Posts Tagged royal
Practical Craft Skills, 27 August 2010
Posted by Jim Black in Practical Craft Skills on August 28, 2010
These photos were taken by Dom Okigbo and James Lowe during a Friday double block. Daniel and Darren were absent from class.
This session, for the first time, we have two senior Practical Craft Skills classes, being taken by Mr Allan and myself. Currently, there are twenty-eight pupils on the course, down from a starting figure of thirty-four, as pupils have left school or re-coursed.
This session, I hope to make time to submit bowl and cook book stand projects to SQA for pre-verification. Together, they will replace the standard course project covering machining. I also hope to submit an Intermediate 1 level wind chime, as a final project. I’ll post examples here in due course.
You’ll see examples of Practical Craft Skills work from previous years over at our main departmental web site.
Safeguarding Digital Course Evidence with ‘Dropbox’
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics, Digital course evidence on August 19, 2010
On average, at least two pupils a year, studying Advanced Higher Graphics here at The Royal High School, lose significant amounts of course work because it hasn’t been backed up somewhere.
This year, I’ll be encouraging pupils to use http://dropbox.com. Dropbox provides 2 GB of free storage on its servers (and up to 100 GB, for a fee). The smart thing though, is that the service enables a user to synchronise the content of his drop box with identical folders located on his desktop P.C., laptop, and smart phone. A user may have this folder duplicated on as many computers as desired. Dropbox runs in the background on your computer, ensuring that files are kept up to date.
It’s also possible to synchronise a folder on a ‘U3 enabled’ USB stick. U3 enabled USB sticks aren’t always recognised by computers, and this is the case at The Royal High School. In any case, Dropbox’s site is blocked within school.
I expect teachers in other schools are encouraging their pupils to use services that are similar to Dropbox. In the past, pupils here have used Sky Drive, which allows on-line storage. They’ve also used Diino, before its free service was discontinued. Neither of these offered the automatic synchronising of data over several computers / devices, however.
If you’re using an on-line storage / synchronising service, which is free for pupils to use, then let us know about it. Also, if you’ve been able to / allowed to get it running in your school, please get in touch.
More Pastel Drawings
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics on August 4, 2010
I produced these drawings while preparing for the new session, when pupils in the Advanced Higher Graphics class will be using pastels to produce the ‘visuals’ for their desktop publishing assignments. They’ll also use their pastel drawings to illustrate their final pieces.
Each of the drawings is an exercise from the Pastel Workbook by Jackie Simmonds.
James Gentles’ Aerial Photography
Posted by Jim Black in school campus on June 2, 2010
At a recent parents’ night, James Gentles offered to visit us to take some aerial photos of the school. Mr Gentles is the designer of a gadget which enables a camera to be controlled remotely, and he mounts his camera on a kite line.
On his web site, Mr Gentles has lots of stunning aerial photos. Take a look.
Monday 31st May brought a day with enough wind to fly a kite and camera rig safely, and Mr Gentles was able to visit during school hours. This allowed us the chance to deploy a couple of classes of S1 pupils to pose for the camera; standing on the tarmac to spell out ‘RHS’.
You’ll see from the photos that Mr Gentles tethers himself to his kite and dons a belt with lots of radio control gear around his waist. He also uses a viewing device to see what his camera sees. The system is ingenious.
On the day, Mr Gentles used a ‘delta’ style kite which measured two metres across. If there’d been less wind he’d have flown one with a three metre wing span, to achieve the required lift.
We’d like to thank Mr Gentles for taking the time to visit and provide these photos.
Wacom Bamboo Graphic Tablets
Posted by Jim Black in Higher Graphics on May 8, 2010
A few months ago we bid for ‘Determined to Succeed’ funding to purchase twenty graphic tablets. We were granted funds to purchase ten, and advised to apply next time around for funding for another ten.
Our funding bid specified that the tablets would be a ‘whole school’ resource. This post is a review, with accompanying pupil work, for the benefit of other teachers here at school who may be interested in using them.
1. Make and model.
The tablets are the ‘Bamboo Pen and Touch’ model by Wacom. They cost around seventy pounds each.
2. Software installation.
Provided you have ‘administrator access’ to the computers at school, the software installs in the usual way from the disc provided. However, if you want to get the most up to date release of the software, visit Wacom’s site and download it, then install.
3. Use
Pupils took to them immediately and they’ve proved especially useful for digital drawing. They’re much easier to draw with than a mouse. It’s easy to set the two buttons on the pen of the mouse to left click, right click or double click; whatever you find useful. Pupils are very comfortable accessing the control options and doing this. Although the active (sensitive) drawing surface area of the tablet is quite small at around 160×110 mm, it is easy to achieve controlled pen strokes.
