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.