EC Container 4
pingpong
5th May
05/05/10 16:16
Right it is Wednesday 5th of May I am walking up the hill I don't feel this morning like I've got a great deal more to say on the work that I'm doing on the MA because so many other things crowd in this time of year and make it difficult for me to concentrate I want a month off now do it all wrapped up to my satisfaction which would be impossible because I'm impossible to satisfy although I can relate to feeling I had this weekend that to me finishing the MA now it is sort of irrelevant I'm already on to next year and thinking about next year and no matter what the outcome of this MA there is so much that I have gained from it way more than what I set out thinking I might achieve err that it has been an extremely useful experience for me there are lots of loose ends some of which make me quite cross the iPhone apps in particular because I still think that my iPhone app is a brilliant idea and I would very much like to develop it and maybe I can for next year but that thread of the MA has receded a bit as the photoshoppingpong has come to the fore and photoshoppingpong is really beginning to take off from my point of view again looking towards next year I will need to get more students involved to turn it back towards students and hope that it's not too much work for me to keep a pottering along but slowly getting lost in the play activity of creating photo shop files painting with digital paint really enjoying the ideas has been a fantastic experience just having that element of game gives a little bit of the incentive that is needed to get me creating to get me into that state and I have myself always needed that he's never been quite good enough that I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it I need that little bit more incentive whether it's working towards a degree or an A-level or GCSE or whatever her or whether it's doing it because there's something else or someone else on the horizon with the rather stupid amount of work that I put in over the weekend to the BAL library presentation that I created which in many ways was way way over the top a .doc document properly would work just as well but I spent very many hours producing the pressie presentation for the Olympic Museum and I will put it into the MA somewhere because it is definitely part of it from my point of view maybe not for marking point of view but it does encompass a lot of thoughts that have I been having with this thought in particular that I do something like that because there's a very slight outside motivation to produce the work I'm thinking of someone else or thinking of a target audience as I do it at the same time mostly doing it for its own sake because it's so way over the top so perfectionist and no one is ever going to really look at it that closely unless of course I make use of it myself for next year perhaps working with a history teaches the idea of the timeline dropping things into the timeline organising your brain space three dimensionally rather than two dimensionally I think that's the main thing that's perhaps the main thing the essence to get into the MA is this idea of three-dimensional space three-dimensional patterns as the brain is a three-dimensional object and we're still in a two-dimensional space often with our computers it's still print based or computer based on a two-dimensional model that comes from the written word and the book and then the screen and while film added linear time it was time that went from here to there a not time the you could jump about in and the beauty of the prezi is that you can jump from place to place and the prezi in relation to timeline as you can jump from place to place within that timeline from era to era and it zooms and out in this beautiful way
25th April
25/04/10 15:51
It is Sunday 25th of April I'm heading up the hill in glorious sunshine and wondering about all the recordings that I've been making recently that I haven't yet turned into type and about how much time it takes and how useful the recording is well I guess how accurate it needs to be as well I don't guess it needs to be too accurate main thing has been going on over the last couple of days is a game of drawing ping-pong mobile drawing with a tutor of art drawing at Wimbledon art college which opens up lots of exciting possibilities of developing a project there over the coming year not that this would be hugely useful to the MA but there are so many parts of this project which are now set to continue into the coming year the task than I do today or one of the tasks is to set out some of my ideas that these ongoing projects for school in order for them to give me the time to do it time is an interesting point because I find that I am rapidly running out of time time and energy are both limited my energy is very definitely limited at the moment and over the last week I've been trying to get lots more sleep recharge my batteries after the fairly titanic efforts of the Easter break when I was really pushing myself quite hard and in terms of the work that I'm doing for the masters it seems that I might need to rein myself back in a bit simply because there won't be time to do all the things that I wish to do to any degree of finish although I am a bit sad that the iPhone app in particular isn't further because I still think that that is a very good idea and it will also be very useful for the flipbook stuff that I'm planning to do next year so I would very much like to get the iPhone app working and the other app on the iphone which is consequences I've not heard back on that at all so I would like to move that one forward maybe get that finished but the photoshoppingpong has been working beautifully I am thoroughly enjoying it and I'm keen to get more people involved are and that it is I guess going to be another ongoing project one bit of work that has to be done this term for that there will be the preparation of the presentation that I will give in San Francisco this summer and I'm thinking that that presentation or at least my part of it could be the bulk of the evaluation that I do for this master's project to combine those two bits of work and to try and get them finished in the half term in the summer what else I would much like to move photoshoppingpong towards freehand drawing as well as photomontage and to mix up the elements of drawing and montage and get computer drawing much more established at school it's something that we don't do a lot of at all and it may be simply that we haven't had the devices with which to do it the graphics tablet helps but I am very much looking forward to the possibility of the ipad with drawing applications on that one of the things that was coming out yesterday with the iPhone drawing that I was doing was the ability to mix many of the apps use the appropriate app rather than one program that does it all to use the program thats most suitable to the idea and mix and match them
23rd March
24/03/10 07:14
