tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80366083059845210512026-03-25T00:16:12.345-07:00Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger99125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-66787116125212278472015-12-30T14:04:00.000-08:002015-12-30T14:11:00.344-08:00

To start off this post I'd like to thank Karen Lirenman for giving me that little extra kick to resume writing and sharing about the work my students do in my design studies class. Posts like these are long overdue. Cookie Cutter Design by copy pastry_bp (Instagram) The Cookie Cutter Design Project This project was inspired by a random search on Instagram where I stumbled upon an account

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-76988984415250147302015-04-19T13:32:00.002-07:002015-04-27T11:21:26.204-07:00

For our 3rd Design project this semester we are looking at how we can use Design Thinking and design process to help others in our school division. Our beginning essential question was, " how can we design something to improve accessibility in our schools? " For this project I found a great place to start. We invited our School division OT into my class to talk about the work that she does in

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-864893765700121162015-03-07T08:43:00.002-08:002015-03-07T08:43:39.765-08:00

I had a couple of my design students ask me about making something for themselves that was wearable. It has stuck in my mind for a couple weeks, and so this week my senior Art students are going to be taking on a new challenge, something we've never done before. I stumbled upon a massive category of things on Thingiverse a couple weeks ago, and was inspired to present this challenge to my

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-8025416793488104772014-09-28T19:22:00.001-07:002014-09-28T20:17:39.865-07:00

Last week I found myself looking for a solution to hang up student artwork in our art display case. What came from this was a perfect example of a design project that I am now going to use in my class. Who said necessity is the mother of invention?  The Problem I needed to hang artwork on some glass display shelves. These shelves are perfect for placing objects on, but not great for

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-34534079342436574152014-08-29T13:32:00.001-07:002014-08-29T14:53:16.813-07:00

Welcome back everyone! I hope this year is going to be a great one! This is a quick post. I hope. The Inspiration After spending an amazing week in San Diego at the Apple Distinguished Educators Global Summit I really wanted to use iBooks Author as a tool for students to document and share their learning. It's so much more engaging and interactive than other methods.   The power of

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-17103983824837481412014-04-07T14:26:00.002-07:002014-04-07T14:26:58.044-07:00

 This week my student broadcasting class is moving on to an exciting project called The Narrative Care Project. This project connects my students with senior citizens in care a our local senior care facility. The students have been given the challenge to answer the following essential question: "How can we use music as a catalyst to evoke memories and how can we preserve these stories?".

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-70841543947293479432014-03-04T17:58:00.000-08:002014-03-04T17:58:19.650-08:00

This originally started as an outline for a post last year that never materialized and now is very relevant again this semester in my multimedia class. Students in multimedia this semester will have more choice than ever before. After completing two compulsory modules (one to learn about Photoshop and the other the basics about Illustrator), students will then get to pick from 6 modules

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-5602951445655699502013-06-20T06:23:00.002-07:002014-03-04T07:43:49.216-08:00

Students in my Media and Design class have been working on our "Furniture Design Project". Using  the design process students are challenged with the following essential question: "How can we design and manufacture furniture for a community common space?"  This project stems from a crazy idea I had a while ago where I'd like to see students use sketching, modelling tools and full

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-89498073368215317962013-04-29T06:07:00.002-07:002013-04-29T06:10:31.795-07:00

The Wikiseat Catalyst Students in my Design class have been working at home for the past 4 weeks on their Wikiseats. The Wikiseat Project in short is to take a piece of welded angle iron call the 'catalyst' and make a seat from this platform, but it's so much more.  "WikiSeat explores the possibilities of new teaching methods in core subjects such as science, mathematics, English,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-48249722232007331262013-02-26T08:46:00.002-08:002013-02-26T08:46:37.434-08:00

Students in block 1 Design class have been working on many different types of sketches. Today I shared with them a sketch that was done by my day circa 1973/74 when he sketched and animated a moon man walking. He captured each of the drawings with his super 8 camera. I'm going to try and get a copy of it from him to share as well. For no, here's the moon man.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-66811629331341520952013-02-03T13:47:00.001-08:002013-02-03T14:05:12.351-08:00

Introducing Design  One major focus of Multimedia and Design class this semester is for students to sketch and sketch often. We have a sketch a day where I give physical, visual and auditory prompts for students to respond to in sketches. I think that sketches are the foundation of designing. On Friday I had a 2 hour Google hangout with Fred Galang. This conversation had so many topics

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-46026987365198280862013-01-29T12:37:00.002-08:002013-01-29T12:55:44.796-08:00

Source: Sketchchair.cc Last October I was fascinated by the idea of using technology to design and fabricate furniture. I saw a Kickstarter project by Sketchchair that made me think about how furniture is designed. I've never made furniture, but with some investigation into the world of flat pack, ready to assemble furniture I was hooked on the idea. All I needed then was some way to fabricate

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-38520864597451824252013-01-29T10:50:00.001-08:002013-01-29T10:50:45.161-08:00

Skills, What Skills?  Over the past year and a half I've developed a serious personal interest in making things. It has come from the realization that as a student of our public school system that preaches to the average kid that they must get a degree to be successful. This was echoed at home, both my parents got degrees, my dad is a adjunct university instructor and is currently working

