Crowded Wisdom

Pretty ugly weather today, (not as bad as the photo thankfully!) and a few of you were unable to get to school which is totally understandable. Now I know what freezing rain is!

If you could however still get your culminating tasks submitted by the end of the day. They are web based, so I’m assuming that you can still do them from home just as easily as you can do them from school. Just post them to your blog site, and please remember to post them as two separate articles. Give each one a title, and don’t forget to address the main points in the original task description.

I look forward to reading them!

As I mentioned in class, there are only about 16 work days left this semester before I have to head back to Australia.  Here are the dates to remember…

• December 22 - Your video project is due.  Please make sure it is fully edited and burnt to DVD.  If you can’t have the finished product by this date, you need to submit whatever you do have.
• December 22 (again) - the last day of school before Christmas.
• December 25 - Merry Christmas!!
• January 1 - Happy New Year!!
• January 8 - School returns
• January 19 - Mr B’s last day
• January 25 - Exam week starts

Between the 8th and the 16th, we will be doing some sort of culminating task, as well as an in-class exam.  I’ll need a few days to get all this stuff marked before I finish on the 19th.

Now… if you have any ideas about what you’d like to do for a culminating task, please leave your thoughts in the comments.   I’m open to your suggestions.

[youtube]_b1cyNigny8[/youtube]

Someone showed me this clip, and I’d be really interested in your thoughts. Leave a comment…

Since you have all just worked on a Flash cartoon, I thought you might appreciate this rather bizarre little cartoon I stumbled across…

http://www.bozzetto.com/neuro.htm 

At some stage later this semester, when it comes time to write your reports, I need to think about giving you an assessment for your groupwork and teamwork skills.

One thing that I look at is how much and how often (and how well) you contribute to these electronic forums we use in class - the blogs, the comments, the wikis.  I do regularly read all of the stuff that happens in our virtual workspaces, and it’s given me a fairly good picture of who contributes and who doesn’t.

I thought I better remind you of this so that you all ensure you are regularly working as a member of the team.  Post stuff on your blog (sure, we do some school stuff there, but I encourage you to use it just to write about anything you like too), leave comments for your classmates, and make sure you actively add to the wiki.

A few days ago, I published a list of who’s completed the Flash cartoon task. Despite the fact that it was due on a certain date (and I allowed a bit of flexibility for people who had been having some problems getting it completed on time) the fact remains that it is due and should have been submitted by now.

The current status of these projects is listed here… please check to see that I have yours listed as completed. (Whether you think it is or not…) This list is independent of whether you have emailed it to me or not!

Those that still owe me the Communications blog entry, please post that as soon as possible to your learnerblog space.

Those that still have not submitted the Flash cartoon, please post the SWF file only to Imageshack (www.imageshack.us - no registration required) and insert the URL to the Flash file in a new blog post. I will get it from there.

Those that have not done both, please see to them ASAP! See me if you are having difficulties. I want to get these marked and returned to you but do not want to start marking until everything is submitted from everyone.

Thanks!

We talked before about the implications that posting personal information online can have. I thought you might find the following news article of interest.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/15906184.htm

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts in the comments section..

A Mac pumpkin…  I couldn’t resist! 

Flash is an amazing authoring environment, able to combine both artistic creativity and sophisticated mathematical programming skills. At it simplest, Flash lets you draw stuff using a rather clever use of vector graphics that can scale gracefully to any resolution, and it also has incredible depth that lets those who want to challenge their skills to explore the world of Actionscripting to bring high levels of interactivity to the objects it creates.

One great example of this dual personality that Flash has is shown in this amazing animated page. Check it out… sure, it’s purely entertainment value but it’s very cool.

Of course, for a more corporate use of Flash, you can’t go past Inside the House, a wonderful virtual tour of the Sydney Opera House. Although this site has been around for a few years now, I think it’s a good use of Flash that goes beyond just using Flash for entertainment value and makes good use of interactivity to meet a corporate purpose.

What other cool, but useful, sites have you found that use Flash? Tell me about them in the comments…

Thought you guys might enjoy this short video of our pumpkin carving…

(Has anyone figured out how to embed the YouTube videos into these blog pages?  The normal way doesn’t seem to work?  Is there some trick that works?)

Remember the KISS Principle?  Keep It Simple, Stupid!  That’s not bad advice as you start to really get into your Flash cartoons…   Try to simplify your cartoon down to the essentials… keep the characters simple, the backgrounds simple, minimise the movements your characters have to make, etc.

You only need enough to communicate the story - don’t overcomplicate things too much.  Think Southpark, not The Incredibles.

Since your next task will be to create a short Flash based cartoon (details coming soon), I thought you might like to have a look at a few samples…

• http://flash.artie.com/
• http://www.flashcartoons.org/original.php
• http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/
• http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html

I particularly like the last one - the StrongBad emails… hilarious! 
If you find any other good samples, please leave a link in the comments section.

Thought some of you might be interested in this post from one of the Australian news services about Google’s acquisition of YouTube. What a fairytale story for these two guys!

