18th Biennale of Sydney Cockatoo Island, Sydney 2012

Sydney - Art / /Photography Professional Development

Jacky Redgate Art Gallery NSW

http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/jacky-redgate/

Untitled (Vase Shape #1–#5), 1989

wood, ceramic, acrylic, 5 parts, each 149.0 x 70.0 x 105.0 cm

Art Gallery of New South Wales are deidicating more space to photography and are planning three major shows. The show when I visited was Gallery’s collection of Jacky Redgates from the 1980s until now. A mixture of installation and photography, the work was large and engaging. The work would be great to introduce the mixture of multiple art forms.

Reflecting on the traditions of modernity in particular, Redgate enquires into the technological, scientific, philosophical and aesthetic ideas that we have inherited. While pulling these apart, she also demonstrates that there is a positive, poetic value in such deconstruction, as can be seen in her seductively mysterious photograph Light throw (mirrors) #1 2009.

Quote from Art Gallery NSW. The exhibition is part of the Gallery’s program Focus on contemporary 2012.

Saskia Olde Wolbers Art Gallery NSW

Saskia Olde Wolbers video art piece, "Placebo" was amazing.

Placebo is filmed in real time in miniature sets covered in paint and submerged in water.

Quote from artist's website.

Hijacked III - Australian Centre For Photography

www.acp.org.au/

25 artists from opposite sides of the globe offer unique photographs ranging from oblique takes on portraiture and collage to snapshots of society at its best and worst. The exhibition presents far reaching photographic practices which question what it means to look, catch or construct images for the 21st century.

Notable artists Melinda Gibson for her montage work and Petrina Hicks for her hyper real portraits.

NSSCF Notes

HSC will be purchasing Acer Aspire 1830T.

Edustar image will be including tutorials on how to use applications.

It will also include Premiere.

It might be a good idea to run a boot camp with the groups of students when the net books are being deployed.

Once school created a tech squad to help out with some of the technical demands.

Parents and students are not allowed to pay for the cost of using the net book.
However principals can charge for misuse of broken / misused net books.

What may constitute misuse?
- Not taking a netback home in case
- Leaving a net book unattended / locked away

Things To Research

http://www.jacaranda.com.au/
Jacaranda Ebooks - digital copies


http://www.khanacademy.org/
From the website, "A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge."

Interactive Digital Media Scored Assessment Workshop

VIT Code 156N19193

Attended the VCAA Interactive Digital Media Scored Assessment Workshop to brush up on producing effective and proper assessment tools for Unit 3 / 4.

The VCE VET Task Types - Glance at guides document was quite useful at breaking down of how a task can be produced. It clearly states what can put into each task, ie length of project, word count for written parts etc. I'll take this information and reassess where I can change the current task. This in turn should make it easy for students to understand what is expected of them.

Deploy Studio

Deploy Studio is a program that allows you to clone your current hard drive image and deploy it onto other computers. This has been useful in keeping our Mac computers up to date for the students to use. I took myself through about a days worth of self guided learning through the help pages and pdf's of the Deploy Studio website. I was able to copy the current images and put in on another computer. Not without hiccups before understanding clearly what I need to do. The major step need for me to use this application was creating a new os on a portable hard drive in order to run Deploy Studio off. Also setting up the program in relation to creating a server took me a few goes. Overall it was a good experience in which I will be able to take these skills and utilised them in the future to make out workflow smoother.

Explanation of PD 2010

1. Ultranet Lead User Training - 10hrs - Delivered by Bruce Barton introduction of the Ultranet to lead users. Initial thoughts are not that easy to use unless lots of practice given. Should create a stronger link between student and teacher.
2. Delivered Personal Studywiz/Smartboards - 20 hrs -Delivered personal training to individuals.
   
