The CLC Blog

Web Design & Media Studies

Simon — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:00:23 +0000

Working with Year 13 students from Dartmouth High School to produce a web-site for their A2 Media Studies coursework.

The PowerPoint presenation that I gave in the morning is available here:

Hope its useful to you as you write up your projects.

Storyboarding Literacy

Steve — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 14:18:27 +0000

Writing stories can be difficult and getting the pace and descriptions is a common difficulty. Students from George Salter High School used the storyboarding software Kar2ouche to create a storyboard about an attack by a creature. The students had been reading Jaws and looked at how to the book and the film built up the tension, some cases leading to a false alarm and others leading to a real attack.

The students had to create a storyboard to set the scene, then build up the tension to a false alarm and then build up the tension to a real attack. The students had seen the following storyboard and finished story as stimulus. They then created their own storyboard and then used it to help create a piece of original writing.

Storyboard Example in Kar2ouche

Story based on the Storyboard

Animated Alexandra

Steve — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:04:34 +0000

Students from Alexandra took part in a stop-frame animation project. They had to plan, script and storyboard their story and build their sets. At the CLC they then had to make their models and begin the painstaking process of animation using iStopMotion. Once they had their animations recorded they then used Garageband to record their sound track.

Click on the link below to see an example.

bugsbunny.mp4

Art Inspires Music Inspires Art

Steve — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 14:40:27 +0000

Working with Alexandra High School we have been creating some pieces of music in GarageBand which are inspired by their Klimpt style patterns. Once this is done the then the music produced is swapped between students and now new artwork is created using Photoshop which is now being inspired by the freshly created music and other students work.

Web 2.0 - What’s that then?

Steve — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 15:45:52 +0000

You may have heard the term Web 2.0 and wondered what on Earth it is. Well Web 2.0 is all about the shift from being a read only consumer driven web to one where we can contribute and publish as well as consume. Web 2.0 is not just one thing. Its not something you install on your computer, nor will it actually make the Internet work quicker. What Web 2.0 is though is a series of websites which allow you to easily publish to the Internet everything from text to images to sounds and even video. We can now be creators of content and share our work with people around the world. These technologies can often be quite social, enabling us not only to publish work but to get feedback from other people who have experienced our work.Well where are these technologies and how do I use them and importantly how much are they going to cost me? To start at the last part of the question, most of these are free. Where there is a cost it is usually quite cheap for the amateur.

OK lets get started.

Blogs

Blogs (weblogs) are online journals that people post to. Each person has there own blog and often they have a topic or theme that they write about. There are blogs from people who work in Educational technology to Iraqi’s talking about life from their view as opposed to that of the West, to everyday people talking about their life and interests such as food . There are a number of sites out there which can enable you to quickly set up a blog from free. Google’s own Blogger will enable you to get up and running quickly. There are some others such as TypePad which may have more features but for a fee.

When you set up a blog you can simply post new articles and publish them. Most blog sites allow readers to leave comments. These can be moderated by the owner of the blog. These comments do enable you to get a feel for how your writing is received and in the case of Fan Fiction is very important to the blogger. Fan Fiction is a blog that enables you to write fiction in the fiction worlds of other people’s novels and movies. So after reading a good book and wondering what happens next to the characters, people write their own stories and through comments and reviews can edit their work to improve their storytelling.

Some blog sites enable you to post from mobile phones. In this way bloggers can post images and text on the move and often get news items published on the net before the professionals do because they are right there in the thick of it blogging from the event.

[EDITED: Steve, could you at least mention the Blogging engine that drives our blog! After researching all the different Open Source CMS, I decided that WordPress would actually do all that we wanted and way more. The difference in using a system like WordPress is that because it is developed by a community for the use of the community, additional features are constantly being added, by way of modules or widgets.]

Wiki’s

Wiki’s are websites that can be created collaboratively. An example is the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That means that anyone can edit articles or indeed add new ones. At first this may sound insane. How can you rely on something that anyone can edit. Well it works because it has such a large user base that will quickly correct any inaccuracies and fix any vandalism. Every edit that is made is stored, so if a page is vandalised it can quickly be restored to a previous save version. Wiki’s are often used to create collaborative documentation, where the workload is shared out and all can contribute to the work at the same time. Wiki’s can be public or private. A quick way to set up a wiki is to use PBwiki. By enabling collaboration on documents in this way it enables work to be produced faster that if left to a few editors and contributors. FreewareWiki is a good example of what can be done. Someone has created a list of free software and reviews and tips. As the team find new pieces of software it is easy for anyone of them to add it to their site.

