CRITIQUES!

SHADOWING DAY

Let me first begin by making a clarification regarding the absence of Kierra and Stephen. We were told they both had health related issues with a parent or their own. Whatever the case may be, they were both very qualified. Kierra is a student from Ms. Eck's second period class, where we had taught a few times. We had chosen her because she had shown a real interest in college. On the second day, she had REALLY grilled us about college, and particularly UCLA. She asked about everything, from the applying process, majors, design, to financial aid, and how she can get it. Ms. Eck, later told us, that she had never shown an interest in college before and hadnt seemed as focused. Stephen has been a consistently good student, and always always focused and alert. We had specifically chosen him because he is very interested in animation. This was reflected in the storyboard assignment, and lots of other drawings and sketches he keeps in his binder/notebook. He has the most pleasant and happy disposition! I really cant imagine there being a mean bone in his body. Ms. Eck, told us, he's a boy who is happy doing his own thing and not interested in getting caught up in the politics of the social scheme at school. He definitely has a lot of potential. Both do.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE BLOGGING OF THE SHADOWING DAY...

ITS...TO BE CONTINUED...!

SETTING UP the shadowing day

On tuesday, Leon and I had the opportunity to have two of our students shadow us for a full day. When setting it up, I definitely did not realize the various speed bumps we'd have to go over, to finally make it happen. Getting this together was a whole new learning experience. Initially I thought that a simple parental approval via their permission slip, and transportation provided by Leon and myself would suffice. But ofcourse, there was more to it! We discovered from Amy that we probably cant drive the kids ourselves because of liability issues, and this was confirmed by Ms. Lockheart, the Assistant Principal at Muir Middle School. There had to be either a credentialed teacher with us in the car or a parent. Luckily with the two kids we had chosen, they were able to call their parents during class on the same day we had chosen them, to ask if their moms could accompany us on this field trip. Both mothers agreed easily. Stephen's mom though, needed to be back by 3pm, as she needed to cook and clean, and couldnt afford to give up a whole day. Ideally we wanted have the group till 3 at ucla. When we found that a credentialed teacher is available to come with us, we then had an option of either taking the parents or the teacher. But later, we learned that we're not suppose to be driving at all, because somehow the school can be held accountable and insurance issues. Both mothers of our students did not own cars, and also could not drive back and forth the distance. This is when it was decided that the teacher would drive the students to UCLA and stay with us through out the the day. I think it was was one or two days before the shadowing date, that Ms. Eck, found out that SHE could actually be the teacher to drive and accompany the students!

So you'd think, the end, Ms. Muskan and Mr. Hong, had a wonderful shadowing day with their two hand picked students, Stephen and Kierra.

True, we did have a good shadowing day but not with those two students! at 9am on tuesday morning (the day of the shadowing), Etsu informs us that Ms. Eck called and says that both of those kids did not show up to school that day, and were not reachable! But somehow, she managed to move so quickly, and got two other good students from our class to come (with signed parent permission slips too).

Did I mention that all the prep for this event took 4 days to get ready? thanks to all the efficiency of emailing and information finding/delivering by both Ms. Eck and Amy, everything moved along quickly, despite all the details and paperwork that had to be sorted.

For your viewing pleasure...

The girl on the left most side of this image, is Karla. She is an excellent student, and someone who I think has really shown interest in design and the software. She is one of the only students who had a bit of previous knowledge about Adobe Photoshop. She has an extremely calm demeanor and seems more focused. She was definitely a candidate to come shadow us at UCLA. We had a difficult choice of who should finally go.





Karla showing me her cover on the mac book....









Leon checking/advising Chris regarding his cover...









"Mr. Hong and Ms. Muskan"...(still sounds strange!)

For this lesson we planned to teach the kids how to design their covers in Keynote. We started the class in the computer lab, and gave each student a packet that we had made explaining how to use Keynote. Teaching in the lab always seems a bit easier, partly because all the kids are facing in our direction, and they really enjoy using their macbooks. In this setting, I think its really good that both Leon and I are teaching together. This way we are able to both go around and help each student personally when they have questions or are having problems regarding how to use the software. We taught them how to manipulate their text, work with shapes, mask images, change color and shadows, and more. After giving them the basic fundamental tools for this program, I think they were able to navigate through the program pretty easily. They created some good effects with their text that does reflect their comic book story. But today was just an introduction, and next week we hope to make much more progress with the content of their cover and methods of designing it.

One challenge with working in the lab, is that students are tempted to open other programs on the laptops. Many students had Comic Life open, so we did have to go around and take a quick look at random times to make sure all the students were on task. I also wonder how effective we are being, and if they are really internalizing the design concepts we are trying to teach. When I try to think back to when I was their age, I don’t remember retaining many of the concepts from my art classes. I do wish we had our adobe programs available for the students. It is something we are still trying get…

This school really does have a lot of great facilities and resources, technologically speaking, because of resourceful teachers like Ms. Eck. I always see her trying to find how she can get more grants for her program, and looking for conferences and workshops where she can learn the current software and technology. This kind of enthusiasm and attitude from the teachers, I think will serve to be more beneficial for the students

Ms. Eck informed us last week that she wouldn’t be in class today, and had a guest teacher scheduled, but we still decided to come since we felt we needed as much time with kids as we could get. So I don’t know if this is possible…but I do believe the number of students in the class has increased! I’m saying this because there weren’t enough seats all of a sudden, and one lucky girl got to use the teacher’s chair. I’d like to think that they all like us so much, that kids are ditching their other classes to join our Thursday design lessons. I can always dream that right? Anyway, today we passed out hand outs that showed and explained the various elements they must include on their comic book covers. Our focus with the students is to teach them how to design their covers, while they use ComicLife to make the rest of their comic book. This class was meant for them to do a lot of in class work on their covers. We gave them a time limit, and immediately collected their work when their time was up. There were some students who had difficulty with specifically what to draw, while some finished rather quickly. We ended this portion with 15 minutes left. In this time we asked one student to randomly pick a cover from the pile, and then point out to the rest of the class, if that particular cover fulfilled all the requirements we gave, and if not what was missing from it. We also asked what they noticed about the typography and images on the cover, and if they could guess what the comic book was going to be about. The rest of the class also joined in on the critiquing, and gave their comments and suggestions about that cover. We repeated this process with about 4 more covers.

We collected their storyboards again, and this time, the students were much farther along, and had done a significant amount of work on them. A lot of these kids are very talented with their concepts and drawing abilities. Its interesting to see how the contemporary cartoons and comic books of today, influence their drawing styles and story lines. I think the class was pretty successful, and was happy and surprised to see the students not shying away from critiquing eachother’s work, and in the end volunteering their covers to be critiqued by the class!