G8 E-learning A

By admin / February 4, 2020 / Animation, Photo & Film, Units / No Comments

Dear students,

I will be posting here the tasks for each of the sessions so you have access to all of them.

Class 7 (8R 2nd March / 8S 3rd March/ 8R 4th March)

Welcome back.

Today the summative is due so I am going to leave you the full class to read through the comments and make any changes. I will be on teams and on email so you can ask me any questions.

Task 15: Live session

Here are the times:

8R class 7 will be Monday 2nd March. Online session from 13:20 to 13:45 or later

8S class 7 will be Tuesday 3rd March. Online session from 8:15 to 8:30 or later

8R class 7 will be Wednesday 4th March. Online session from 13:20 to 13:45 or later

Task 16: Uploading the summative A to Manageback

Please read the instructions below before you upload to MB.

please make sure to write your name in the file name. I won’t grade you without it because my tablet gets the files mixed and I have made mistakes grading checkpoints, so to avoid this on the summative, please add your name.
upload the appendix, too. Your research should be in the appendix, so I need to be able to access it too.
deadline is 10pm Beijing time.
please upload what you have at this point, even if it is not finished, because if you don’t upload any work will be graded 0.
you will have a chance to resubmit when summative B is due, so this temporary grade will be on MB until then.

And this is it for today. See you on Teams!

Class 6 (8R 25th Feb / 8S 26th Feb/ 8R 27th Feb)

Welcome back. Forth week of online learning. We never thought this was going to be this long. But you are doing well, don’t worry. We are going to have another checkpoint today, for A3 and A4. Please upload to MB and I will give you comments. If you missed the first checkpoint indicate in the documment you want me to also give you comments on A1 and A2 by marking them red, nd I will do that before the summative. Remember it is a rolling system, so try to go with it, you will have chances to resubmit, as always.

Task 12: Recap

After the first 5 classes you should be done with A1, A2 and A3. If you are not done with them please finish them first since you will need them to complete A4.

Also, you need to upload the first 10 pictures of your photo journal to seesaw. Once you are done, please comment on 2 other people. In class 8 you will be asked to upload 10 more pictures and critique your classmates again, so please keep on taking pictures, since that is ongoing.

Next class (class 7) you will be asked to upload the tasksheet and the appendix as the summative.

Task 13: Finish A2

I sent your questions to Enric Catala, a professional photographer based in Cambodia. You can see his work here.

He found your questions very interesting 👍 and sent you a video with his answers.

He made a different video for each question, you can use them as primary research, and you can find the videos by clicking on the red link: Q1, Q2…. Thanks so much Enric, for all your help!! ❤️

Q1. What do you think about this project?

Q2. Any advice for us (during this project)?

Q3. How to make our pictures unique?

Q4. How to make interesting compositions in our pictures?

Q5. What do you think about when you take pictures?

Q6. What would you like to see in our pictures?

Q7. What are you curious about?

Q8. How to use a group of pictures to tell a story?

Q9. Is equipment important?

Task 14: A4

Now it is the time to make sense of all the different pieces of research. We did some research in A1, in A2 (should be in the appendix) and in A3 by analysing the work of other photographers. Now it is time to make sense of it and write a design brief.

Please follow this below instead of what it is in the tasksheet. I tried to simplify it to help you.

The whole design brief (these 4 paragraphs) should not be more than one page.

You are going to write 3 paragraphs. And you are going to incorporate the research you have done in each of these paragraphs. ) It is very important to be concise and to the point. This are sentence starters to help you but feel free to change them if they are not helpful.

Task 15: Live session

I will be online on Teams during class and have a Question and Answer online session so you can have any questions you may have next class. Here are the times:

8R class 7 will be Monday 2nd March. Online session from 13:20 to 13:45 or later

8S class 7 will be Tuesday 3rd March. Online session from 8:15 to 8:30 or later

8R class 7 will be Wednesday 4rh March. Online session from 13:20 to 13:45 or later

Task 16: Upload to MB checkpoint A3 and A4

Please remember to upload so I can give you comments before the summative.

