.com has a specific RSS subscription page on it. I spent a long time with the graphics and making it work, but I find that at this point noone I've talked to really knows what RSS is. Plus, being animations, the 'aggregator' would only be iTunes, which I don't have a problem with. It is the most appropriate 'aggregator', but since we're dealing with just text and links, google reader is much simpler. Plus, you can view all the feeds within our iGoogle PLE.
anyway, so with google reader i subscribed to CNN, HowStuffWorks, Wired Top Stories, theOnion, and Esquire.
I figured I can get basic top stories from around the world on CNN. HowStuffWorks.com is an awesome website that is constantly being added to. And, it's surprising how easy it is to get a general idea of how an atom smasher works between checking your email or facebook. Wired will help keep me in the loop of the latest tech trends. That way I can talk about these new advances in technology in class and appear like I'm super-savvy. The Onion is hilarious and I'll watch anything they put out. Finally, Esquire is basically my favorite magazine. It's intelligent and very balanced. I figure if I am going to get into this RSS thing, then I may as well make it as much like recreation as possible and not so much work.
...i just thought of another one I need to add...ted.com has RSS. and here's a link you should check out if you haven't already:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
anyway, so with google reader i subscribed to CNN, HowStuffWorks, Wired Top Stories, theOnion, and Esquire.
I figured I can get basic top stories from around the world on CNN. HowStuffWorks.com is an awesome website that is constantly being added to. And, it's surprising how easy it is to get a general idea of how an atom smasher works between checking your email or facebook. Wired will help keep me in the loop of the latest tech trends. That way I can talk about these new advances in technology in class and appear like I'm super-savvy. The Onion is hilarious and I'll watch anything they put out. Finally, Esquire is basically my favorite magazine. It's intelligent and very balanced. I figure if I am going to get into this RSS thing, then I may as well make it as much like recreation as possible and not so much work.
...i just thought of another one I need to add...ted.com has RSS. and here's a link you should check out if you haven't already:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
BP3_2010111_Web2.0T1-Aniboom
Last year, I was made aware of an online competition headed by FOX called "The FOX-Aniboom Holiday Animation Challenge". At the time I thought that as a working animator, I wouldn't be worth my salt if I didn't submit something. Submissions needed to be holiday related and edgy. At that time, I was also asked to do a cartoon for a public speaker friend of mine, who just won the latest National Memory Championship, promoting his memory business. What he wanted was something that capitalized on the media's hyping of President Obama's need to look at teleprompters during speeches. This is what I came up with...
I didn't end up getting paid that much for it and I completed it in lieu of any kind of competition. Up until now, I had thought that this was a long, lost opportunity. Back then, I thought Aniboom was simply FOX's website specifically for this one competition. I was so wrong.
Upon a second look, Aniboom is a website where an animator can create a profile and upload their work and share with other animators or just other online spectators. Even if you weren't an animator, one could spend all day there watching what people came up with.
In the classroom, this is important because not only can I introduce a new venue for students to enter their work, but Aniboom proves to be a real world example of why my class and their work in my class is important. As with blogging, this type of sharing gives the students an alternative audience and therefore goives them more ownership over what they come up with. It also proves to be a free-for-all arena as well for animation. They do not have to stay within the bounds of what I ask of them if they want to be a success.
The front page lists links to create a profile to upload your work. It also has a link for success stories, which are basically testimonials to how and why my class is relevant and transferable to the real world. It has a link on how to discover opportunities to fast track a career, and of course, it has a link to just go and browse through the submissions.
Aniboom is a vast field of opportunities. I don't stress out about missed competitions now, because there are others right around the corner. This is a world wide animation film festival that I plan on letting my serious students know about immediately. In fact, I'm going to upload a holiday e-card of my own...maybe they'll have another competition around the easter season. This kind of thing hopefully will be me leading my students by example.
http://www.aniboom.com/animation-video/420259/EasterEmpire/
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
BP2_201017_Educational Uses for Blogs
Huann, John, and Yuen (2005) maintains that blogging in the educational arena can be used to connect classmates with each other, classes with other classes, student with their teachers, teachers with experts, teachers with other teachers, and all combinations of all involved with this collaborative process. This rings very true with me actually right now, since i am very rusty with making proper citations. I checked out several of my classmates' blogs before beginning this one specifically to see how they presented and cited their information. Thanks, friends!!
