Another great find is this video about a woodworker named Leo who lives in a yurt with his partner on the edge of Exmoor in the UK.
This beautifully shot film shows him turning a piece of wood into a beautiful bowl using a home built traditional treadle lathe (foot powered).
I’ve just discovered this wonderful video on Youtube that I feel I have to share.
In this era of cheap shonky tools flooding in from China, poorly designed and made without any passion in factories that pollute and exploit. Where even tradesman treat equipment like it’s meant to be disposable, cheap and nasty, because that’s all the big hardware stores sell. To know that some people still take pride in their craft gives me hope.
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Oh and the Bon Iver music probably helps…
Find out more about John Neeman Tools.
Well I haven’t posted in a few weeks due to lot’s of things popping up. I applied for an opportunity called the Teacher Champion which involved using social media to promote several educational initiatives but wasn’t accepted. I think I would have liked this and was somewhat disappointed, however, life goes on and last week I threw my name in for the Google Teacher Academy Sydney. I’ve been following it closely on Twitter and collecting the YouTube applications in a playlist. Some are really good, unfortunately for me, but good for them.
Here are some of the ones I feel really stand out and I’d be surprised if they didn’t get in;
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And my attempt…
Good luck to all the applicants for Sydney 2013!
This is just a follow up to an earlier post about a competition my Graphics Technology class became involved in towards the end of last year.
I’ve recently received an promotional email regarding the V8 Supercar skinning challenge that my Graphics class were involved in. I’m not sure if the quote of mine below was a direct quote, oh well, now I know how politicians feel.
A joint project between the V8 Supercars Students on Track program, Brad Jones Racing and the NSW Department of Education and Communities Rural and Distance Education has piloted providing the real world application for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in schools. Sixty students from Mudgee, Coonabarabran, and Monaro High Schools have been inspired to master Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator design programs applying their skills to an authentic industry application.
Brad Jones Racing, based in Albury NSW, generously opened its doors and supplied their race car design templates and sponsors’ logos for the project. Led by Brad Jones Racing’s graphic designer Brad Norman “Mr Stickers” and Kim Ireland from Rural and Distance Education the students were taught to successfully design race car liveries “in the round” through a series of video conferences and in school class work.
Mudgee High School teacher Mick O’Sullivan said that “This project inspired students to really learn Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s been a fantastic opportunity. Our students were rewarded with an excursion to the V8 Supercars Telstra 500 in Sydney.”
“The pilot has been a great success” says David Foley Manager of the NSW DEC Rural and Distance Education Technology Unit. “Now we want to extend the same opportunity to many more students in 2013.”
During my university days we watched a great short video series about the American design firm IDEO called The Deep Dive. I remember at the time being told that we’d have to order the tape (VHS!) from the ABC in the U.S. well advance a decade into future and we have the wonderful resource called Youtube. So thanks to Youtube, here it is in 3 parts. And I thoroughly recommend it for any design student.
Every year I start to program for my new classes, every year I try to make my collection of programs fit together, meet student outcomes and be clear, simple instructions for a teacher to follow. It always starts with my last template. Here’s a link to the first Excel spreadsheet I tried. This summer holiday I planned to simplify my process more and had the idea of using CS6 namely, Illustrator and InDesign to build a jigsaw’ish graphical program with ‘Outcomes’ and ‘Learn to’s’ and Learn About’s’ all connecting to activities, however, working with my prototype it became apparent that it would be rather unwieldy, although it did look pretty I must say. After getting rid of the little jigsaw tabs it became a little more workable. I still think I’ll play with the jigsaw idea in the future and one I have a colour A3 laser printer at my disposal I’m sure it will work.
But as you can see, it looks very much like the cells of a spreadsheet. Back to the drawing board and time to load the last excel template I used… Program_Maker_V3, feel free to download it and modify and enhance it if you like it. It has the Outcomes for most of the TAS subjects built-in but is easy to modify to your own syllabus.
Recently I picked up the new Office 2013 suite and I must admit, it’s good, especially the fact that it supports widescreen monitors which might not seem like much but with my dual monitor setup and going from a word doc into an excel spreadsheet, the process is very smooth. I’ll try to capture the way I work with it as a tutorial in the future. So with some ideas from my prototype during the holidays and new modifications to my previous excel spreadsheet I think I may have improved my system and results. Here is the first program for 2013 which includes sheets for Resources, Evaluations, Outcomes(data) and a Scratch Sheet to try things. Feel free to clear the current data and insert you own. And if you do use anything from it please share with others. Now if you have any ideas to improve it please message me on Twitter @MrSully_
Download Graphics Tech Semester 1 2013
Woodworking for Mere Mortals is one of my favourite Youtube channels, one that all Industrial Arts teachers should regularly check out. Over the summer break (Australia) they posted this little beauty, a charging station which I think may fit in nicely with my Industrial Technology Timber Core 1 course in 2013 seeing that the iPod Classic Dock that we made earlier in the year is now out of date and not suitable for the current devices. The students will need to think about some modifications due to the heat build-up in this project which will give them the opportunity to do some research and make some design decisions of their own.
Download the plans and Sketchup model from Steve’s great website
An interesting film from the archives.
Coming up to the end of the school year may be a time to evaluate new emerging technologies in content delivery. Flipped classrooms look interesting.
Shapeways is one of several companies producing products for other people, using modern collaboration technologies and a growing ability for more people to produce 3d models.
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