Please send me any questions or concerns or problems you are having, by email. Thanks and see you soon!

Class 5 (8R 21st Feb / 8S 24th Feb/ 8R 25th Feb)

Welcome back 👋🏻 How are you today? How is this elearning going? I hope things are going well and you are not getting too overwhelmed. I feel that as we go on, we start getting a hold of things. I moved to a new location and I have a better internet connection, so that is good. If you are having connectivity problems or computer problems, please let your teachers know. We understand because we are going through the same. 🤦 Don’t get frustrated, please. We are all trying our best.

Task 10: sharing your pictures and commenting on others

Last class you started sharing your first 7-10 pictures on your class on Seesaw. This class we are going to start commenting on each other’s work. Taking pictures, uploading them to seesaw and giving comments to each others is going to be an ongoing task. You will see how your projects evolve and how your pictures get deeper and more personal as we go on. So please don’t expect to take your final 10 pictures the day before the summative, that won’t work.

Photographers often use critique sessions. It is very useful to see what other people understand and see in our pictures because sometimes we are so used to them that we don’t see them completely. It is the importance of having fresh eyes. We were going to do this in class but due to our situation, we will do it on seesaw. Not the same, but I think it will work.

Today you are going to give comments to 2 classmates by writing them a comment. When giving comments please make sure it is constructive criticism and not destructive criticism. How to do this?

start by saying something you like about their pictures.
then suggest something they could improve. ex. I think pictures 2, 3 and 4 are too similar, so I would probably use the best one and remove the other 2. I really like picture 3 because I think the composition is more interesting.

Task 11: A3

We are going to look at the work of other photographers to get inspired for our own pictures. You will need to look at the work of 3 photo journals. Please find 6 suggestions below. I recommend you choosing 3 out of these 6, unless you find a great one. (Please send me an email so I can check before you analyse it, since I don’t want you to waste time analysing something that may not work.)

In the tasksheet you have this table. This is from last year’s so we need to adapt it a bit to this years’ project.

Remember we are trying to write less, so to help you with that you need to only answer this questions. The table should fit in one page.

A (Aesthetics): How do these pictures look? Describe briefly the look of this series of pictures (talk about color, contrast, brightness, etc)
C (Target): Who is the audience for these pictures? (are they appropriate for all ages?)
S (Size): Do you think the size of the picture affects the message? Would these pictures be more effective if they were bigger or smaller? (have a look at the work of JR and Agnes Varda here to undersand how size can make photographs more effective)
F (Function): What is the purpose of this work? What is the message the photographer wants to communicate?
F (Feeling): How does looking at these pictures makes you feel? How does that feeling connect to the message?
~~R (Reality)~~ we are going to skip this one
Your opinion: What do you like? What inspired you to consider bringing into your project?

You need to analyse the work of 3 photographers. You need to analyse the whole project, not only photo, you need to see how they used different pictures to tell the same story, which is exactly what you are going to be doing in your project. Please choose 3 from this list of 6:

1/ Philip Toledano, Days With My Father, he dealt with his mother’s passing and the impact the loss had on his father, who suffered from dementia. See here what he wrote, and here the pictures he took:

2/ Philip Toledano, In the reluctatnt father he studied how the birth of his daughter, dreaded at first, changed his life for the better.”

3/ Philip Toledano, in When I Was Six, Toledano goes back in time, to the moment when his sister Claudia died in a fire. He was just 6, then, and, to this day, he doesn’t remember how he coped with the unexpected loss. “I don’t have any memories of my life after she died, except for this kind of peculiar fascination with space travel and astronomy,” Toledano tells TIME. “I think it was a way of being somewhere else, far from what had happened.” After the death of his parents, Toledano found a box of Claudia’s things that his mother had kept. “Clothes, toys, health records, notes she wrote,” he says. “But also, everything to do with her death. It was a museum of sorts. But it was also a second chance; a chance to know my sister; to understand the pain my parents carried, and the strength it took not to bury me along with my sister.” – TIME writes.

Here is what he wrote, here the pictures he took.

