MrMeldrum.co.uk

The Genius of Design on BBC

admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 09:48:26 +0000

There is an excellent series being shown on the BBC at the moment. It doesn’t have a regular slot but you can watch the episodes on iPlayer. The first episode is particularly good - all about the move towards industrial design.

Watch the series here, on BBC iplayer. This episode is available until the 12th of June

S4 Craft and Design Final Projects

admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 09:13:01 +0000

After two years of hard work the S4 came to the end of their Craft and Design course last week by sitting their exam. Their final projects were also finished recently and photos are on flickr now.

I am really pleased with the effort and enthusiasm shown by everyone in the class, and some excellent pieces of work have been produced. You can see all of the projects in this flickr set, and also see some of the previous work done by this class in sets - screwdrivers, trinket boxes, work in progress.

S3 GC Houses

admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:00:16 +0000

My S3 Graphics class have been working one a quick folio project this week. They had three periods to design a house, work out the box development for it, add detail and colour, then fold it together an glue it. There were some great results, and hopefully as well as some practice at this sort of work the class have become a bit more used to working to a tight deadline. Click to view the photos on flickr.

Extra classes for Craft, Design, and Technology

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:34:22 +0000

At this time of year there are loads of deadlines that come thick and fast in the department. If you’ve put in the work in class then you should be able to complete everythng you need - but if you want some extra time to finish a piece of work, or to give it something extra then there is plenty of time available if you want it.

Remember that there has been a study club running since August on Tuesdays after school, and you can also some in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday lunchtimes. This might be particularly useful if you want some extra time in the workshop without fighting for space or tools!

The deadline depends on the course you follow but almost everything in the department has to be finished before the Easter holidays - ask you teacher if you are unsure of when your work has to be done.

Things to do in the snow!

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:29:00 +0000

Hello everyone,

Obviously with the school closed at the moment you aren’t getting your usual lessons for Craft and Design, Graphics, etc so preparation for the upcoming S5/6 prelims, and the preparation for final exams is taking a hit.

Luckily help is here! Below are some things you could be doing to make some use of the time before school re-opens.

S1/2
Obviously the snow is causing major problems across Scotland. I challenge you to design a new product that could help in some way when it is snowy. You should sketch the design, in any way you like, and write down some information about the product features or materials.
Some ideas might be: a fancy new snow plough; a cool windscreen scraper - maybe some way of keeping your hand warm; a fantastic new sledge.

Other things you could do are:

Have a look at the 1 design a day website and evaluate one design. How good does it look? How well do you think it works? How much money do you think it is worth? What materials is it made of? Then try to redesign it to make it better.
Watch this BBC clip on metals, then take photos of different products in your home, or outside, which are made of different metals. See if you can tell which metal it is.

Standard Grade Graphic Communication
Unless you have a set of drawing equipment at home then your main areas to work on would be sketching and Knowledge and Interpretation. You can of course sketch and render anything you like - examples would be paper punches, computer mice, headphones, mp3 players. You can download past exam papers from the SQA and this would be useful to see what KI questions might come up. If you want me to check answers then leave a comment here or email me on my school address.

Another couple of things to try would be to download Autodesk Inventor and start modelling some products for your folios. It’s a free download, but it is a big one - so check with the person who owns the PC before installing it. Instructions on downloading are here.

If you have some DTP software, like Publisher or Serif Page, then you could work on something for your folio using that. Examples might be a promotional leaflet for a company, using text, images, borders and backgrounds etc.

Craft and Design
My S4 class have a massive amount of work that you could be doing, you all have the source and question booklets at home, try a few of these - particularly wood turning, metal turning, heat treatment of metals, and plastic forming methods.

Take a look at the Royal High CDT website for ideas of what your projects might turn out like.

Again, the challenge I set for S1/2 stands for you guys - design a product that could help in some way when it is very snowy.

Tasks/Challenges for everyone
Take loads of photos of the snow and make a video using Animoto, please leave a link here in the comments so we can share them around. Remember the usual internet safety ideas - no faces in the photos, especially with the name of the person alongside, etc.

Practice your sketching and rendering.

