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!
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 11:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.