AP Art: The Memory Project

Inspiration for Portraits - Pakistan from The Memory Project on Vimeo.
In AP Art we are going to being working on a special test project with young people from Pakistan called The Memory Project.  Each student will be given a photograph of a young person from Pakistan and have an opportunity to create a portrait.  the video above gives some insight into their background but there will be some information about them in addition to their image which can be incorporated into the art.  We will then send these children the portraits as a gesture.

Media Arts: Our global PSA Project

We held our second Global Nomads Group video-conference with the G/9-4 school in Islamabad, Pakistan in Media Arts class yesterday and had another interesting global conversation.  In addition to discussing our collaborative community project the topics ranged from stereotypes to cars to war to media and some of the biggest surprises included learning about some of the things we take for granted such as mascots, You Tube, and lockers.  Our next video-conference in early April when we'll show our work on our global community PSA project which we will begin brainstorming today.

Media Arts: Videoconference #2 with Pakistan

This morning in Media Arts class we will have our second Global Nomads Group video-conference with the G/9-4 school in Islamabad, Pakistan.  During this conference we will discuss our upcoming collaborative community project, our personal and global history work, and the short videos that we created this week about where we live (ours is posted above).

Media Art: Animation Basics

In Media Art this week we are going to go over the basic terms and principles of Animation including terms like: persistence of vision, stop-motion, storyboards, animatics, table reads, dailies, frames per second, pencil tests, CGI, cells, extremes, in-betweens, key frames, foley, and the Twelve Basic Principles of Animation.  We'll be looking at how animated works like Futurama and Toy Story are made and there will be a short quiz on Wednesday on the terms.

We are also going to work on out ongoing collaboration with Pakistan with out 5 photos of Smithtown due tomorrow, Tuesday 2/11

Media Arts: Welcome, lets get global!

Welcome to all of the new students in Mr. Needles media arts classes this semester!  In this class we'll be taking part in a very special program from the Global Nomads Group entitled Global Citizens in Action.  The program uses new media to open an exchange between classroom in Smithtown with classes in Pakistan and Afghanistan and we'll be using SKYPE and videoconferencing to actually talk in person live with classes and have an ongoing conversation.

Our first video conference is going to be Tuesday, February 4 at 7:20am (aka the 2nd day of class) which means that we have a bit of important preparation to take care of on our first day!  The theme of the first exchange will be understanding each other's worldviews but before we begin we need to talk about how to have a successful video conference across the world and take a brief survey to understand a bit about what we know and how we feel now.

Media Art: Global Nomads

This year Mr. Needles media classes we will participate in a new exciting online exchange program called Global Citizens in Action through the Global Nomads Group.  We are being paired up with a class in Islamabad, Pakistan and the collaborative lessons will focus on cultural exchange, media literacy, and global citizenship.  I recently worked with our partner teachers in an online professional development program and we reviewed the lessons which should be as engaging as they are insightful and interesting!  We will be starting just after the winter break and it should be a wonderful addition to our class!