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!

In today’s class we began with a keynote presentation showing examples of various cover designs from comic books, book covers, and movie posters, to give the students an idea of different approaches and techniques that have been used to make covers. We used these examples to talk to them about how and why certain layouts were used, and opened a discussion about what they noticed regarding the typography, iconic/graphic/photographic images, and color choices they saw in these covers. We asked them what messages they were receiving upon viewing these covers. The students generally did have comments to make about what they were seeing, but there were points where we had to help them along by asking them questions about the images. I think something that we found difficult was making sure that all the students were quiet and paying attention. The class size is about 30 kids, and even when there are two of us (leon and myself), there are still some students who aren’t paying attention and are instead talking with their classmates at their table. Commanding the classroom is still something we are figuring out at times. But we did go to those specific tables and start asking them questions, and attempted to figure out the kind of cover designs they’d be interested in. Hopefully as the classes progress, we’ll have a better understanding of how to keep the students interest and full attention.

Since the students will be taking photographs for the comic books, we gave a short lesson on techniques of using their digital cameras (there is a class set of 1megapixel cameras!). Unfortunately we had 15-20 minutes left of class, so we tried to move quickly. We had one of the students volunteer and come in front of the class to do a sample shot, and show them how they could use the camera and computer programs to convey their story through their photo. This particular girl was making a comic book about her friend Tiffany who is also in the same class. This did cause lots of giggling, but they did get an idea of how they can think about taking their pictures and the different effects and type they can apply using computer programs.

Today the students were supposed to have had half of their storyboards for their comic books completed. We did collect them, but later discovered that not everyone had turned them in, and also that a lot of them had barely started. So after class Leon and I sat down and wrote comments on every storyboard. Hopefully this will prove to be helpful, and they’ll take the assignment seriously and fully complete it by next week.

With each class I think we’re realizing that 50 minutes is a ridiculously short period of time to teach design! Maybe our 3 hour design class in ucla aren’t so bad afterall…Okay no, perhaps a 2 hour class would be better for this grade of students. I don’t think I felt as satisfied as I wanted to at the end of today’s class. But our after class discussions with Ms. Eck, are a big help, as we review how that class went and plan for the next week. She is extremely attentive and helpful!

Muir: Day 2

In our first period class with Ms.Eck today, we met the students in their computer lab. Our plan was to introduce the fundamentals of using a Mac, and how to use the program Comic life, which they would be using to create comic books. We were very pleasantly surprised at seeing a 30+ set of mac books available for use (which came with isight too!)! Ms. Eck, had told us earlier about it, but nonetheless, it was a little startling and a reminder that most middle schools now have much better technological facilities. Everything I see at Muir, I find that I unconsciously begin to compare and relate to my experiences of when I was a middle school student in a different area and time. Previously when I had the opportunity to visit with the other teachers they were describing the various facilities they have at hand, but just don’t know how to use them. Ms. Eck also said that most of these students still need to learn the basics of navigating around the computer, even though the school has what I think, such an impressive collection of Macs. Perhaps I cannot say this in full authority as I have not been to the school too many times still, but I feel that it’s not so much the lack of facilities that’s an issue, but a lack of education in how to use them in regards to both the students and the teachers.

The kids, however were thrilled about getting to use the Mac books today. Once they were all situated and ready with their Mac books on, we began by asking them basic questions to test their knowledge of the computer. When we asked if they knew what a desktop, folder, and file were, many students answered in a very cocky tone that ofcourse they knew. But when asked if they could explain what it was, the room was silent. Now we were able to open a line of discussion with them. After some thought, the kids started making comments and guesses. The most clever response I heard was from a boy who said that the folder in a computer is like a locker or safe. The lesson ran very smoothly and the class as a whole was very cooperative and interested in the lesson. Something which they really enjoyed was learning about the short cut keys, instead of just using their mouse to click on commands in the menu. In the Comic life program, you can drag images into a template of your choice. Because the macbooks had isight, students were able to capture images of them selves to insert onto their comic layouts as a test. One problem we faced was that the isight feature soon became a distraction for many students, and they kept taking many pictures before they were instructed to do so. Something else that we also need to keep in mind for our next class is to end the class earlier, so we can ensure that all the macbooks have been properly shut down. Many students had just closed their computers, instead of going through the procedure that we instructed. We also need to consider time for putting all the macbooks back on their carts before the next class enters. The class periods are too short!

In the second period class the students were starting on a poster design for a contest which had the theme “Raise your voice, remembering our ancestors, empowering our community.” Here, we were teaching various elements of design and composition, and getting them to think and brainstorm about symbols and images that come to mind when they hear this theme. This was a very interactive class. Most of the students were very participative and involved in the discussion. I don’t remember exactly how the topic of college came up, but one girl had an array of questions of what do we learn in college, how can she apply, what does she need to do, who does she need to talk to, wanted to affirm stories she had heard about having to speak to the dean of a college as a way getting accepted, how to get loans, and financial help to go to college. These were just a few of the questions she had. While some students seemed to sit their blankly (this may have been because the students range from 6^th - 8^th grade), others who usually were a little disruptive became interested too. After class, Ms. Eck told us how surprised she was to see this particular girl grilling us about college in such a serious manner, as she had never shown any interest in the past, and wasn’t her best student.