March 15

Hello, hows it goes? Today we were in another classroom, since there were no seating arrangements, all the boys sat in the same corner of the room. How fun. We did critiques, had students go to the front of the class, present their cover, and respond to comments. Only a couple volunteered, the rest sure did not want to go up. A lot of them started frantically working on their covers when we told them what we were doing, but we made them close their laptops (they all said they were done). They don't experience crits often, but they did alright. There were two or three girls that had lots to say about each one. We heard many suggestions. I would say we just didn't have much time for each person. We tried to go through as many as possible, and we still only got through half the class. Hmm, one of my tooth hurts. Oh, we also had a shadowing day on Tuesday, it was quite fine. Neither one of the two students that we asked to come showed up! How strange (they were all excited last week), but the two that did end up coming were good and curious. We showed them lots (a lot) of art and design classes, got to talk with lots of teachers. It was actually my first time observing any art class at UCLA, art classes seem so different from design classes, it was certainly a learning experience for all of us. I'm pretty sure they now have a understanding of college that few middle schoolers have. Later gator.

March 8

Today was in the computer labs again. Instead of having another lesson where we give a design lecture than go through the software, our plan for today: Muskan and I would go around and help each kid individually while everybody tried to finish their covers. Because the period is so short, we barely made it. We looked at each student's cover, and only one did not have anything to show (he claims the file was lost). A couple students had something interesting, but the majority were relatively generic. Most just slapped on an image and some text without really designing anything. None bothered to use the masking tool that we taught last class. With only an hour, we spent maybe four minutes on each student. It was extremely difficult trying to get them to talk about their concept. They really need more 'studio time' where students just work and we go around talking to each person. That's the way most designer's educations were. But there's just no time for that when we only go once a week and the class is more than 30 people. Next week we plan on going around the room and projecting on the wall each cover to get them to talk. We need to get a discussion going. We might have kids shadow us on Tuesday, don't know yet.

March 1

Hi there. My name is Leon. Anyways, class was okay again. We worked in the math teacher's classroom again where all the laptop are. Working with computers makes class feel fast, turning on the computers, opening files, saving, etc all take time. I thought I was imagining people last week, but the class really did get bigger! There's six or so new kids, where did they come from?? Anyways, we introduced Keynote to them. We made sure they knew what Keynote was made for (presentations), but also showed them how to be resourceful and use it for designing. They manipulated text, masked images, rotated and scaled objects, and added effects. Basically, every skill or concept we taught them on paper could now be done on the computer. Like every class, we gave them handouts. This lesson's handouts were pretty cool, if I do say so myself. Six pages of great looking info about cover design and Keynote tips. Of course the class period was too short again. We managed to get a basic layout for each cover done, but not much design. Next week will be interesting, we're going an extra day to get thing moving. I feel like we need to focus less on skills and spend more time designing. Design design designers. Design is difficult to teach. I don't think I would understand the importance of design myself at that age. It's not that design concepts is difficult to understand, it just takes alot of time and effort being immersed in design to realize that good design has less to do with looks and style than about creativity and intelligence. All this skill building and making things pretty is relatively insignificant. How do you inspire young people to make things that are smart and creative? I'm quite surprised at how many of them are content with using the default font.

Feb 22

Hello. Ms Eck was not available today, but we decided to go ahead and teach at Muir solo for the first time. It went pretty well, we went over the assignment and some cover design concepts and had them sketch a cover. We set time limits, finished everything and had time for a short critique. The class was more talkative without Eck there, but they were not out of control or anything. We were happy. As always, there were some students had good ideas, and others that had trouble thinking of what to sketch. But in the end, everyone turned in something, which is pretty great. Besides them being talkative and us having a little hard time getting their attention, today was pretty swell. Next week, we finally start working on the computers for production.

