Visual communications

The new module that we have recently had is Visual communication with Suzie Pugh. Suzie specialises in art and in our first session with her we talked about pictures and their meaning. At the start of the session we all sat in a circle and we discussed images that we had seen that has stuck in our minds that day. People said a range of things that they had seen some had captured a image in their mind such as the scenery that they saw when they first woke up and looked out of their windows, other said logos that they had seen.  We then talked about why it was that these particular images/logos stuck in our minds and if they had any relevance to us or had some sort of meaning.

I talked about the fields that I had saw when I looked out of the window this morning, I think it stuck in my head so much because when I caught a bus to University I passed a lot of fields as I do every morning, So in my mind I had captured a still picture of the landscape.

We then looked at some photos that Suzie had on a PowerPoint for the class and tried to discover the meaning behind them.

One of the pieces that we looked at which interested me was ‘The Scream’ by Edward Munch in 1983.

The main focus of the picture is what seems to be a man screaming with his hands on his face this instantly makes the viewer want to look more into the painting to see why he is screaming which entices you to look further. The colours that are used which looks like the sky are all vibrant oranges which looks a lot like a sunset. Underneath blues are used which seem to create some sort of pond. There are no straight lines in the painting, which may suggest how the painter was feeling. There are 2 people in the background which are either walking towards the man that is screaming or away, this may be the reason for the man screaming. I think that the painter is trying to portray ‘fear’ in this painting. It is a very strong painting.

What is Education Guest Speaker.

The start of the week, Monday 16^th January instead of having Andy – What is Education Policy and Practice we had a guest speaker. The guest speaker was Dr Russell Grigg who is head of the South West Wales canter of Teaching Education who gave us an overview of ESTYN.

I learnt a number of things from this lecture such as what ESTYN does.

• ESTYN’s aim is to ‘achieve excellence for all learners in Wales (ESTYN 1998)
• ESTYN also provides advice for the Welsh Assembly and promotes good practice in education and training

Dr Russell Grigg also talked about the 3-fold purpose

1. Provides accountability to the users of services and other stakeholders through our public reporting in providers

2. Promote improvement in education and training

3. Inform the development of national policy by the Welsh Government

I also learnt about the inspections as Dr Grigg had inspected schools himself so I knew the information had come from a reliable source. The inspections involved people and the relationships between Learners, Teachers, Parents and Governors. The inspector would have to judge whether certain areas of the school were Excellent, Good, Adequate or Unsatisfactory.

A good teacher is important as they have a big influence on children and that listening to learners is good practice, The inspectors aims are to further education standards.

Reference’s

Estyn (2002) Retrieved 21st January 2012 from http://www.estyn.gov.uk/

Wordle

This was very simple. To make this I typed some words that linked in with my theme and then I clicked 'randomize' to see what style i liked best.

Tagxedo

I used Tagxedo to create this image with slight animation. I listed the words that I wanted in my image and then used the a shape that I wanted and I used the treble clef. I couls chnage the colour of it and also the font. What I liked about this one was when you scroll over a word it turns the right way up and the goes bigger so you can see what it says.

The graffiti creator

I experimented with 'The graffiti creator' It was up to me what word I chose, so i decided to use my theme 'Music' This would make the word into graffiti, I could then stick to one colour or use a number of colours. The edit features consisted of addind stripes, bubbles and then could also add shadows. I found this one very simple to understand and was fun to use.

Text-Image

I used Text-image to create a image out of text. The theme i chose to work with was 'Music'. The word I used was 'Enrique' as I like the artists music. It was up to me what word I chose but i felt picking a artist was relevant to the image. I could change the background colour but decided to keep it to black.

Placement before Christmas

During my week of placement I went to a primary school. There were 8 classes, starting with nursery/reception and ending with year 6.

Each class had a computer and a interactive whiteboard, during the mornings the teacher would use the computer to do the register and to record information about the children such as if they were having dinners and had paid, if they were entitled to free school meals or if the child was in sandwiches.

In the year 6 class that I went the teach handed each child a mini whiteboard and marker pen and then used the interactive whiteboard for a group activity. This way all the children could interact together by playing educational games. 

In year 4 there was a similar activity but there was no mini whiteboards. The teacher gathered the class on the carpet and one boy and one girls was chosen, these were the 'team leaders'. They did a simple task on place value but really enjoyed being able to use the interactive pen and write on the board. It came more about the Boys V Girls challenge but the children learnt a lot on the topic.

Nursery and reception were a little different  but they did have a interactive whiteboard except it was left on all day on ceebeebies website for children to go on whenever they wanted.

Whilst being in the school I also noticed that there was a PC suite, this consisted of 16 computers and 1 interactive whiteboard. The children would use these to type up letters, make posters and play educational games.