Pixeled Multimedia Teachers Association

This is one from Claire, really useful resources.

http://www.colourlovers.com/
Colour is at the core of every creative project, from graphic & print design to fashion to interior decorating to simply painting the walls of your home. this site aims to be a place for you to find and share your color inspiration and passion with fellow colour lovers.

http://www.colorcombos.com/
Welcome to ColorCombos.com. This site was built to help web developers quickly select and test color combinations.

http://www.sessions.edu/career_center/career_descriptions.asp
The world of communication arts and visual design is constantly changing, as are the kinds of creative jobs and disciplines available in the field.
Below is a listing of design careers and job descriptions in Graphic Design, Web Design, Multimedia, Digital Arts, Advertising, and Marketing. Use the list to find the direction your career should go and what Sessions courses will help you get there.

http://www.colorblender.com/
Welcome to ColorBlender – your free online tool for color matching and palette design!
To get started, choose a preferred color using the color picker below, and a 6-color matching palette (a "blend") will be automatically calculated.

http://colorcell.uneven.org/
Here you'll get a short introduction into the world of colors

On the 5th of September I attended a PCEDUG (PC Education User Group of Victoria) Meeting held at Kew High School. PCEDUG has been running for twenty years and started as a mutual support group for people using IBM JX computers.

It’s free to join and anyone can attend the meetings. There are usually four meetings a year and is made up of a Mixture of classroom and IT teachers, ICT Managers, computer technicians and network managers.


The evening I attended was hosted by MMT (Multimedia Technology P/L) and Commander. Michael Dyson from MMT spoke about different technologies within the school IT environment. There were a number of very cool products they had on display including the Panasonic ToughBook. OMG, I jumped every time they grabbed it by the screen and whacked it back onto the table it was sitting on.

I unfortunately couldn’t stay for the entire meeting but after the presentation, Peter Burgess spoke about Kew High School and its progressive move into Information Technology.


If I ever become an IT teacher, I know I will be keeping PCEDUG on my list of favorites.

Your Vice President, Stuart

On the 21st of September I attended a Game Maker PD held at Westall Secondary College. The session went for 3 hours and was introduced by Roland Gesthuizen who spoke about Web2 and the advantages of introducing Game Programming into the curriculum.

Tony Forster ran the session and took us through the basic operations of Game Maker. We were each given a space invaders tutorial to run through and were encouraged to have a play with Game Maker and think about solutions to suggested problems within the gaming environment.

I really enjoyed the session but I did feel that there were a few attendees that were very nervous about introducing GM into their classes and especially how the “girls” will take to using GM.

I can see GM being used in a number of different ways in multiple subjects and assignments. If anyone is interested in more info, please visit: http://www.freewebs.com/schoolgamemaker/ (Official GameMaker Website) and http://www.freewebs.com/schoolgamemaker/ (Tony Forster Schoolgamemaker Site). I’m sure Tony would be interested in answering any questions you had about GameMaker.

Your Vice President, Stuart

I'm going to the ACEC conference in Cairns next week and running a workshop. While I was on the ACEC site though I followed a link to a site called 'HitcHikr' which is basically a run down of links to other conferences happening around the world. I kept following the links and read through some really interesting blogs about new developments in education and how to teach students in the digital age. The only frustrating thing is - no-one in the Australian education system seems to be listening. I find this really sad, that so much can be done to utilise technology effectively to change the way our schools operate and yet we are eternally stuck in the 19th century model of teaching.

I know some efforts are being made, for example Fitzroy High, to implement new ways of teaching and learning. However, Fitzroy High is still in the early stages and it will take a few more years before anything develops that can be used as a template for other schools.

I find it frustrating that the resistance to technology, certainly in my school, comes from a lack of money spent on teacher professional development. The students all have laptops and the expense of putting together networking and cabling and the sheer maintenance of it all costs a fortune. However, whilst the school has spent millions on putting the hardware and software in place they spend next to nothing on training and developing staff to effectively teach with new technologies. It's crazy, but then I find the whole education system hopelessly outdated and doing little to prepare students for the 21st century. What about global warming - how are we preparing students to live in an environment that will be drastically different from the one we grew up in. What about China and India - the next superpowers, how are our kids going to compete in a global economy?

If you want to read more about the potential prospects of our school then follow this link: http://hitchhikr.com/index.php?mode=about

You will have to follow the links that interest you but one I enjoyed reading in particular http://2cents.davidwarlick.com/

Educators though should be blogging and sharing their research and views. I don't believe enough of us in IT/Multimedia are using blogs effectively. I think we should make them a part of the Content/Copy module. Get students to keep a blog all year - then for their assessment task they can take bits of their blog as evidence of their writing and put it into an instructional website on how to write a blog (which covers the 15 hour specification for an assignment). I'm certainly going to try this with the students next year.

For me its holiday time - three weeks off teaching and time to start marking SACS and creating resources for the year 12 mock exam. When I'm creating the mock exam I generally steer clear of the VCAA end of year exams and I've been wondering lately why I do this. Surely it would be easier to use an exam that is put out by VCAA as this will give the students some idea of how to follow the format of the final exam. However, I find the wording on VCAA exams can confuse students so I prefer to go through them in class. My mock exams focus on what I've taught my students throughout the year - in my own language. This allows the students to feel confident under the stressful conditions of any exam. They don't always get the answers right of course but the point of mock exams is to practice exam technique, meaning that students give themselves enough time to answer the questions and complete the practical tasks. Once they've mastered exam technique they can then focus more upon answering the questions.

So as far as creating a mock exam I do follow the VCAA one in the sense that I put in roughly the same amount of questions, a flash animation exercise and a website. Basically this is standard on each exam - throwing in a flowchart/algorithm is also helpful. In the end though, it will always depend on the ability of the student, whether they have revised for the topic and whether they have practised putting websites and flash together.

During my weekend perusal of anything new and wonderful to teach my VCE students, I stumbled upon a site that has a lot of useful video tutorials. The tutorials cover up to an intermediate level of most of the programs we are likely to use in teaching the Certificate II/III. Some of the Dreamweaver tutes, including how to insert RSS feeds and changing visibility of layers (something I've often had trouble with) were really useful. The site is located at: http://www.video-tutes.com
It is well worth checking out.