4/ Roman Ynan takes pictures of his everyday, living with his family and seeing his kids grow. He calles it Photographic Diaries.

5/ Shot by Lean Lui, The Time Goes By, a series inspired by and dedicated to the photographer’s septuagenarian grandmother here.

6/ Kyoko Hamada, I used to be you. A series of autoportraits on what her live may be like when she is 80.

Here is a video of her explaining the project:

And that is all for today.

Next class (class 6) we will work on A4 and will have a checkpoint for A3+A4. You will upload your work and I will give you comments to help you prepare for the summative that will be next class. Please send me any questions or concerns or problems you are having, by email. Thanks and see you soon!

Class 4 (8R 17th Feb / 8S 18th Feb/ 8Q 19th Feb)

Welcome back 👋🏻 Here we are, continuing this e-learning education with many challenges. My daughter wants to cry most of the time, so I know how you feel. But please don’t be discouraged, I am here (Beijing time), and I am connected during class times, so I should be able to respond right away.

Task 9: why A1 seems more difficult this time?

Last checkpoint I gave you comments and some of you were a bit frustrated because it is was not perfect and may seem more difficult. It is not more difficult, but since we are asking you to write less we want you to think more about what you write. That is why it seems that I am more picky this time🔍. But remember, this is preparation for the personal project and DP, so don’t get discouraged of you did not get it right the first time.

The challenging part is that you show that understand and use the new vocabulary. You should use the word photo journal and perspective appropriately. To do so, please folow the links provided. Since these words can mean different things in different contexts.

Key_and_Related_Concepts__new_website_

Task 10: revise the research questions

If you uploaded work, you got comments on your questions, otherwise check this self-evaluation for inquiry questions:

1. Inquiry questions need to be big enough to invite research (what makes a good photograph?) But not so big that it is going to get the whole day to find the answer (how to use the camera?) At the same time yes/no questions are not good inquiry questions.

2. Inquiry questions need to provide you with the information you need, to make decisions. You are the designer, you decide. So questions asking for someone else to give you the answers (what kind of photoraphs should I take? What colors should I use?) are not good inquiry questions.

3. When answering the questions you need to use at least 3 different kinds of sources. Not all can be answered using the internet. Try to use real people (send me questions for the professional photographers we are contacting or the Marketing Department) books or magazines or other games as sources. Also make sure you have primary and secondary research.

4. Make sure you cover different areas of research. Ideally you would have one question per area. Minimum you should have at least 4 areas of these below:

– Area 1: Understanding the terms in the design task. Questions such as: what is perspective? what is a photo journal? (here)

– Area 2: Photography. Any question to help you take better pictures. What makes a good composition? (check this link) how does the camera in my phoen works? what is aperture?

– Area 3: Audience. What do the Keystone Comunity know about the coronavirus? Any research about the outbreak to hep you set it in context. What other journals are out there documenting the same? (like the one here) what kind of images are the chinese media using to talk about the coronavirus? (These are the images your audience is seeing every day to complete the story in their heads) What about the international media?

– Area 4: client. Why would be interesting to share this work? What can make the work richer? Send me an questions you have for the marketing department and I will send it to them and get you the answers.

– Area 5: perspective. How to make your work unique? What is the photography? (visit this link) What is the purpose of photography? (visit this link)

– Area 6: making. How to make an online portfolio using sway? (this link)

Task 11: research time!

The class time today will be spend on doing the research. Remember you need 6-10 questions and you should spend 10 minutes per question, so 80 minutes should be enough to complete this.

Please complete the research in the appendix. Write the question, MLA citation of the source and the answer. And please note that you are not going go get graded for this research (that is why we ask you to move it to the appendix) but you will be graded in A4 to see how well you use this research to write the design brief.

Task 12: share your first pictures

You have been taking pictures during the last wee, now it is the time to share them.

Please go to seesaw (we.seesaw.me) and log in with your Keystone account. You should be in your class. It looks like this.

Then you will click in the round green plus sign. You will be given different options, click on the 4th one: Add file. You will be able to upoad a series of pictures as part of a post. Please upload 7 to 10 pictures.

