The Teacher Toolbox

Over the last couple of months I’ve been given a chance to tinker with the private beta of the video game making software Atmosphir. Wow! This software is so powerful and so easy! Check out the video to get an idea of what it can do and sign up to wait for the beta to go public on the Atmosphir Waiting List.

I introduced the software to a group of kids a while back and they were very impressed. In fact the woman who hired me thanked me for getting her ‘a few brownie points’ with her own kids because they loved it so much.

My brother Damien died when I was eight. He died on his forth birthday and today is his anniversary. Ever since then, whenever I find myself lamenting getting older or am going through a bit of a rough patch, I just think that every day I get is one more than he did.

How lucky are we to be  alive on this amazing planet! What are you doing with the time you’ve been granted? What are you doing to make sure you leave the ‘campsite’  just a little bit better than when you came?

I once heard an interview with the Kiwi songwriter Neil Finn where he talked about how a ‘mistake’ can lead to a whole new song. As I tinker with new software I often find, when something is not quiet going the way I plan, I end up exploring a whole new tangent and produce something completely unexpected. I’m not saying that these tangets are worthwhile, but they are often ideas that would never have been produced without the initial mistake.

Recently my son and I have been experimenting with a plugin for the Steam games Half Life 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 called Garry’s Mod. The mod allows you to manipulate your objects and characters to create scenes independent of the gameplay. It is what the Machinima community use to make Half Life 2 movies like Civil Protection.

Initialy I found it really hard to pose this character in a chair and that sparked the idea for this single panel cartoon.

So where do we encourage our students to make mistakes and then to value them?

It’s school holidays here in Oz so I knocked up this puzzle for my son to test out. The problem works well and it is sufficiently challenging. Have fun solving this puzzle.

Happy Holiday Season to all.

From the realm of  ‘use it or lose it’ here is a collection of free problem solving apps for the Itouch. My family and I get a fair amount of use and enjoyment out of them. They are free from the Itunes App Store. Enjoy!!!

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CatchaMouse – Toobz-Free – LogPuzzle Free – TanZen Lite – ZentominoLE – Ragdoll Lite – Cross Free – Fifteen – Peg Quest – Magnetic Lite – CrackCode – PegJump – BrainTeaser – Hedge Maze – Dynamite Lite – and the one I shelled out $1.19 for… Nintaii.

Love, Death, Rhetoric & Half Life – A Blog Post in Two Parts.

1. Why do it?

- …because we can and because it is very, very EASY!
- Exposing students to ‘real’ 3d animation is cost prohibitive and rather complex. This is cheap and readily available.
- So much of schooling is ‘about’ stuff. Kids are required to write about, ‘the explorers’, about ‘the planets’ & about ‘what they did in the holidays’. Where do we encourage them to create new stuff? Where do we encourage them to produce stuff that has never been produced before?
- In my experience, ‘I can’t draw’ gets in the way of adults and children cartooning so this form of digital story telling eliminates the excuse.

2. To Foster Creativity

- How might you adapt it to make your own creative product?
- What might this sort of experimentation lead to if this type of thinking and experimentation is encouraged and celebrated?
- Do new with the new and encourage our students to do the same.
- Think and Question -  Compare the lines from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with the Half Life context. How are they alike and different?
- Hypothsize the events before and after this graphic.
- Substitute other famous quotes for the dialogue in this comic. What new meanings can be created? eg ‘It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before. It is a far, far better rest…’

So how did I come up with this idea? Bits of SCAMPER.

Combine – Half Life 2 screen shots, with Comic Life with a quote from a Tom Stoppard play.

Eliminate – I had heaps of other alternatives that I eliminated as they didn’t have the impact this idea had.

- So where does the thought to combine famous quotes come from? In my mind I seem to run very quickly through a heaps of possibilities and then I eliminate the ones of lesser worth or impact as I go. It is sort of like brainstorming without the butchers’ paper

For the people who aren’t into gaming or don’t know how to do screenshots I’ve put together a collection of images you can use for your own creative digital storytelling.

Enjoy

Adrian

One of the big hits in my recent workshops has been CoolIris. Teachers like the way that it strips away all the text from around images giving a ‘gallery like’ feel to the images being explored.

I recently used the software successfully with a group of 5 year olds as we explored the work of Franz Marc together. My plan was to use Voicethread to record their responses but alas the computer had other ideas.

I’m currently putting together a collection of reflection questions for art. I’ve included many of my favourites and am working on some new ones. I’ve placed the draft of this document online and left it free for anyone to add to. Feel free to add your favourite art reflection questions to it.

Edit the Google Document Here NB no log in is necessary (I hope)

cheers

Adrian

I’ve just finished a couple of posters for the lil guy I’m working with on the difference between prisms and pyramids. You can print this pyramid poster out A4 from my site. There are also ten other maths posters on the page which were viewed 11 506 during October. Feel free to see if you can use them.

I’m currently doing a favour for a friend of mine and working with her son because the lad is ‘beating himself up’ about his maths knowledge.

Here is a game I’ve made for him that encourages him to reflect on how mental computation is often more efficient than using a calculator. NB Over the years I’ve found that adding a little ‘competition’ with boys often provides them with a little extra motivation to learn the basic facts than constant worksheets

Download Beat the Calculator