After a long day I was just having a little play with my Oddfellows , my new Digital Camera & Comic Life
Archive for the ‘Cartoons’ Category
The computer is the most powerful learning tool ever created. So why are the majority of my professional dialogues centred around strategies for getting teachers to turn them on? 
Teachers should be the epitome of what it is to be a learner. They should model self directed learning. They should model life long learning, critical thinking and insight. Teachers should possess insight that extends far beyond the capabilities of the hardware into the realm of learning & creativity. It is not a matter of ‘making the time to learn this stuff’, it is what we do by definition!
Embrace these disruptive tools people and use them to transform and educate!
There are so many opportunities available for teachers to explore in order to ‘value add’ to the quality and scope of the education they provide students. So why is it we constantly hear people lament, ‘Oh I’m so far behind with all this computer stuff’?
People… you don’t get left behind in this field, you choose to stay where you are!!!
What are you doing to improve your skills?
Over the last few years I’ve become very interested in creative process. What is it that enables some people to have an amazing output of creative ideas? How can we teach ‘creativity’? Can we truly teach creativity? Am I creative or am I doing what creative people do?
One of my favourite creativity tools is the SCAMPER Process. I particularly like to play around with the ‘Substitute’ & ‘Combine’ part of the process to produce ‘creative’ pieces of work.
In my ‘Dora Meets Sigmund’ comic I’ve ‘Substituted’: Comic Life for paper, digital photographs for drawings as well as ‘Combining’ Dora from my daughter’s doll house & Freud from my workspace. The dialog comes from ‘Combining’ aspects of a joke my cousin and I had via email. Thanks cuz!!!
Try a little SCAMPER yourself, you’ll be amazed with what you come up with.
One of the things I love about ‘ripping across the ditch’ is the healthy banter between Aussies & Kiwis. As part of a demonstration of open source Vs proprietary software I knocked up this cartoon.
So now I’m looking for captions. Feel free to add your ideas to my comment section
2 weeks later – ‘One day lads, we will reclaim The West Island!’ – …and Kiwis might fly!
Today I finally finished a homepage for my Stressbuster Cartoons. If you need a chuckle as term is getting a little stressful then this is the place to be. You might even find something to print out or email to your workmates.
cheers
Adrian
Tonight whilst multi-tasking (yes blokes can walk and chew gum at the same time)… I was Skyping a person who is about to give a keynote here in Oz & working on an electronic jigsaw based on ‘air’ words @ the same time.
So… what’s my point?
I guess it is that the free tools we now find ourselves immersed in are extremely powerful and it is up to us to harness their power in creative and powerful ways.
So that said, ‘What are you doing it harness the power of modern tools?’
Or more to the point… ‘What could you be doing to harness their power?
It’s worth a thought!
Adrian
Dear World,
Meet Ima Swami – he is going to be pointing out many of the things that they don’t teach us at university and a few other life truths
Ahh Grasshopper… beware the teacher who refers to themself in the third person. They inhabit a strange alternate reality.
cheers
Adrian
PS Feel free to tell stories from your life that demonstrate this anomaly .
Every now and then I get really bored with what I can do and want to branch out in a completely different direction. Recently I’ve been doing a bit of cartooning & I’ve been using the web to learn skills. I’ve read tutorials, asked questions on forums, I attended a workshop through adult education, read a few books, toyed with software and emailed my workshop tutor for opinions and advice.
This week I’ve discovered a cartoonist who has his own rather popular webcomic called ‘Blank-It’. One of the interesting things that Lemmo (the artist) does is to broadcast himself creating the panels of the cartoon using his Ustream TV channel.
In this broadcast Lemmo discusses his design decisions and techniques. He also answers questions from the audience and gives advice. It is so cool to be able to interact with an artist who is in the process of producing an artwork. This has to have implications to those who teach art in schools.
During this stream I asked Lemmo several ‘newbie’ questions and he gave great advice.
Firstly I asked about the software he was using to broadcast his screen and his webcam = Webcam max
Next I asked about the production of shadows in comics as I’d been using the dodge tool in Photoshop and was not particularly happy with the results. Lemmo suggested creating a new layer and then with the pencil tool set on black with the layer opacity set to 15%. This allows you can make shadows with a much harder edge. Then if when printed out the shadows are not to your liking you can head back into the Photoshop file and adjust the opacity on the whole layer which will improve all the shadows. Great advice on so many levels!
In this screen dump you can actually see Lemmo taking a little time off his work to offer me a bit of advice on mine. This was greatly appreciated and I then implemented the advice in my next cartoon. Have a look at the shadows in Byte Club.
So what is my point?
There are many people out there using the interactive web in all different fields. How are you going to use these tools to improve and extend your learning? How are you going to make your students aware of these tools in order that they extend their own learning beyond the constrictions of a narrow curriculum?
Adrian
For me looking on in here in Oz, NECC http://www.necc2008.org/ is the choir i.e. most of the teachers who attend already use Read/Write tools to connect with the world and are aware of the need for a 21st C skillset.
So here is my message to the choir… print this out, leave it laying around so people will take it home to the ‘chalkface’ 
You’re not a typewriter! You’re not an electronic text book! You’re not an electronic text book! You’re not a games console! You’re not a glorified piece of @$%*ing cardboard!!!
You’re the all seeing all dancing tools that enable interaction with the world!
Adrian
PS Thanks for the inspiration Brad - Language Warning on this one people!