MORE ICT at my placement SCHOOL

A minor note:
Well, as it turns out you don't really need to have blinds to see the projected screen, it sure helps on a sunny day but you can make do, we have a board in the artroom leaning up over the window which blocks out a bit of light so that does help. Worst case scenario you could just bluetak up some white paper over the windows closest to the screen, this would still let light in but provide some shelter for better projection clarity.

IT in the class room - Year 10 Visual Communications
The kids in this class are 50 percent on task, 50 percent off task. The set project mimcs the year 11 Vis Comm project in that it follows the design process and is very student directed. The students have longer on the tasks than the year 11's would and at the stge they are up to (Research/Idea Generation) there is less technical drawing. The task is to design a magazine cover design for the school magazine and they must use a variety of materials to work their ideas up.
In most of my observations more than half will get out computers and work on photoshop to do this. They work from ideas out of their head and have no thumbnail sketches or prep drawings as reference, which i personally think is best practice because it holds focus when using computer design tools and makes it easier to reach a set goal. I can see the value of experimentation of course, but from my experience at high school years ago, i remeber how easy it is to just get lost when computer aided desiging without thought to the idea first.
The students work at varying levels and without much instruction as to photoshop tools. I have observed peer teaching and students finding tutorials on the web. I go around in my observations and help where asked, one student was having trouble with a selection tool not working. I had a look at his screen and noticed the file size was 12.7GB (a bit big for a plain photoshop file) opening the image size window revelled it was 10 meters x 10 meters big!!! So i showed him through dpi and file size etc. The selection tool worked much better after that.

The teacher of the class noticed that the students did need some instructionn in this area and the next class gave them a bit of a tutorial on creating a file, layers, selection and basic text uses. They were given a handout for reference with screen shots on it. I think this was a good starting point. I wonder though if this is enough? Some of these kids obviously want to create amazing effects and are finding online tutorials to this effect but are struggling a bit through it. In this class where it is quite open and student directed i think there is a difficulty in juggling each students requirements. On questioning the teacher about the unit design for this class, he said, it is worth doing it this way rather than a more prescriptive unit where each lesson is more ctructured as by the time they get to year 11 they are totally up to speed on the design process and how to navigate it. I remarked that also it may serve a purpose in sorting out the stronger students from the weaker ones in terms of the self direction needed for VCE Vis Comm.

Possibilities for ICT at my placement school.

I am currently teaching Year 8 Visual Communications, Year 9 Art and Year 12 Art - Focusing on the contemporary issues writing outcome.

The Year 9 class and the Year 12 class are in the same room which is a stand alone room which is quite large and is fitted with an interactive whiteboard (Smart board). When given a tour of the school with my mentor i asked him if he ever uses it and he replied, not really just to project on sometimes.

I recently gave the Year 9 Class a lesson on colour theory for paint mixing which is part of a unit on Impressionist style landscape painting. After giving the class, which was a wild ride of varied levels of paint staying in the correct areas (some on paper others on students and uniforms), I reflected and thought how the whole exercise could have been explained to better effect through the use of a prepared powerpoint - or better yet an actual interactive diagram for use on the smarboard - of the colour wheel showing the primary, secondary and tertiary colours and their effects before the students went to paint wily nily on their works.

After finishing the class I had to stay back to clean brushes and the sink (need to factor in more time for students to clean up next time!) this did give me some reflective time alone in the room however and it struck me that while the interactive white board had been installed in this room, no provision had been made to make it a usable facility. The room, which has windows spanning the length of the room on two sides, has no blinds fitted to allow better visability for projections. It lead me to think that the opportunity for this technology to really work was being overlooked and I wondered if ICT in this case is seen within the school as something that was installed but never really used and hence seen as not useful?

I will investigate further......