If you want to get in touch with me -to share sketches, design ideas, ask questions, whatever - then please leave a comment here, or I will be checking my school emails quite often (sameldrum@scotborders.gov.uk) and I have a twitter account that you can check for news on the school or things to do while school is closed, find it here @mrmeldrum

The the other thing I am going to try is a website called twiddla. I will be there for an hour this afternoon from 3.30 to 4.30. Not sure what we might use it for but feel free to come along and try it - click here to get to the room I’ve set up.

And finally, have fun, enjoy the snow, and we’ll see you back in school soon I hope!

S4 C&D - Sand Casting

admin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:49:35 +0000

Last week we had a look at sand casting - a process that always comes up in some way in your exams.

We watched this video, watch it again and see if you can remember the names of the different parts.

Unfortunately the video is on YouTube so it won’t be visible in school.

S1 Mobile Phone Holders

admin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:00:21 +0000

Your first homework exercise in S1 was to draw your phone and measure its dimensions. We now need to collect these sizes in so we can order the right size of plastic for your phone holder. You will be asked thie week to fill in a quick form this week. The form is availalble here, but you only need to fill it in once, in class.

Welcome back!

admin — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:52:36 +0000

It’s that time of year again, another new school year begins tomorrow. Whether you have just sat some exams and are coming back, are coming into 4th year, or are even starting out on brand new courses I want to say welcome to the department. As ever with your effort and enthusiasm we can achieve great things and make some fantastic products.

This site has changed a bit since last year, hopefully you will find it much more useful, and easier to find useful resources. One of the things I am planning to spend time on is creating videos to help with course work and revision. These are going to be available on blip.tv (the same service that hosts the school news podcast) and you can also find them though this site. Please let me know if you find them helpful or if there is a specific topic you would like me to cover.

Finally, all the best for the new school year.

Mr Meldrum

Updated How to download your FREE student copy of Autodesk Inventor

admin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:24:20 +0000

Last year I wrote a post describing how to get your hands on the free student copy of Autodesk software that you are entitled to for being in full time education. A few things have changed so I thought I’d up date it:

The nice folks at software company Autodesk have kindly set up a great area on their website where people involved in education can download their software for free. We use both Inventor and AutoCad in school but you may also like to try the other software available - I’d love to hear how you get on, in particular with SketchBook. To get your free software all you need is:

* A pc or laptop Click here for system requirements
* A broadband connection
* A School e-mail address (either a pupil or teacher e-mail address will do)

First go to the registration page for Autodesk’s Student community. When the page opens you will need to complete all of the required fields.

Important: At this stage you will need to enter your school e-mail address and also create a username and password. You should also enter an e-mail address in the ‘preferred e-mail’ field that you can access from home. All future correspondence will be forwarded to both addresses, using both means you can download the software at home.

Autodesk will now send you a verification e-mail. All you need to do is open the e-mail and click on the link to verify your account.

Now go to the Autodesk Student Community homepage and use your new login details to access the student community.

Once you have successfully logged in go to the software downloads tab and choose Autodesk Inventor Professional. You can select the correct version for your system from the drop down menu, then hit the download button. Just to help you pick which version: We have 2008 installed at school (no longer available for download), but I have used both 2009 and 2010 successfully.

There are a few download options but I would strongly recommend that you choose to DOWNLOAD USING THE AUTODESK STUDENT COMMUNITY DOWNLOADER. You will now be faced with a dialog box, select ’save file’ make sure you save it to a location on your PC where you can easily find it.

Once the download tool has been saved on your PC you are now ready to install it. It should only take a few minutes to install, once installed open it up and log in.
Finally, reselect the program you want to download and the download will begin. The download tool will also display your serial number at this stage. Make sure you record it so that you can insert it at the required stage of installation.

The files to download are quite large but it will happily run if you leave it overnight - just remember to make sure your PC won’t go into hibernation.

Once it has downloaded simply follow the on screen installation instructions, there are a few important things to note though:

During the configuration stage of installation make sure you change the units from inches to mm and choose ISO for the default setup.

If you are having any problems with this process then please feel free to leave a comment, or drop me an email.

I have to give credit to Robert Clements for this post, he wrote it originally in 2008, but I’ve made a few changes and posted it here because it’s pretty useful.

An unusual desktidy

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:14:32 +0000

Once the 3rd year Craft and Design class all complete their screwdrivers the next project is a much more open one which will carry on into the new schol year. They will be given a very open design brief to design a desk tidy.

This pencil sharpener design appeared this week on the One Design A Day blog. It might be a starting point for any research in the next project.