4. ’Pen and Touch’
Pupils didn’t find the ‘touch’ controls – similar to those on an i-Phone – of much use. I suspect that if our computers were a bit more powerful, and had graphic cards, there’d be less of a time lag evident when using the touch controls. Conversely, the pressure sensitivity feature of the pen works really well. Provided you’re using the tablet with a programme that recognises pen pressure sensitivity, pressing harder with the pen can be set to increase line width, or opacity, or rate of ink flow etc. Our pupils have been using the tablets with ‘Gimp’ primarily. Gimp is an open source (free to download and use) alternative to Photoshop. It’s good for digital painting and photo manipulation. The tablets have also been used with ‘Inkscape’, another free drawing programme, and with Serif PagePlus and Scribus – both DTP programmes. PagePlus is a commercial programme, but Scribus is free to download and use, and is our preferred option for Advanced Higher Graphics pupils laying out magazine articles etc.
5. Setting up and storage
The tablets plug in to any USB socket. When using with particular drawing programmes, experiment to find out if you need to plug the tablet in before launching the programme, or visa versa. The tablets appear to be reasonably robust, though the nibs of the pens may be liable to damage. This may be because of the pressure sensitivity feature of the pen. However, each pen comes with several replacement nibs. Our funding allowed us to purchase a few extra pens, in case of future damage. Each tablet has a small fabric loop that the pens slide in to, for storage. This is a very useful feature. Our box of ten tablets is small and light enough to transport around school. One pupil can easily carry it.
6. Summary
We’re happy with our purchase. The tablets have proved useful and popular and we’ll be bidding for another ten in future.
7. Borrowing the tablets
Check with us beforehand to confirm availability, then nominate one of your more responsible pupils to collect and return them. A second pupil should also be sent, to open doors. If you’d like a bit of initial instruction in using them, contact me. I’ll be happy to get you started.
8. Examples of pupil work.
In addition to the slide show included with this post, examples of pupil work created with the aid of a graphic tablet are available to view as follows:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1261007 – Robert Hackett
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1317051 – Rachel O’Donnell
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1259063 – Elliot Sutherland
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1277908 – Rebecca French
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1259414 – Kaitlin Pietersen
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1320058 – Ben Muir
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1267778 – Hamish Gentles
S3 Craft & Design – Rocking Toys
Posted by Jim Black in Rocking Toys on April 30, 2010
Progress photos taken on 30 April 2010 by Kennedy Adamson.
You’ll notice from the photos that the rocking toy incorporates a wide range of materials and processes. This helps reduce bottlenecks during manufacturing, as there are only two wood lathes and two metal lathes in the room. Pupils have access to casting, forging and brazing facilities in an adjacent room, which has a large window to allow supervision. Usually therefore, pupils have a choice of tasks to progress. This does make lessons rather busy for the teacher though, with so many machines and processes running at once.
It may not be evident from the photos that S6 Prefect Andrew Goudie does a lot of work advising and supervising. The S3 pupils call him ‘Chief’. This session he has enabled workshop lessons to proceed particularly smoothly.
Class 1j Building Bookends
Posted by Jim Black in Uncategorized on April 30, 2010
Afton Davidson took this batch of workshop photos on 28 April, while most of her classmates were building bookends.
This is the class’s second practical project. The first was a wind chime.
Advanced Higher Graphics ‘Visuals’, 2010 – 2011
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics on April 10, 2010
Last year we were fortunate to have Myrna MacLeod visit us and deliver a talk. Myrna is the lead tutor of the Graphic Design course at Napier University. She made it clear that much of the content of Graphic Communication courses is not of use to her in deciding whether a pupil should be offered a place on her course. Since then, we’ve been looking at ways to satisfy her requirements, as a number of our pupils are applying for entry to this type of course each year.
The ‘visuals’ element of the Advanced Higher Graphics course offers the opportunity to produce portfolio work that may be more useful to pupils applying for graphic design courses. Over the years, the visuals that pupils have produced at Royal High have been a bit disappointing, and not to the standard that would allow them to be included in a portfolio. There have been highlights though -
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_2004_asuna_images/asuna_visual1b.jpg
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_2004_asuna_images/asuna_visual2b.jpg
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_2004_sarah_images/sarah_visual1a.jpg
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_0405/zoe/zoe_visual1a.jpg
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_0405/zoe/zoe_visual3a.jpg
In the coming session, I anticipate that pupils will combine drawings in pastel with tracing paper overlays, to create their visuals. Using a tracing paper overlay will allow the pastel drawing to remain a ’stand alone’ portfolio item as well as be a course visual. Pupils will scan their pastel drawings and actually incorporate them in their final DTP pieces, perhaps manipulating them in Gimp along the way. Pupils will set up still life compositions, photograph them and use the photos to help investigate composition. They’ll also use Inkscape to produce vector traces of their photos, to investigate tone / value, and produce ‘value’ sketches. As we have very little space to keep still life object groups assembled, I anticipate that pupils will work from their photos and value sketches to produce their pastel drawings.