Monday, 23 March I was downloading a program iTunes last night which is a digital zoetrope beautifully done and there it got into the Apple editor's pick so I was a bit cross about that at the time because I feel that this is what I had in mind but on looking at it a little bit further what I am doing is more of a display of images this zoetrope on iTunes on the iPhone is much more of a toy and I'm hoping that what I can produce is more of a tool more of the game so that got me thinking about the nature of game and toy the balance between something that is just a curiosity a pub game something that makes you smile for a second or two that is really are quite boring after that or something that you want to come back to again and again because it interests you and captures your imagination and that is the tool that I would be looking for one that I could really use with students in school and a tool that would capture their imagination and it is after all the capturing of the imagination which is what I am after as a teacher that's what I'm doing in my classroom I don't think I'm teaching skills they learn those I am out to capture their imagination get them fired up so what is it about the nature of games and gaming not that it goes to far to take up too much time it needs to be simple and easy beautiful and fun amusing titillating somewhere between game and toy toy and game it is the do with visual illusions so it is in the realm of the wonder err a must stop doing errs because my voice recognition software isn't too good with err though maybe this time I would have trained it enough that that is all beside the nature of games and gaming and how much time people are prepared to spend I found with photoshoppingpong earlier in the year that it took me a while to get into it took me a while to get going and then I was addicted and I was always looking forward to the next volley but I have had a lot of difficulty getting students involved to this extent it is much easier to get them involved within the structure of a lesson and much much more difficult to get them involved and working outside of lesson time until I have got them going far enough that they are doing it for themselves rather than for me I have not ever been particularly interested in games playing as games playing has developed over the last 30 years I'm of a generation that missed out on this but there are things that interest me about media it is much easier just to sit down passively in front of the television and watch whatever is in front of the eyes without having to even bother with making a choice as to what to view I have a library of interesting programs interesting films that would be much more edifying than the slush that is normally broadcast and yet it is an effort to to set them up to watch I have to watch them where as in front of the television with my laptop on my lap idly surfing the Internet while half watching a crass quiz I can successfully waste a lot of time the second gate
19th March
21/03/10 08:57
OK Friday, March 19 and lower gate I'm going to try and talk much more clearly and more slowly one of the problems I seem to have had with the transcription is not recognising some of my faster words he doesn't like me saying err either doesn't like that at all so here is a slower dictate. Talking to my year eight yesterday about sight and perception how we see everything with the brain with our understanding and our memory not objectively with our eye so the sight is all subjective it fitted in quite neatly with the program I was watching on television about high-speed cameras and how the eye and can only process information at a certain speed so it doesn't see things the fast which is of course the basis of flipbook movement animation and move the Cinema the persistence of sight that the image on the retina and all the visual tricks behind the zoetrope and the praxinascope etc and I was also thinking about how the flipbook in your hand is still so magic the kinaesthetic actually holding it and I found some flip books online yesterday that are designed for the iPhone that work with the inclinometer so that as you tip the iPhone runs through the flipbook backwards and forwards so I'm very keen to build that into my iPhone application. I also had a brilliant meeting on Wednesday with the centre for fine print research they are very keen to get these training sessions going so to an extent that does hone what I am doing for my masters degree to look very closely at the flip books to collaboration bit with photoshoppingpong is going while I think that will just tick over I've got my year nine started now on the Photoshop ping-pong site and I can speak quite a lot about the game that Peter and I played and how much fun that was how we got into the flow what else might I talk about this morning and I think leaving the education bit behind and being much more to towards on the idea of games of playing games of collaborative games of games where you raise the energy and maybe this has something to do with expectation and with boundaries when you go and play rugby you expect to get muddy you expect to get involved in the rough-and-tumble which wouldn't be appropriate in other settings so partly the game is about appropriate in this in different settings and I was also talking about this to my year eight yesterday in relation to Facebook and blogging that you have too be even more careful about the appropriateness of the comments you're making because of the contexts in which they are made particularly if anyone can be reading them your mother perhaps or a stranger whoo second gate
19th March
21/03/10 08:57
OK Friday, March 19 and lower gate I'm going to try and talk much more clearly and more slowly one of the problems I seem to have had with the transcription is not recognising some of my faster words he doesn't like me saying err either doesn't like that at all so here is a slower dictate. Talking to my year eight yesterday about sight and perception how we see everything with the brain with our understanding and our memory not objectively with our eye so the sight is all subjective it fitted in quite neatly with the program I was watching on television about high-speed cameras and how the eye and can only process information at a certain speed so it doesn't see things the fast which is of course the basis of flipbook movement animation and move the Cinema the persistence of sight that the image on the retina and all the visual tricks behind the zoetrope and the praxinascope etc and I was also thinking about how the flipbook in your hand is still so magic the kinaesthetic actually holding it and I found some flip books online yesterday that are designed for the iPhone that work with the inclinometer so that as you tip the iPhone runs through the flipbook backwards and forwards so I'm very keen to build that into my iPhone application. I also had a brilliant meeting on Wednesday with the centre for fine print research they are very keen to get these training sessions going so to an extent that does hone what I am doing for my masters degree to look very closely at the flip books to collaboration bit with photoshoppingpong is going while I think that will just tick over I've got my year nine started now on the Photoshop ping-pong site and I can speak quite a lot about the game that Peter and I played and how much fun that was how we got into the flow what else might I talk about this morning and I think leaving the education bit behind and being much more to towards on the idea of games of playing games of collaborative games of games where you raise the energy and maybe this has something to do with expectation and with boundaries when you go and play rugby you expect to get muddy you expect to get involved in the rough-and-tumble which wouldn't be appropriate in other settings so partly the game is about appropriate in this in different settings and I was also talking about this to my year eight yesterday in relation to Facebook and blogging that you have too be even more careful about the appropriateness of the comments you're making because of the contexts in which they are made particularly if anyone can be reading them your mother perhaps or a stranger whoo second gate
EC Container 5