Monday, December 11, 2006
On another note - here is a round up of the Pixeled Conference day by our correspondent Marian Stoney.
Pixeled Conference
The second annual PixelEd One Day Conference was held again at lab.3000 in the city on Thursday December 7th, and was attended by over thirty committed teachers of Multimedia. We ran six sessions in all, covering everything from the basics of design to the raw edge of new media. Vice-president Stuart Bush delved into the mysteries of Machinema which, for those of us who had trouble even pronouncing the name, is the process of creating a movie by manipulating a game to provide the action for the story and adding a voice-over dialogue. (Think “Red Vs Blue”.) I became the proud recipient of a Freddo Frog for owning up to the fact that I have never played an Xbox-style game. And if you are wondering, I wasn’t the only one.
Scripting is not everyone’s cup of tea, but in my opinion it’s a bit like learning a foreign language. You need to immerse yourself in it as much as possible, and absorb all you can; gradually it starts to make sense to read or listen to, but your own attempts at using it might be pretty basic and tentative. After a while (with lots of errors, of course) you start to put it all together in some sort of cohesive form and away you go! Anyway Rachelle, our own purple-haired president, ran a great session where she helped many of us along the rocky path to scripting fluency.
Teachers of Multimedia come from a range of backgrounds, and generally those from the IT area can feel as at sea with design terminology as some of us from an art background can feel with scripting. That’s why I offered a session on design elements and principles – to take the fear factor out of design. Thanks, guys, it was a fun session and I hope worthwhile.
Mario Yannakakis ran a session on incorporating video into Flash 8, an area that I would love to explore. Lots of useful info on file compression and management, presented in Mario’s unique style.
Augusta Zeeng from Eltham College presented her inaugural session on making theory fun for Cert II. Just in her first year of teaching, Augusta did an excellent job, backed up with helpful resources.
I ran the last session of the day on creating good animation. I did show lots of cute little animations to keep everyone amused but did learn one thing – don’t make people take notes in the last session of the day! John Parlas from Yarra Valley Grammar took over from me for the last half hour or so, to run a practical session on speed lines and easing in Flash – great graphics and useful techniques with excellent take-home resources.
Some of the sessions were videoed and should be on the member’s section of the PixelEd site soon. Next year we are thinking of packaging up a DVD of the day’s sessions, notes and resources as a way of providing PD to teachers in country schools.
For me, the highlights of the day were the involvement of the new presenters (anytime, guys!) and the enthusiasm of the participants. It was a superb opportunity to network and to gain new and fresh approaches, not just from the presenters but from each other as well.
Pixeled Conference
The second annual PixelEd One Day Conference was held again at lab.3000 in the city on Thursday December 7th, and was attended by over thirty committed teachers of Multimedia. We ran six sessions in all, covering everything from the basics of design to the raw edge of new media. Vice-president Stuart Bush delved into the mysteries of Machinema which, for those of us who had trouble even pronouncing the name, is the process of creating a movie by manipulating a game to provide the action for the story and adding a voice-over dialogue. (Think “Red Vs Blue”.) I became the proud recipient of a Freddo Frog for owning up to the fact that I have never played an Xbox-style game. And if you are wondering, I wasn’t the only one.
Scripting is not everyone’s cup of tea, but in my opinion it’s a bit like learning a foreign language. You need to immerse yourself in it as much as possible, and absorb all you can; gradually it starts to make sense to read or listen to, but your own attempts at using it might be pretty basic and tentative. After a while (with lots of errors, of course) you start to put it all together in some sort of cohesive form and away you go! Anyway Rachelle, our own purple-haired president, ran a great session where she helped many of us along the rocky path to scripting fluency.
Teachers of Multimedia come from a range of backgrounds, and generally those from the IT area can feel as at sea with design terminology as some of us from an art background can feel with scripting. That’s why I offered a session on design elements and principles – to take the fear factor out of design. Thanks, guys, it was a fun session and I hope worthwhile.
Mario Yannakakis ran a session on incorporating video into Flash 8, an area that I would love to explore. Lots of useful info on file compression and management, presented in Mario’s unique style.
Augusta Zeeng from Eltham College presented her inaugural session on making theory fun for Cert II. Just in her first year of teaching, Augusta did an excellent job, backed up with helpful resources.
I ran the last session of the day on creating good animation. I did show lots of cute little animations to keep everyone amused but did learn one thing – don’t make people take notes in the last session of the day! John Parlas from Yarra Valley Grammar took over from me for the last half hour or so, to run a practical session on speed lines and easing in Flash – great graphics and useful techniques with excellent take-home resources.
Some of the sessions were videoed and should be on the member’s section of the PixelEd site soon. Next year we are thinking of packaging up a DVD of the day’s sessions, notes and resources as a way of providing PD to teachers in country schools.
For me, the highlights of the day were the involvement of the new presenters (anytime, guys!) and the enthusiasm of the participants. It was a superb opportunity to network and to gain new and fresh approaches, not just from the presenters but from each other as well.
# posted by susan @ 12:51 PM 
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