3. Delivered Studywiz PD - 4hrs - Delivered training to large groups on how to use and integrate learning tasks with Studywiz.
4. VITTA VET Interactive Digital Media Day - 11hrs - Held at Melbourne University, the staff of VITTA demonstrated and discussed the approach to assessment task for the new certificate. Found the prepare video assets most useful.
5. PMA - Digital Life Expo - 4hrs - Visited the PMA Australia Digital Life Expo. Viewed many cameras, computers, printers, various hardware and software. Particularly interested in the Drobo back up solutions and how it would be appropriate for the Multimedia and Photography industry in relation to backing up clients work.
6. Wordpress Website Maintenance and Training - 3hrs - Provided by web designer Jin Wang to run and update Hawthorn Secondary College website. Information and training will be very useful in discussing templates, html and updating websites within Interactive Digital media.
7. Self directed Dreamweaver and Flash Training 6hrs - Searched and watched online youtube and vimeo clips looking at CS4.
8. Alfred Stieglitz- the Lake George Years in Sydney The Art Gallery of New South Wales 1hrs- Visited The Art Gallery of Sydney to specifically see this show. The show was excellently laid out and the explanations of the artworks were easy to read. Stieglitz work of personal nature contrasted by some better known explorations of the city. I liked the idea of continually shooting and exploring a place or subject.
9. Paths To Abstraction - The Art Gallery of New South Wales 1hrs - An excellent introduction to early abstract work up until the 1980’s. Noticed a lot of works were borrowed from the NGV.
10. Heide’s Educators Forum: Photography 7hrs - Natalie King, curator of the Up Close – Carol Jerems show spoke of her experiences of organizing such a show. Interesting to hear how far research can go.
11. Up Close - Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang Heide Museum of Modern Art 1hr - An excellent show combining artist of similar genres. Nan Goldin’s multimedia slide projector piece was excellent for students to see the narrative and relationship to music.
12. Timelines exhibition NGV International - 1hrs - From the catalogue “The camera’s ability to depict ‘a moment in time’ - to stop the clock for a brief moment – gives photographs a unique capacity to direct our consideration towards the mechanics and poetics of this pervasive and mysterious cosmic force.”
13. Re_View Photography Exhibition NGV International - 1hr - Interesting to see what photographs the NGV has in its archive.
14. Ricky Swallow Exhibition The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia - 1hr - Ricky Swallow is an Australian sculptor (born in San Remo, Victoria in 1974), who lives and works in Los Angeles. He creates painstakingly detailed pieces and installations in a variety of media, often utilizing objects of everyday life as well as the body (bones etc.). From wiki www.rickyswallow.com/
15. Mystery Tour -The Boulevard- E5 - 5hrs - Staff PD day held at The Boulevard. Focused on E5 initiative.
16. Weekly PIC staff meetings - 84hrs - Attended weekly meetings discussing the general running of PIC Photographic Imaging College.
17. SoundHouse meeting with Peter Wakefield 3hrs - Attended meeting discussing current training package and timetable.
    

Ultranet Plans

Plans for August 9th.

Looking into the Meeting schedule to deliver information that passwords will need to changed.
Staff will need to register on the IDAM. Maybe this can be done on the same day to avoid wasting time on August 9th.

Jennie interested in putting together a powerpoint.
The staff to be split into 2 groups.
F1 and F2 to be used.
The most important part we felt of the training was letting us play around. We would like to emulate this.
Using the laminated cards to set people on some small simple tasks in the morning.
The treasure hunt task we completed would be good for the afternoon.
Minh should be available for technical problems on the day.

Areas of focus.
The eXpress spaces good for engaging initial contact.
Tasks could include:
Understanding applications.
Changing profile.
Control Panel.
Finding people.
Writing a blog.

Design space
It would be good to find excellent examples to show staff. At the moment this is the most valuable part of the Ultranet.


Beyond August 9th.
No student access until staff have had adequate training.
This is not a race and the DEECD have told use we are to make out own decisions implementing.

eCurriculum Matters Term 2

Seems like there is so much going on this term and I can't quite get in top of it.


Recently we had our Studywiz updated. Apparently it was many versions behind. There is still a few issues we are dealing with.
Studywiz is currently over capacity with the amount of user inputted into it.
My technician is receiving error messages that we have emailed the Studywiz support team.
Staff are finding Activities from past teachers that they cannot delete nor can I.

The ultranet is coming. Unfortunately, I'll refrain from blogging about it until more information has come about. There are many things that may come from this, including extra work for different people.

We have asked the staff to complete ePotential. There is some people who cannot access it.

On the PIC side things are traveling along ok.

2010 - Back into it the swing of it.

The mystery tour was held The Boulevard. The morning consisted of PD. This is a PDF outline of the instructional Model called E5 which it seems the Department is introducing. It reminds me of how we teach VET subjects, such as Multimedia and the photography classes at PIC. The model has 5 Domains: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate. Each Domain then has a set of capabilities then, for progressive level of skill. I found the discussion some what useful as it does seem to be a good way to discuss and describe particular parts of practice.