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-84761103557741576392012-10-28T22:46:00.003-07:002012-11-01T11:52:10.650-07:00

laser cut snowflakes I created This is my 100th post! I know I should be sharing more, so I"m going to try and share the happenings in my Technology and Design class for the rest of the semester. The title of this post hopefully got you thinking about what duct tape learning. When we think of duct tape we think of fixing, repairing, creating constructing, etc. That's exactly the kind of work

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-58620474213190350972012-09-19T06:32:00.004-07:002012-09-19T07:41:31.616-07:00

Great fall morning here in Cold Lake! I'm up WAY earlier than normal and off to school to check out the project of 2 students in my Technology and Design course (temporary name until something better comes to mind). The premise of the class is for students to get big idea challenges/questions and have them use the design process to attack them. They will then use the digital tools provided to

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-87579915247895868842012-03-25T12:04:00.002-07:002012-03-25T12:04:59.867-07:00

Tuesday last week as a great day. I had a 3 hours of impromptu PD thanks to Mother Nature. A freak dump of snow caused our busses to be cancelled. We only had 1 student in our whole school. A colleague of mine Brent Stasiuk gave me a ring and asked if I wanted to take a trip to the French Separate school down the road to see some amazing technology in action. When I arrived I was in awe of what

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-89783217702122359022012-03-25T09:31:00.000-07:002012-03-25T09:31:13.203-07:00

This morning my son Jack was trying to use a mouse to open a web link we have on our iMac desktop. He's 5 and is fully capable of working any iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in our home. I saw him struggle a bit to move the mouse around. It wasn't easy for him, but eventually he was able to navigate to where he needed to click. What struck me about this event was that with touch interfaces coming to

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-13974216216432214332012-03-12T10:35:00.002-07:002012-03-12T10:38:37.338-07:00

Last Friday I was away working with some of my awesome broadcasting students and had a substitute teacher take my class. While I was away our director ran the newscast as we always do each day at Cold Lake High School, and everything seemed to go off without a hitch. The news had some audio issues with a mic and our weather man had to pinch hit as an anchor, but nothing out of the ordinary.&

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-73358687553976119642012-01-18T13:15:00.000-08:002012-01-18T13:15:47.969-08:00

With the semester winding down things I'm thinking about the past three months with my design studies class. More than anything, what I hope to get from this three month coup of the class is some serious learning from the students and myself. Here's a quick look at how things are going. Enthusiasm FTW! Students who are motivated in the class and are already tech savvy are rocking the Kinder

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-76535686292364118212012-01-18T09:57:00.000-08:002012-01-18T10:07:15.543-08:00

In December my design studies students and I travelled to do real field research with a kindergarten class. Seeing high school students paired up with little ones was a cool experience. I had this crazy idea and I wanted it to turn into an opportunity for my students. I've also started to develop the course as we go along on my class wiki, where you will also find other "personal projects". All

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-64436865022019381232011-11-27T19:39:00.001-08:002011-11-27T22:29:41.198-08:00

My First Modelling Challenge for Myself 40 hours of work into the Makerbot obviously isn't enough. I keep coming back for more! This weekend I was able to spend some awesome time with a friend and fellow ADE Jason Sand. If you aren't following Jason on the Twitter, do it here now! Jason and I were at a Final Cut Pro X training session for two days. During this weekend of hockey and refreshments

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-69686580120849186382011-11-22T18:42:00.001-08:002011-11-22T19:25:30.827-08:00

The Makerbot is up and running in full swing. I've printed alligators, dinosaurs, moustache rings and now a moustache cookie cutter. The learning curve is fairly steep, but the work done by others is making this learning so enjoyable. What's awesome about the 3D printing community is that they are much like my Tweeps: THEY SHARE! They don't judge (too much) and will always point me in the right

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-71396794657408015082011-11-16T20:20:00.001-08:002011-11-16T22:23:55.466-08:00

I've been taking a lot of videos and time lapse sequences about how I've taken on one of the largest personal learning projects I've taken on in a long time. Building a Makerbot 3D Printer. Here's a Makerbot 101 video to check out. Below is a time lapse of part of the build. All of this has been from a post by Dean Shareski who has challenged his pre-service teachers to spend 25-50

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-84811583504452461342011-11-07T21:40:00.000-08:002011-11-07T21:40:36.026-08:00

Students were DQ'd if they ate their marshmallow. Some groups used permanent marker to ensure this wouldn't happen. Today was an awesome day. Hot on the heels of some great collaboration and conversations with colleagues and tweeps I started my Design Studies unit with The Marshmallow Challenge. Huge thanks to Rose Lapointe for guiding me in this way. I now realize that I was the student and

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8036608305984521051.post-50768447600973829462011-11-06T20:37:00.000-08:002011-11-06T20:38:40.284-08:00

A few people on my staff know I blog about my class. Most don't I don't advertise a lot on staff that I tweet, read blogs, and collaborate with people outside my school more than inside my school. This really struck a chord with me recently. So, under the guise of asking for supplies for my Design Studies unit, I wrote this email to my staff tonight. I officially came out as a blogger and

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1