Feb. 15

Presented various cover designs (comics, books, movie posters) at the beginning of class. Classes are so short (50 min), by the time we finished presenting, only half the class time remained. Immediately after the presentation we asked the kids to turn in their storyboards. The storyboards assignment were given to the kids last week and due today. Many kids wouldn't turn them in, so we told them we had another assignment for them next week if they didn't turn anything in. We got most of em. With only 20 or so minutes left, we quickly showed the cameras and how to use them. We asked a volunteer to describe her storyboard and take a quick picture for one of her scenes. She was the one who actually wrote a story about another classmate, 'supertiff', which I think made the demonstration more troublesome. Neither really wanted to take a picture, but they did after some initial hesitation. We loaded the image to show them what it it would look like with type on it. After class: we went through the storyboards and marked up comments. Some students had surprisingly good pages, but all of them were far from done.

I think in the end, both I and Muskan felt wonky about how we handled the class today. Every additional lesson we teach leads to more unresolved issues. How do we use computers with no design software? Even if we do get the software, how much trouble and time would be needed to install them on 40 computers (theyre fast and new but have no software!) that belongs to another teacher and classroom? How do we cover the lesson material in a class that's less than an hour? All these questions leaves us feeling a bit anxious and unprepared when we're prepping the days before. We've decided to concentrate on the comic book covers because there's potential for design and would be different from their comiclife's predefined layouts, but we spend so much time trying to think of technical solutions to how they would make their covers. The kids are getting to the point where they have their ideas and sketches ready for layout on their computers, what do we do next? We were actually suppose to be working with the macbooks today, but we decided not to. But no doubt we'll figure it all out. . we're smart. Also Ms Eck is really helpful and gives good direction.

Feb. 8

Two periods. First period we introduced computer skills and comic life. Second period we gave a lesson on the essential elements of poster poster design. Today was more spontaneous. Our first period was taught in a different classroom (which had enough laptops for each kid) and we had our lesson planned that did not have comic life (the software they’re using) in mind. The lesson was a crash course in computer literacy, beginning with ‘creating new folders’ to covering all the comic life features. Instruction went pretty well, I think the amount of material was just right for the time we had. Before explaining a concept or showing them how to perform a task, I would often assess whether they already had prior knowledge. For example, I would ask if they knew what a file was or how to create one, most everyone would almost always answer with a ‘yesss’. And each time they didn’t really know (some had a little trouble with tasks like creating a folder). I found it pretty interesting since few ever said yes when we asked a non-computer question, I think they’re used to the idea of being more computer literate than adults. The kids were good, they got into the whole computer thing and looked like they had fun. Second period was a completely different class. We had no idea what the kids had already done for the posters they were making, and also did not know what material we were to be teaching. We ended up making a short discussion on the important elements of poster design. This discussion actually led to a great dialogue with a couple students who we’re very curious about studying design in college. One girl was super interested questions after questions, there was a period where I was actually unsure what to do (keep answering questions about college and design or get back to the lesson?). We were surprised to find out she had never showed any interest in college or pursuing the arts before today. Given a prompt, they sketched ideas for the rest of the time. Some ideas were quite good, some were quite bad, some would not believe they could think of an idea.

Feb 1

Presented "What is design?" 1st period: The goal was to expo examples of what designers do and also show some of our personal interests and work within the 53 minutes. Most kids were attentive, but not as interactive as hoped. Gettse the children to as manying students to interact, ask or answer questions, was like grinding glass, perhaps it was because it was early and they were sleepy? - one kid was asleep in the back room. Ms. Eck helped get them to talk by rephrasing some questions into more kid-relevant questions. What I learned - if you want to get middle schoolers to talk design, relate it to mySpace. In the end, we actually had less dialogue than expected, which resulted in shorter presentation than planned. Second period - good class, they were interested, especially in motion and animation. Asking and receiving questions was easy, apparently a few of them want to be illustrators. Aside from one kid in front who was constantly interruptive and actually had to leave class (one disruptive kid can really influence the others around him to be like him), the kids were more interested which made teaching much more enjoyable. I also see Muskan too many times a week because of ArtsBridge.