After lunch, and I must say the food was very good, a few brave souls headed out, onto the golf greens to embarrass themselves for the greater good. Led by our courageous PE teacher Rick, we all preceded to bash the golf balls in every direction. It was good fun, expect for the small amount of sunburn I realized I had later on that evening.

Professional Activities List 2009

Activities List.
The following is a list of other school activities that I have been involved in or attended during the first half of 2009:

PIC Photographic Imaging College Staff Meetings
Hawthorn Secondary College - VET Multimedia Staff Meetings
Removal Of Staff Room, before renovations
S.R.C. End Of Term BBQ
Annual Photographic Camp to the Otways
Student counseling
VET Report writing
Excursions to NGV
PIC Sound and Image Night
Alfred Brash Sound House Moderation Meetings

The following is a list of activities I have had co-ordinated:

Conducted formalized interviews of applicants to the college
Liaison with S.R.C and planning and production of events.
Assisted in planning and production of off campus workshops.
Helped, plan, prepare and run the annual camp.
Updates and contributions to the college Blog
Updates and contributions to the college Myspace
Updates and contributions to the college website.
Updates and contributions to the college Facebook.
Plan, prepare and ran folio excursions to National Gallery Of Victoria, CCP, Brunswick Street Gallery.
Planned, ran, and kept minutes for the PIC Staff meetings.
Kept minutes for the Hawthorn Secondary VET Multimedia Staff Meetings.
Production of college promotion, publicity, exhibition, of the Sound and Image Night
Updated and maintained information and records on College Database

HSC's Digital Take Off

VITTA Slide To Open

I was recently asked to attend the VITTA's (Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association) to sit in a product council for one of the peices of technology that we use at the HSC. Unfortunately, I signed a Non Disclosure Agreement so I can't talk about the product too much but I can talk about the conference! Most of the booths at the conference I was familiar with. Studywiz and Smarthboard, both had stands. I didn't really see anything of interest for HSC. Now, this doesn't disappoint me, just makes me realize more that the technologies in place are excellent, and the skills of all the stand using the technology needs to be updated and maintained regularly. In saying this I think Hawthorn has made significant leaps and bounds to implement PD strategies, ie The Introduction of more Interactive Whiteboards and the focused introductions to Studywiz.

A primary school in a growing suburb on the outskirts of a major Australian capital city decided to install interactive whiteboards in all teaching rooms. Within several months all teachers were using the technology. In fact, so rapid was the surge in teachers acceptance that the term 'digital take-off' was coined. - "Leading a digital school." Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney

I think HSC is in a bit of a 'digital take-off.' Most staff members I have approached have been trying to or using the technologies we have implemented into the school. To reiterate the point, with the Ultranet coming to Victorian schools in 2010, directed eCurriculum PD in the new year is a must.

Guzzle It 2 - 2009

I was recently involved in organizing a small annual exhibition of photography at The Workshop Bar, Melbourne. The show is organized by students and staff and precedes the major end of year exhibition. It gives the students who are more passionate and involved to present work and be presented alongside their mentors. The show ran for two weeks and there were many positive responses.

Sept 7th - Quality Indicators Workshop.

Background and context
QI is a compliance issue. It must be done.
Assist RTO's to collect and use data.
1st July and Learner Engagement and Employer Satisfaction Quality Indicators based on 2009 Activity. REGISTERING BODY REPORT.

Continuous Improvement
Why do we need continuous Improvement?
It is important because it keeps the course relevant and current. Feedback from clients helps answer the questions are we doing the job properly. To comply with the AQTF standards.
Ongoing cyclical process for improvement.
Making small improvements in processes based on evidence. Focusses on on outcomes rather than processes.

Continuous improvement cycle.
Planning Continuous Improvement > Selecting Learners to Survey > Using the Learner Questionnaire > Administering the Survey > Analyzing Data > Improving Training > Review Results >

Everyone should know what it's about and how it informs out continuous improvement.

Data
The types of data collected are:
Surveys - QI, Clients and Staff.
Enrollments and Completion
Employment outcomes
Complaints
Finances

Everyone should be involved in these processes.

Surveys and SMART Software
Learner Questionnaire - The first page is mandated.
The second page is demographic data that does not need to be collected.

Employer Questionnaire

ACER Smart Resources
http://www.acer.edu.au/aqtf/improvement.html
Email ACER for relevant password.

The ACER online system has the capacity to create online links for students and employees to complete surveys.

Analyzing the QI
What key questions should be 'asked" of the data?

