Developing Key Skills in ICT & Visual Communication Assignment

The development of my ideas started at friendship. Through this section of my sketchbook I looked at how items in the photographs could inspire my final piece. One of my ideas was to create a flower or bouquet made out of photographs that showed strong emotions about my friendship group. The second idea was to sketch a mirror image of how I see myself and how I feel about where I belong. The next section focuses on a class trip to Athens. The inspiration here was a statue of Leonidas, seen in one of the photos. My idea was to create a helmet or sculpture to signify my sense of safety with my friends. By looking at my photographs of Rome, I felt strongly inspired by the architecture and statues. I thought about making my own scale model of a temple of safety and self reflection. Rome also influenced the idea to create a sculpture. New York City is where my heart truly lives; visiting there took my breath away. The atmosphere is electric and the people are so friendly, that I really felt at home there and this is why I have chosen to base my final piece on America as whole. I felt like I belonged in the USA and my desire to visit more cities inspired me to create my own American flag. I have included a colour test page to show what different colours mean, this helped to influence the colour scheme of my final piece. The artist I looked at was Jasper Johns, he did some work using the American flag. His website is found at: http://www.jasperjohns.com/art.shtml

Guest lecturer on 28th February

Our guest lecturer today was Mike Day, Chair of the Education Committee and Senior Cabinet Member, City & County of Swansea. He discussed how education policy and politics in everyday situations. I learnt that development of policy and politics is down to the practitioners (teachers/lecturers), politicians and Local Education Authority. It is developed on many levels, including the Welsh Government. I found the topic very interesting and compelling.

Guest lecturer on 14th February

Today's guest lecturer was Olive Hopker, Head of Planning and Development SMU. I found this lecture hard to follow because of all the noise in the theatre. Olive talked about 'Collaboration vs Competition' and they way in which it is developed in various contexts for learning. I didn't know where to start with all of the information that is found online. I didn't understand the topic as it was hard to follow what was being discussed.

Looking at advertising

In today's seminar with Suzie, we looked at advertising on youtube.com. I enjoyed the session because I've never looked at an advert and picked out all the interesting details that are in them; and I never really thought much into the message they are trying to convey to the people interested in the product. I found the session very helpful for looking at adverts in depth.

Sessions with Suzie Pugh

I don't see myself as very 'artsy' but I've enjoyed the sessions that we've had with Suzie so far. I enjoy working with computers because I consider them generally 'easy to get on with', where as I never really enjoyed an of my art lessons in school. We have talked a bit about the assignment for visual communication in our seminars and I feel like I have an idea of where to start and where this might take me. Since then we have had to create posters based on a sense of belonging. Mine mainly consisted of pictures reminded me of home; like a picture of a cat, lasagne (YUMMY!) and some dolls that reminded me of child hood.

I have taken, to the seminar, some items with an interesting stories behind them. One was a rock taken from the ruins of Sparta in Greece. This was from an ancient history trip two years ago. The next was my Rosary, from another ancient history trip to Rome, last year. This was the year that the Icelandic volcano erupted and the week long trip became a fortnight long trip in such a beautiful city!

Last week we talked about metaphors in song lyrics and had to come up with our own examples. One that I can remember was 'beautiful disaster' by Kelly Clarkson.

For today's session we had to think of an emotion to express and go around campus taking photos of the chosen emotion. I have chosen anger, so I have decided to take my camera around the city centre to see what I can find on my travels. Once I'm happy with my selection they will be uploaded onto my blog for all to see!

'What is Education?' sessions

It was sad to have found out that Andy is unwell, especially over Christmas and New Year. We have had some guest lecturers in place to take Andy's sessions for him. I found the sessions by Steve Gullick very interesting as I had no idea that what the role of the governors in a school is, his way of teaching was very engaging and I enjoyed his sessions.

Text-image.com

I created this image using text-image.com. I chose the picture from the sample images folder on the computer and entered the words educational studies into the site so they would report to create the picture of the tulips. I like the way the picture turned out, however I should have made the text a bit larger so that the words could be seen.