Starting next class, we will be critiquing each other’s work as a practice of our ATL collaboration. So you will be also be evaluated on the kind of feedback you give your classmates. Is it meaningful, does it help them improve their pictures? We will talk more about this next class.

Please take 5 pictures more for next class. (That means that in class 4, today, you upload 7 to 10 pictures and in class 5 you will upload 5 more).

And that is all for today. Send me any questions by email!

Class 3 (8R 13th Feb / 8S 14th Feb/ 8R 17th Feb)

Welcome back again. Today is an important day because we have a checkpoint! Please check MB and upload the tasksheet and the appendix. Please save the task sheet with your name on the file name: “Angela-taskA”. Don’t be nervous, we are just doing this so I can check how you are doing and offer you help and suggestions before the summative. Here are the things you will need to prepare:

Task 7: A1

Please notice there is an addition. I marked it red. Also please follow the instructions here and not on the task sheet. There is no problem to solve this time. Sorry for the confusion.

Design task: You are a photographer showing your personal point of view on living through the coronavirus in Beijing or wherever you are. You will also be writing your thoughts either Chinese or English to accompany these images, creating a photojournal. Your role is that of a documentary photographer, highlighting this social issue in China from your personal experience to contribute to having a more broad knowledge of the situation. Your audience will be the Keystone community. Your work will be printed and compiled into a book combining poems and photographs of all the grade 8 students. Your client will be Keystone Marketing Department.

Please explain in 200 words WHAT you will do in this project, WHY are we doing these photojournals and why perspective will be important, and who is the AUDIENCE.

If you want to get 7-8 you will also need to justify in 200 words why this work is important. Please present some preliminary research (including the sources) about the coronavirus to back up your justification.

Please remember that writing more does not mean a higher grade and that we are including word limits to prepare you for personal project and DP. If you exceed substantially the word limit, your work won’t be graded and you will have to redo it. In Design, less is more.

Example for the 200 words explanation: In this unit we are going to be creating disaster shelters using 40ft containers (what) because there are millions of unused shipping containers that can be used for relief situations (why). The global context for this unit is sustainability and after studying natural disasters in the last 100 years, I will be designing for after a tsunami in Thailand. My client will be the UNHCR and my audience a family of 3 that will be living in this shelter. (77 words)

Task 8: A2

Today you are going to create the research plan, so you can choose the questions to research and I can check them before you spend a lot of time researching questions that are not relevant. Inquiry questions need to be open enough to invite research.

No need to fill A2/A and B we will go directly to C.

In order to get 7-8 you will need 6 to 10 questions. If you only have 6 is because they are very deep, good questions.

The questions

Here are some ideas for questions for you to choose from:

BASED ON WHAT WE HAVE DONE SO FAR

1. what does perspective mean for the IB? ( source: Key_and_Related_Concepts__new_website_)

2. How does photographer X takes pictures of New York? After your task 2.

3. How are other people documenting this situation? The journal of Guo Jing, task 6.

NEW ONES

4. How to create an online photojournal with sway? ( Mr Twinney put this video together for you.

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/25ce7998-5a51-4bda-8515-a03945158a28

5. What is a photojournal? Please check here.

6. What is aperture? What is exposure? And other photographic terms.

7. Is photography difficult? Is photography easy? This article of Paul Graham is one of my favourite pieces on photography.

8. What is photography? What is perspective in photography? In this link you will find videos on different photographers talking about what is photography for them. Choose one, write the question. Example: what is photography for Vik Muniz?

9. How big can photographs be? If you are looking for inspiration, you can also go here, to see how Agnes Varda and muralist JR created an amazing photo project and movie!

10. We are getting in touch with some photographers, what would you like to ask them? Write your questions in the plan, we will send the questions to them and get video answers for you.

Please continue with task 3

Taking pictures and writing your thoughts will be an ongoing task. I am not going to tell you if you need to take pictures every day or every 2 days. It is up to you. But you will be asked to share your first 10 pictures in class 4, so make sure you have them.

