REMINDERThis pending invitation is awaiting your response: • From James OckelfordDon't want to receive email notifications? Adjust your message settings. © 2012, LinkedIn Corporation Friday, 17 February 2012Before I Die I've just discovered this great resource for creating a community art work focused on dreams and aspirations. It comes from the fantastic Civic Centre team in New Orleans whose work is focused on making cities "comfortable for people". I wonder if this is something we could try at Tallis linked to the publication of the new school vision? 
Sunday, 5 February 2012iStopMotion on the iPad I've just discovered that iStopMotion is available for he iPad with the addition of the free remote camera app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I think this is going to form the backbone of a scheme of work for the equally new GCSE photography course! I just need to give some thought to keeping the iPhone/iPod/iPad steady during image capture. Looks like a bit of research into mini tripods is in order. 
Friday, 20 January 2012Wreck This App I was delighted to discover that the wonderful Keri Smith has an iPad app called (predictably) Wreck This App. It's a digital version of Wreck This Journal but with some interesting extra functionality like the use of the inbuilt camera. It's not flashy or over designed. In fact it's intuitive interface and simple but provocative instructions are what make it perfect for the iPad.  This would make a wonderful addition to any lesson but has obvious appeal for the visual and media arts as a way to encourage students to experiment with their journal making and documentation strategies.  - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad Action Research Group meeting Thanks to the new Creative Tallis team who met for the first time this year to discuss how we can continue to support creative learning across the curriculum. The discussion was stimulated by an incomplete page on our Manifesto for a Creative Tallis Manifesto website entitled "Practise Wonderation and Newology". Suggestions included: using exciting starters to stimulate enquiry; developing more immersive learning experiences and prolonged investigations; and acknowledging the skills and experiences that students bring to the classroom. We had a brief look at the various websites and social networking opportunities the group had created. We all agreed with the principal that teachers should maintain their own fascination for learning and model this attitude for students. We discussed how to recruit some young folks to the ARG and agreed to bring along at least one student to the next meeting. Finally, we used Popplet to begin to capture some thoughts about what we wanted to accomplish this year, our intended audience and how we might achieve our goals. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad Wednesday, 7 December 2011Tuesday, 8 November 2011SoCIT - Plugging Into Creativity The film we submitted to the Schools of Creativity pavilion at the Royal Festival Hall's 'Festival '51' exhibition this summer is now available online along with those from other Schools of Creativity across the country. We will soon be hosting the touring version of this exhibition (Dec - Jan) in our Gallery space, just in time for the Post 16 Open Evening (1st Dec) and the official opening of the school in January. Saturday, 5 November 2011What does it mean to be imaginative?
We will use statements about the imagination and what it means to be imaginative and ask students to decide how much the statements reflect their learning habits of mind: Being imaginative means trying things our. It means combining ideas from different places. It means being able to carry on even when you can't fully explain your reasoning.Whenever I have had explicit discussions with students about a particular skill or attribute prior to a learning activity I have always found it to be more successful. I hope and expect that this term's work will benefit from being framed by this exploration of the imagination and that we will have a great deal to discuss and share in terms of how this skills/ability/aptitude can be tracked over a period of time. Tuesday, 1 November 2011A brief glimpse of our brand new schoolI have had the most amazing day in our new school building. Whilst it's not quite fully finished I was able to gain access to my teaching area and unpack all my boxes. having put up with a completely inadequate teaching space for so many years it feels extraordinary to be in spaces that I helped to design and specify and I know the students will love them. The amount of light and space is incredible and it was so lovely to wander around the building today and listen to colleagues waxing lyrical about their rooms and facilities. We know we have been very lucky to be involved in the BSF process when so many people across the country have been denied the possibility of a new school building. Rest assured that we will be working very hard to make sure that we don't squander the amazing opportunity this building affords us to ensure our young people have a fantastic 21st century education. Sunday, 30 October 2011A pop-up university of the future? The 2012 Learning Without Frontiers conference will be taking place at Olympia. The website makes the following announcement: Our design team are busy re-imagining the interior of Olympia’s National Hall to create a “pop-up university of the future” presenting an entirely new experience for our delegates and attendees. It is interesting to see that the notion of a Pop Up School (#popupschool) has caught on at this event which aims to be a source of disruptive thinking in education. The flashy and obviously very expensive pods illustrated above are a far cry from our Pop Up School at the Creativity World Forum in 2010. Our DIY booth (named 1001/2 because we were not assigned a proper place in the venue and had to squueeze ourselves in between booths 100 and 101) was resourced with paper, pens and other stationary items that we had scrounged from other exhibitors, and yet we were equipped with a number of digital devices (iPod Touches, iPads, laptops, cameras) that enabled us to exist online and engage visitors with the concept of a virtual school. We certainly confused a few people. "So, what time does your pop up school start?" and "Do the students have to wear a uniform?" were frequently asked questions. But I like to think that we also raised a few eyebrows and delighted a few visitors with our proposition that the idea of a school is changing due to the different ways in which we are able to learn in the 21st century. I am tempted to book a ticket to LWF2012 to see what a big budget "pop-up university of the future" might look like. You get a 'free' iPad if you book in the next two days (price £800). However, I hope that it will look and feel and function a bit more like this. Friday, 21 October 2011Musical bicycleCheck out this demonstration of collaborative creativity: What if you would be able to generate music by the simple act of riding your bike? This project started with that question. We have build the first prototype and thanks to Jeffry Sol and Vincent Beijersbergen we were able to do so in a month. And yes it was pretty difficult, but loads of fun.... the idea is pretty simple; basically, a wheel and dynamo work the same way as a record player. But it was not as easy as it looks. First, we had to come up with a solution for the wheels; how can we change the records? The forfork was blocking the wheel. That's why we changed a 30 year old bike into a lefty bike; and build a construction that would still support the weight and would be strong enough for people to ride on it. The biggest challenge of all was to make sure that the needles would stick to the record and follow the grooves, without skipping too much. Therefor we bought two vertical record players and took them apart, to see how they worked. Also; we wanted our bike to be as low tech as possible; that's why the only "extra" energy we used was a 9 volt battery to support the amplifier. In order for the records to run smoothly, we also had to change the crank of the bike and the chain. After that, we build our own horn, to have some extra volume, and we sprayed the whole bike black. We had some sponsors like bikestores, handy people and DJ's and that's how our dream in progress turned out to be real... Here's to the crazy ones; thank you guys, you rock. - Merel, Pieter and Liat
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CREATIVE TALLIS
Promoting creative learning at Thomas Tallis School