One use for blogs that directly relates to the subject I teach, animation, is showcasing works. This is something that I am currently trying to make happen in my school district. However, "video and music sharing raises some quite complex issues for teachers-particularly those related to unregulated and copyrighted content" (Davies & Merchant, 2009, p. 105). In my case, the district has one operating system image and policy for all computers in the district. This policy does not allow students or teachers to be able to view most web formats for video to even be seen in a browser window, effectively negating the whole idea or a showcasing tool. This distresses me since I am trying to actually put into practice what I am learning here at Full Sail. So far, my requests for change have been ignored.
The main reason this is important is that blogging of this sort gives the students incentives, with the speedy feedback, the option to use multiple forms of media, be it text, images, and video, and the ability to link posts with each other. When the students know that they will have an audience besides just the teacher, they often produce higher quality work (Holzberg, 2003). To me, this is common sense. So, thus far, I grade while showcasing student work on the projector. However, this only shares work within each class, and the only feedback comes from my own comments and audible student reactions to the work. I've been doing this ever since I began teaching the subject.
It will take more convincing and following up on my part to really fully utilize all the benefits of blogging. However, until myself and the students are allowed to upload and view each other's videos, I can utilize text blogs in the classroom to post assignments and get student feedback as far as what they want and need to be successful in my classroom while having fun, which is really what my class is for.
References:
Holzberg, C. (2003, Aug. 1). Education Web Logs. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2010, from http://www.techlearning.com: http://www.techlearning.com/article/1234
Huann, T. Y., John, G. E., & Pau Yuen, J. M. (2005, Sep. 26). Weblogs in Education. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2010, from http://edublog.net: http://www.edublog.net/files/papers/weblogs%20in%20education.pdf
Merchant, G., & Davies, J. (2009). Web 2.0 for Schools: Learning and Social Participation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
One use for blogs that directly relates to the subject I teach, animation, is showcasing works. This is something that I am currently trying to make happen in my school district. However, "video and music sharing raises some quite complex issues for teachers-particularly those related to unregulated and copyrighted content" (Davies & Merchant, 2009, p. 105). In my case, the district has one operating system image and policy for all computers in the district. This policy does not allow students or teachers to be able to view most web formats for video to even be seen in a browser window, effectively negating the whole idea or a showcasing tool. This distresses me since I am trying to actually put into practice what I am learning here at Full Sail. So far, my requests for change have been ignored.
The main reason this is important is that blogging of this sort gives the students incentives, with the speedy feedback, the option to use multiple forms of media, be it text, images, and video, and the ability to link posts with each other. When the students know that they will have an audience besides just the teacher, they often produce higher quality work (Holzberg, 2003). To me, this is common sense. So, thus far, I grade while showcasing student work on the projector. However, this only shares work within each class, and the only feedback comes from my own comments and audible student reactions to the work. I've been doing this ever since I began teaching the subject.
It will take more convincing and following up on my part to really fully utilize all the benefits of blogging. However, until myself and the students are allowed to upload and view each other's videos, I can utilize text blogs in the classroom to post assignments and get student feedback as far as what they want and need to be successful in my classroom while having fun, which is really what my class is for.
References:
Holzberg, C. (2003, Aug. 1). Education Web Logs. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2010, from http://www.techlearning.com: http://www.techlearning.com/article/1234
Huann, T. Y., John, G. E., & Pau Yuen, J. M. (2005, Sep. 26). Weblogs in Education. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2010, from http://edublog.net: http://www.edublog.net/files/papers/weblogs%20in%20education.pdf
Merchant, G., & Davies, J. (2009). Web 2.0 for Schools: Learning and Social Participation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
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