Who should be involved in the analysis of the report? All staff.
How often will the analysis be done. Once a year at least for 222
What results or issues are you expecting to find from the analysis? Where learners are dissatisfied with their learning.
What are the key training questions we want to answer ffrom the analysis of this data? What areas specifically need to be improved.

Reading the data.
How do our learners and employers rate our training?
How well do we rate compared with our 'like' competitors?
Are there any scale that rate poorly?
Are these results what we expected?
What other data can inform the issues raised by the surveys?
What can we do to improve out service based upon the survey results?
How could this analysis inform our long term strategic planning?


Improvement Strategy

PIC Planning Issues and Choices
Using the the ACER software we can email or provide a link to students to complete survey.
We would need to have at least two groups. 1st Year and 2nd Year.
We can also have a employer surveys.
This would be best used for testing the process because the data is not compulsory yet.
This data only needs to be collected once a year.
The data needs to be collected this year and used by the 1st July 2010 as a compulsory activity implemented by the AQTF.
Currently we have a X amount of hand written surveys by students.
Not all students have completed but we have more then majority so this data will be fine.
This will need to manually entered into the SMART software and a report produced and sent off to AQTF.
VET Multimedia will also be surveyed for this year. Different groups should be used.

PIC PD - June 15 - Vibrance

A little mystery was explained for me today. Ian Lobb from Free Gamma explained the Vibrance slider from Raw Processor and CS4 clearly.

Vibrance is meant to move up things that are saturated without affecting things that already are saturated.

Something that was also interesting;

Smart objects allow you to turn to filters into adjustment layers and you can build masks into them.

Also the idea of using 2 Exclusion layer styles, merge them, then find edges to create a Sharpness mask, was also very interesting. I think all of these things can be passed onto the students.

Your pictures need IMPACT.

was quite amusing.

Monday June 1st 2009

Today I joined the Principal and the Vice Principal to discuss the new website at the school with web designer Jin Wang.

Jin showed us a mock representation of what the web site would look like. Sleek, simple and very user friendly is how I would describe what I saw. The major problem that schools have is keeping an up to date, and professional looking website. The website Jin is creating will be a content management system which will allow us to update the website easily and simply. I am looking forward to the final product as it will be a positive addition to the college.

I have received information about the network audit we are going to have at the college to identify and advance. The company performing the audit is EspireIt.

"Hi,

With regards to the audit to be performed at the college we will be able to start these works from Friday the 12th June. Reason for starting on the Friday is so that we can also have your current TSSP present to answer any questions and provided any details which may be required. We will then be able to continue the audit on the Monday / Tuesday of the following week.

To prepare for this audit can you please gather all the current details and documentation you have which will be required such as IP address, usernames and passwords for Servers, firewalls and any other relevant hardware software on site. This information will need to be gather or stored somewhere..

As discussed if you don’t have any documentation or network maps we are able to design these for you but they will be at extra cost.

Best regards,

Managing Director"

I am attended a PD on Thursday - S228-2009 eLearning Planning - Intel® Teach Leadership Forums.

"The forums will focus on how to promote, model and support technology in learning and the elements for successful eLearning planning. Participants will examine leadership behaviours, best practices and the latest resources. There will also be opportunities for hands-on learning about Web 2.0 technologies, including social networking, wikis and blogs."

In Photography college news, I will unfortunately miss the 2009 Second Year exhibition opening as I will be away for the Queens Birthday long weekend. I will have to catch the show when I get back.

Twitter in Education

View more OpenOffice presentations from hopkinsdavid.

I've been thinking about this idea for a while. It's still an idea. The school could have a twitter account though. Maybe for notifying daily events? Must must on this.

Blogs

The Librarians at the school have asked me to develop some professional development around blogs for them. I'm going to make some notes, and start here with them.

Why we blog.

From the WA Department of Education and Training.

"Blogs provide a communication space that teachers can utilise with students whenever there is a curriculum need to develop writing, share ideas and reflect on work being undertaken in the classroom."

From the site Designing e-learning.

"Blogs can be easily maintained and updated through a standard web browser without the need for additional technologies. They are often free of charge to establish'.

What Wiki has to say about blogs.

"A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs."

How we blog.

There are numerous amounts sites that allow you to blog on the internet. Most of them are free.