This is the task: a journal of your day to day life during the coronavirus outbreak. It does not matter where you are, it is a global issue. Write how you feel , take pictures of what you see. Remember that the most important thing is to use your perspective. So, if you cannot leave the house that will make your project personal, if you have family in the area and are worried about them and calling them often, take pictures of that. If you are abroad in a foreign place, take pictures of that. Combine using words and pictures.

Please upload tasksheet and appendix to Managebac so I can track your progress and help you. Please do not upload blank documents.

See you next class!

Class 2 (8R 8Q 8th Feb / 8S 10th Feb)

Welcome back.

Task 4: email

The first thing I want to ask you today is to know how you are doing. I miss you! And I know how overwhelming this can be, so please send me a quick email telling me how it is going so far (positive and negative) and if there is anything I can do to help.

Task 5: getting organized

The next thing we will do today is to get a bit organized so you can understand where all this is going.

– In class 1 we completed task 1,2,3 in a document, any word document. Please name that file “Appendix”. You can also add to that file task 4.

– from now on all the research will be done on a different file than the task sheet: the Appendix. If you read through what we have done so far, we have been answering some research questions:

– there will be a checkpoint on class 3 where you will be asked to upload the tasksheet with A1 (we will do it in class 3) and A2 (we will do it in class 3) and the appendix. Class 3 will be Feb 13th for 8R/ Feb 14th 8S / Feb 17th 8Q. You can already see the box on the calendar in Managebac. Upload without worrying if you upload late. I will set the deadline to 11pm.

Task 6

Last class we asked you to start a journal about living through the coronavirus. And you may not even know where to start. Please see the example below, Guo Jing is an illustrator living in Wuhan that shares her story using words and illustrations.

The global context for this unit is personal expression , so you need to see how she used the big topic (living through the coronavirus) to tell us things about herself and her town (through her personal illustrations).

Have a look and then answer to this question: how reading and looking at Guo Jing’s journal inspired me or helped me to write my own? Your answer will be Q4 in the appendix.

Coronavirus Wuhan diary: Living alone in a city gone quiet

Task 7: A1

Now we are going to try to put all this together. Open the tasksheet and let’s do A1. Before we start you need to read the design task:

You are a photographer showing your personal point of view on living through the coronavirus in Beijing or wherever you are. You will also be writing your thoughts either Chinese or English to accompany these images, creating a photojournal. Your role is that of a documentary photographer, highlighting this social issue in China from your personal experience to contribute to having a more broad knowledge of the situation. Your audience will be the Keystone community. Your work will be printed and compiled into a book combining poems and photographs of all the grade 8 students.

Please explain in 200 words WHAT you will do in this project, WHY are we doing these photojournals and why perspective will be important, and who is the AUDIENCE.

And that is all for today.

Class 1 (5th Feb 8R, 6th feb 8S, 7th Feb 8R)

Our new unit is an IDU with Language and Literature. Inter disciplinary learning means that you will be combining what you are learning in Design (Photography) with what you will learn in LL (poetry).

To start this unit last year each student choose a topic they would like to explore, but this year the circumstances are so powerful that I think living through the coronavirus will be our big topic for the unit. How are we going to create different projects if we all have the same topic? You may be thinking.

Task 1

The related concept for this unit is perspective. But what does that really mean? Your first task is going to be to research what perspective means in the IB, following this document.

Key_and_Related_Concepts__new_website_

Task 2

To help you answer that question I am going to ask you to research photographers that took pictures of the same topic: New York City. Go to this link and choose 3 photographers you like, then explain what perspective of New York was each of them trying to show.

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-photographers-who-captured-the-soul-of-new

Have a look at the student guide (page 10) for more on this.

Task 3

The last task for today, which will be an ongoing task, is to start a journal of your day to day life during the coronavirus outbreak. It does not matter where you are, it is a global issue. Write how you feel , take pictures of what you see. Remember that the most important thing is to use your perspective. So, if you cannot leave the house that will make your project personal, if you have family in the area and are worried about them and calling them often, take pictures of that. If you are abroad in a foreign place, take pictures of that. Combine using words and pictures.

And that is all for today, please let me know if you have any questions.