Over two weeks since my last post...not good. But, alas! Here I type...
Last Thursday's school day was annihilated by the scheduled Career Day at The Hun School of Princeton. What remained after the dust settled in the morning were afternoon classes that lasted 27 minutes (never an ideal amount of time to teach). Because of the shortened periods, I instituted the first in, I'm sure, a series of "Special Topic" classes that will pop up throughout the school year as unique opportunities to do something quick, fun and hopefully educational!
Our first special topic was a return trip to our preK days to re-learn and recite the ABC's--except with a media arts twist. I screened the ultra-short video I produced for last year's Student Visitation Day at Hun--a compilation of 26 different text-based logos from the first letter of 26 different companies/ products. I attempted to post this video on YouTube, but when played back no picture appeared, just a blank screen. I checked that uploading of the clip went properly. I also double checked that it was indeed the correct video. Everything seemed to be as it should. The only explanation of the technical glitch, that I can figure out, is that YouTube immediately recognized the "unsanctioned" use of corporate logos in a video post and stripped away the video signal from the piece. Wow!! That's power!! As a result, no video to show!
Anyway, the "Logo ABC's" video was a nice lead-in to another hands-on assignment where the students used pastels to design their own initials using the corporate logos from the video. The purpose was for their final renderings to be as close a match to the colors, shapes, size, and dimensions of the original logos. To succeed the students had to study the relationships between the various points on the logo. They needed to understand the concept of negative space. They needed to demonstrate a willingness to try techniques of different color applications to the paper; shading, mixing colors (and in general getting a little (or a lot!) of charcoal colors on their fingertips). And above all, I needed to see EFFORT. (There it goes
again...that word 'effort'.) I really like what's been done so far. It's great to see this sort of activity in such a high-tech room! Work will continue on these projects outside of class time till the end of this week, as the students make attempts at perfecting their designs.
This is a screen capture of the Media Alphabet.
Can you identify all the corporate logos?
Which ones spell your initials?
Did we have any homework for tonight?
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