Photo Galleries

A good example of an online photo gallery is Flickr. Flickr allows you to upload your pictures either as a private gallery for friends and family or to publish your work for the world. The power of this is again in the comments people leave behind. If you are an amateur photographer, getting feedback from others of similar mind can be very important in developing their skills as a photographer.

Other Notables

There are Web 2.0 tools out there. del.ici.ous is a website book marking site. You can bookmark websites, give the links a keywords (Tags) that mean something to you. You can get to your bookmarks on any computer and also using the tags see other websites that cover the same interests. So if you bookmark a really good web site on cooking and use that keyword as a tag. Then other people who have used that tag in their bookmarks can be linked to each other so you get a whole load more bookmarks of cooking sites available to you. Because people have took the time to bookmark these you can bet that they are going to be more noteworthy that the usual stream of search engine results.

Writely is an online word processor. I am actually writing this using the tool. I can save my work online but also save it to my computer as a Word document, an Open Office document or a PDF. You can create documents collaboratively and also use it to post to your blog. As it has better editing features that the usual blogging tools this is a good idea.

Anyway I hope this has given you some places to get started. Remember that you all have something to contribute and that using these tools its easy to get your thoughts and work published for the world. What are you waiting for. Stop reading me and get on with it.

Space Camp 2006 - Reviews

Simon — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:06:41 +0000

At the end of Space Camp, everyone created an evaluation or review of what they did, enjoyed and learned over the course of the week. This is Sarah’s audio contribution and Ashley’s flash contribution.

In view of the range of software skills and experience that people already had, and had gained over the course of the week, I left the choice of delivery method up to them. Typically, most people went for the PowerPoint option and produced slides reporting each day’s activities.

Some ‘finished’ their presentation, so I encouraged them to present similar information in a different format using Matchware’s OpenMind software, to create a mindmap, making use of its interactive, multimedia elements.

Two people chose to do something different, so these are now available for you to check out. Sarah King chose to repeat her podcasting skills to create an enhanced audio podcast. Ashley Southall demonstrated some of his Flash skills to produce a different kind of presentation.

Have a listen and let Sarah know what you thought of her approach to sef-evaluation.

Space Camp 2006 - Saturn Video Podcast

Simon — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:18:28 +0000

This is a video podcast on Saturn from Space Camp 2006. It was created by Sam, from Wood Green High School, College of Sport.

More…Space Camp was one of our summer activity programmes this year and featured 18 students from year 7 to year 10, representing 3 of our network schools, including the host school.

Amongst the activities we undertook, we made mission patches and rockets; we also learned to control robots and podcasting. One of the days was spent at the National Space Centre, Leicester, where we took part in one of the Challenger Missions - Mission to Mars.

All the young people thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and contributed a great deal to the success of the week. Search for ‘Space Camp’ on the blog and read some of the comments they wrote.

Space Camp 2006 - Neptune Video Podcast

Simon — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:05:07 +0000

This is a video podcast on Neptune from Space Camp 2006. It was created by Lucy & Raveena, from Wood Green High School, College of Sport.

Space Camp was one of our summer activity programmes this year and featured 18 students from year 7 to year 10, representing 3 of our network schools, including the host school.

All the young people thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and contributed a great deal to the success of the week. Search for ‘Space Camp’ on the blog and read some of the comments they wrote.

Space Camp 2006 - Mars Video Podcast

Simon — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 10:27:19 +0000

This is a video podcast on Mars from Space Camp 2006. It was created by Liam & Matt from Wood Green High School, College of Sport.

Space Camp was one of our summer activity programmes this year and featured 18 students from year 7 to year 10, representing 3 of our network schools, including the host school.

All the young people thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and contributed a great deal to the success of the week. Search for ‘Space Camp’ on the blog and read some of the comments they wrote.

Space Camp 2006 - Jupiter Video Podcast

Simon — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 12:00:52 +0000

This is a video podcast on Jupiter from Space Camp 2006. It was created by Tom and Karl, from Wood Green High School, College of Sport.

Space Camp was one of our summer activity programmes this year and featured 18 students from year 7 to year 10, representing 3 of our network schools, including the host school.

All the young people thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and contributed a great deal to the success of the week. Search for ‘Space Camp’ on the blog and read some of the comments they wrote.