Story is here.

We will be spending a couple of lessons learning the basics of Flash.  It is a pretty amazing program and the more you learn about it, the more you realise there is to learn…  it’s a bit of a bottomless pit with what it can actually do.

You might like to speed up the process by checking out some of these tutorials.

•  http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/
• http://www.learnflash.com/flashtutorials2.htm
• http://www.entheosweb.com/Flash/default.asp 
• http://www.learnthat.com/computers/learn-1774-free_flash_mx_2004_training_tutorial.htm 
• http://www.atomiclearning.com/flash_mx_2004pc 

And if find any more, or you do any interesting animations, please add them to your blog so the rest of us can have a look.

Our next task will be to look at the different forms of animation, and how animation can be used to communicate your ideas.

Our main task for this unit will be to use Macromedia Flash to create a 2D cartoon. Flash has lots of useful tools for creating animations, and can do a lot of the hard tweening work for you. Our next few lessons will be developing basic skills in Flash… it can be quite challenging! After that you will beworking on an animated cartoon of your own.

If you’d like to have a play with some stop-frame animation at home, grab yourself a copy of Anasazi Stop Motion Animator and see what you can do with it. You will need a camera of some sort (just a cheap webcam should do the trick, or you could try plugging your DV Camera into your computer). If you do end up making any short animations, please share them on your blog. (maybe upload to YouTube and then link to it)

For an overview of animation and different techniques, this site has some good basic information. It’s fairly basic, and admittedly it’s aimed at younger kids, but it’s still a useful place to get an overview of the basics of animation.

You can also get a free 30 day trial copy of Flash (for your home computer) at www.adobe.com/go/tryflash

You might get a few ideas from looking at these banners from a company that specializes in web banner design… Browse through their sample gallery for ideas…

http://www.bannersonline.com/portfolio/portfolio.phtml

It’s true that many web ad banners use animation, like the one below… Photoshop can do that too. Ask if you want help with it.

Here is a link to that Principles of Graphic Design presentation I showed you in class…

http://www.mundidesign.com/

It may take a few moments to fully load, so if bits seem to be missing, just be patient.

Just chasing a couple of missing locker numbers…

I still need your locker numbers from Mac, Alex J, Alex K, Serg, Caitlyn S, Lauren T…

Could you guys and girls please leave your locker number as a comment in this post please. Thanks.

Guys and Girls,

I urgently need to know your locker numbers. There are some students looking for spare lockers in period 1, but we don’t know which ones are free at the moment. Can you let me know your locker numbers ASAP.

Thanks.

Click the image above to get a copy of the official Commtech Course Outline.  It explains the different topics we plan to cover, as well as the breakdown of marks, etc.  I’ll get you a paper copy of it as well, but you can come back here to get a spare when you lose the paper one. 

We spoke about this in class but I feel compelled to restate it here, just for the record. Your blogs are public. Your work can be seen by anyone on the web.

For this reason, it’s pretty important that we follow some sensible guidelines for putting ourselves “out there”…

1. Your blogs are really just online extensions of our classroom. Speech that is not appropriate for class is not appropriate for your blog either. While you are strongly encouraged to engage in debate and conversation with other bloggers, we also expect that you will conduct yourself in a manner representative of your school.
2. Never EVER EVER give out or record personal information on our blog. Your blog exists as a public space on the Internet. Don’t share anything that you don’t want the world to know. For your safety, be careful what you say, too. Don’t give out your last name, your phone number or your home address. This is particularly important to remember if you have a personal online journal or blog elsewhere.
3. Again, your blog is a public space. And if you put it on the Internet, odds are really good that it will stay on the Internet. Always. That means ten years from now when you are looking for a job, it might be possible for an employer to discover some really hateful or immature things you said when you were younger and more prone to foolish things. Be sure that anything you write you are proud of. It can come back to haunt you if you don’t.
4. Never link to something you haven’t read. While it isn’t your job to police the Internet, when you link to something, you should make sure it is something that you really want to be associated with. If a link contains material that might be creepy or make some people uncomfortable, you should probably try a different source.

All quite reasonable rules really… (adapted from these)

I know some of you probably also run other blogs or MySpace sites, and I can’t really tell you what to do on those.  For your school one though, it’d be great if you could stick to the guidelines above.  Thanks! 

Hi everyone and welcome to the Communications Technology class for this year, rather cryptically named as TGJ201. I’m pleased that you have all been so willing to try the blog thing as a way of learning. Blogs in education are still a pretty new idea and many teachers are exploring ways that they might be used to make learning more relevant and interesting for you.

Feel free to blog whenever the mood strikes you. Jot down your thoughts and ideas, your responses to what you learn. Share your thoughts with others. Add links to website or articles you find that might be of interest to the group. Take time to read the other class blogs on the link list and please leave comments for each other. The two-way nature of this blogging medium is very powerful!

I hope you enjoy this semester!

PS, if you want the names of those books I mentioned in class, check this other post.