• http://www.thoughts.com/
• http://edublogs.org/
• http://www.typepad.com/
• http://www.xanga.com/
• http://www.livejournal.com/
• http://www.blog-city.com/

My choice of blogging site is www.blogger.com/

About the layout of a blog How To Blog: A Beginner's Blog Publishing Guide

Posts are actually arranged in reverse chronological order, which means that when you visit a blog on the web, the latest story will appear at the top of the website, and the earlier ones will descend in order beneath it, by how recently they were published to the web.

Posts have a subject or header - just as a newspaper article, or email does

They then have a subject or body - the main part of the post, again just like an email

They most usually have comments - a way that readers can respond to what's been said. This is an important part of blogging, which is much more conversational than print media. As soon as you write something, your readers have a chance to respond to it

They quite often have a time and date stamp - so that readers know how recent the post is. Commonly people aren't so interested in reading out of date posts. Blogging is very much an "of the moment" phenomenon, and while you might create "evergreen" content, it's likely that at least some of your posts will be time sensitive.

Have you read any blogs from Librarians?

Why don't you check out Librarian in Black or the The Shifted Librarian or maybe the Librarian.net.

Tuesday 26 May

The new 24/7 digital recording box came in last week. The technicians began to set it up and discovered it was only showing up 5 of it's 6 hard drives. I liased with the company this morning explaing that I wasn't comfortable opening up a "brand new" box, however she explained that I should and it may have just been from the shipping. Along with the Tech we opened it up, jiggled the right wires and it has seem to have worked.

The photography students needed to raise a little more money for their middle of the year exhibition so they held a sale of prints. I donated a few prints which sold. I didn't really get to stick around as I was upstairs fixing the box. I'm finding I'm being pulled in a few directions at the moment and it's hard to stay in one spot and focus.

I've orgaznied with the new web designer or talk and discuss the ins and outs of the hosting situation of the school website. He will hopefully be in on Monday to show the Principal, Vice Principal and myself. The idea is that a few people with permissions will be able to update the site via a content management system design. I'm really looking forward to it, my only concern is that sometimes CMS look "clunky" or "un-user friendly," so when I see the designs, or mock, hopefully this is not an issue I will have to talk to the designer about!

I am continuing to update the Staff Bulletin with ecurriculum news. The latest batch of links were from Boroondara Ultra Wiki. A place to find out about Ultranet as well as promote some of the great use of ICT in schools in the Boroondara Local Government Area.

All these, a dozen emails,Photographic Studio Class, and VET Multimedia till 8pm. Whataday!!!:D

Intro to Social Media in Education

Found this interesting slideshow presentation on the Design 4 Learning blog. The author of the blog and presentation, Dean Groom is the Head of Educational Development Design at the Learning and Teaching Centre at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Intro to Social Media In Education

View more presentations from pmhs.

Term 2 - First Day Back

First day back and I have been doing lots of things!

Answered and replied to numerous emails about Studywiz. Did have some immediate feedback from parents that it has worked for. I have documented this feedback and printed a hard copy to my performance and development folder. I have just made a standard email proforma that I fill in with the individuals information that seems to be working well.

Studywiz Parent Details

To access your parent account on Hawthorn Secondary Studywiz type this address into your browser:

http://studywiz.hawthornsc.vic.edu.au/

Then choose the option Enter as Parent. Your loging details are:

Username: XXXXXX

Password: XXXXXX

Made contact with the Education Consultant at Electroboard who organize and sell interactive whiteboard training and products.I received a response back straight away.

Hi Marcus,

So good to hear from you. I was beginning to think XXXXXX had maybe forgotten about me.

As it is very early in the term my schedule is pretty free. Let me know what day would be good for you and your staff and we’ll go from there.

From what XXXXXX has told me I assume I’ll be running a beginners session?

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers J.

Principal has asked me to complete documentation for Studywiz. I have started Teachers and Parents, and hope to have them all including Students finished by next week.

Also spoke to the Librarians about upgrading the ClickView system to their latest model. This is the description from the Clickview website:

Whether you forget to schedule a recording, hear about a great show that you missed, or see a relevant news and current affairs story at home, with ClickView 24-7, you never have to worry about missing a quality show.

By recording up to 6 channels of broadcasts for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ClickView 24-7 gives you a constant supply of digital television. A required show is simply extracted from ClickView 24-7 and made available on the ClickView Library Server.

With one 500GB hard disk drive per digital television channel, ClickView 24-7 features 3 Terabytes of storage capacity (equivalent to 640 DVDs). ClickView 24-7 gives you access to over 1000 hours of television recordings.