Education

Using Simple Animation Tools in Education

The growth of multimedia in education across the world is well documented, in particular the increase in film and animation. Governments and educational bodies in America, Europe, Asia and Australia are encouraging schools to use innovative technologies in the classroom and to boost media literacy. Film-based media courses continue to attract increasing numbers of students at both college and school level. Students, meanwhile, are showing increasing fluency with audio-visual media through their constant engagement with online video services such as YouTube and the ubiquitous availability of basic filmmaking tools such as camera phones and video editing suites included with both Windows and Mac computers.

“Where do you stay?”: Making sense of a new sense of place

A red silk shirt with blousey sleeves.  A black ascot.  And a black beret.  It was an outfit tailored to make a skinny white kid with stringy hair look like a goober.  In seventh grade, I was one of the first students bussed across town to help integrate the Rockdale County school system. Although I wouldn’t have said it then, being in the minority was a powerful learning experience.  But poor Mr. Hudson, a former professional jazz musician, was relegated to special circle of hell where he had to teach ungainly white kids like me how to

iDMAa 2010 Reflection

Twitter. LinkedIn. Augmented reality. I learned about all of these trends and others while at the iDMAa conferences in years past.

Every year I go to the iDMAa conference to network with digital media professors and professionals across the nation and the world.

Not only do I benefit from my interactions with programs that are a few steps ahead of mine, but I try to help new programs and new professors to benefit from my experiences of coordinating a digital media studies program for

Focus vs. Awareness: Seeing the Upside in Generation Graze

Professor Hazen came into the class and drew three lines on the chalk board (remember those?) — each at 45 degree angles to each other but not quite touching.

“What is it?” were his first words in the Psychology of Perception course I took my junior year at UGA.

“A triangle” the five students who weren’t afraid to talk on the first day of class said in unison.

“Nope.  I drew lines.  You drew the triangle.”  He was right.  They were just three disconnected lines.  We organized the random visual data into something we could make sense of.  A shape.  A triangle.