Until a few days ago I had almost no experience in using pastels. I’ve now worked through some of the exercises in the ‘Pastel Workbook’ by Jackie Simmonds and found pastels to be relatively straightforward to use. It’s a quick process and it’s easy to produce strong colours, though finished drawings are going to be tricky to store, to avoid smudging.
As an alternative or addition to pastels, pupils who already have watercolour skills will be encouraged to utilise them in the coming session.
I’m also working on a clay modelling ‘visuals’ project that will investigate incised letterforms and calligraphy and may incorporate texturing work using a rapid prototyped calligraphic stamp. I anticipate that pupils will produce their own stamps in-house, modelling them in Pro/Engineer or Blender, then printing them on our (not quite assembled yet) Rapman. I’ll post info in due course.
S1 and S2 Flight Project
This is a project I’ve run with classes of all ages.
When there’s been plenty of time available, I’ve taught a bit about aeronautics, aeroplane control surfaces, the aerofoil cross-section, pitch, yaw and roll. I’ve also covered a bit about the history of manned flight. Pupils have built paper darts and tried to get them to roll, pitch or yaw. They’ve then worked in teams to construct and fly a kite. At other times, the whole project has consisted of only one lesson, when teams of pupils constructed a kite in around half an hour, then flew it in the remaining time.
The photos in this article shows pupils in class 1c constructing their kites and pupils in class 2d flying theirs. I did this project with them as they couldn’t gain access to our workshops, due to S4 Craft & Design classes taking priority.
The kites are usually constructed in teams of three. One pupil follows me step-by-step, constructing the kite, while another makes the tails. The third team member prepares a sheet of thumbnail designs for decorative graphics, for selection by team mates.
The kite design requires a sheet of A3 size paper, some masking tape, double sided tape, and a length of pine, approximately three millimetres square in cross section. The kite design is taken from the book ‘One Hour Kites’ by Jim Rowlands. Usually, provided there’s a breeze, all teams manage to get their kite to fly.
There are examples of kites from previous years on our web site, along with links to a number of resources at -
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/s2%20flight%20project%202001%20pg1.html
Higher Graphics Children’s Story Books
Posted by Jim Black in Higher Graphics, on demand printing on April 2, 2010
This is a new project for session 2009 – 2010.
Just before the Easter holidays most pupils completed their story books, ready to upload to www.blurb.com for printing and binding. Most used a combination of Inkscape, Gimp and either Scribus or PagePlus to create the graphics and lay them out, ready for export to PDF format.
Many pupils used colour and pastel pencils to create the graphics, which they scanned, then further enhanced. Some took photos and enhanced / manipulated them, to illustrate their stories.
This is quite a departure from the leaflets that pupils have produced on the Higher Graphics course over the last few years. All pupils were given the option to create a leaflet instead of a book, but all opted for a story book. A considerable amount of extra work was needed to realise their books, but almost everyone rose to the challenge, and will have an unusual portfolio piece to take along to university interviews in future.
Those who opted to use open source software (Scribus, Inkscape and Gimp) instead of a commercial alternative (PagePlus), don’t seem to have been disadvantaged: their work looks equally good. They’ve been exposed to out-and-out raster and vector graphics packages – Gimp and Inkscape - and should now have an understanding of what each has to offer. Those pupils using PagePlus may be less clear, as PagePlus is something of a hybrid, which cleverly converts vector graphics to raster graphics as it sees fit.
One advantage pupils using PagePlus have had is the way the programme processes transparent images to then save them in to the PDF format required by Blurb.com. PagePlus handles this in the background perfectly, whereas Scribus converts any graphics with partial transparency to full opacity. This has happened when pupils have prepared images with partial transparency in Gimp and exported them as Portable Network Graphics.
Pupils have been tasked with uploading their PDF files to Blurb.com, then purchasing a copy of their book using (a parent’s) credit card. The books are due to be submitted for grading on the first day back in school after the Easter holidays.
We’re very excited to see the results.
Depending on how the books turn out, and upon pupil demand, we may decide to register the school as a publisher, assign ISBN numbers to books, and try to get them in to local libraries and on sale in book stores.
Here are links to pupil books, both Higher and Advanced Higher, that have already been uploaded to www.blurb.com for printing and binding -
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1259414 – Kaitlin Pietersen
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1232400 – Claire Mathieson
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1261007 – Robert Hackett
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1237007 – Michael Speirs
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1274579 – Matthew Connolly
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1274833 – Sam Wynn
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1259063 – Elliot Sutherland
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1317051 – Rachel O’Donnell
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1277908 – Rebecca French
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1320058 – Ben Muir
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1267778 – Hamish Gentles
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1288704 – Alison MacLellan
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1261506 – Jordan Dear
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1293879 – Blair Cowan
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1304641 – Jessica Whyte
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