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.