A couple of very interesting tutorials that will show you how to create typographic portraits. I have sorted the tutorials from easy to more difficult (which also implies from less to more complex and striking):

1. Koh, Johnson. “Make yourself an Amazing Typographic Portrait | 10Steps.SG.”10Steps.SG – Photoshop Tutorials and Resources. 2 Oct. 2009. 27 Oct. 2009 <http://10steps.sg/tutorials/photoshop/make-yourself-an-amazing-typographic-portrait/>.
2. Grove, Stacey. “Typographic Portraits.” Advanced Photoshop 6 Sep. 2009: 44-47.
3. Sergio. “Typographic Portrait like Grammy’s Posters | PSDTOP Blog – Design Tips, Photo Effects, Icon Creation, Special Effects and Links.”Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – Design Tips, Photo Effects, Icon Creation, Special Effects and Links, PSD tuts, PSD. 9 Jan. 2009. 27 Oct. 2009 <http://www.psdtop.com/blog/photo-effects/typographic-portrait-like-grammys-posters/>.

For source number 2, the magazine’s web site is www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk. The issue number is 61.

Courtesy of a colleague from the Science Department, do take a look at this amazing video about an interesting piece of technology: the touchtable.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/231-touchtable.html

Guiding Question/Problem: How to promote an intercultural environment in our school?

Link to an Area of Interaction: Community and Service – Learning and teaching about some else’s culture

Links to Approaches to Learning: All; emphasis: Information Literacy, Organisation and Study Skills, Reflection

Duration: 6 weeks, starting from 19.Oct.2009

Context and challenge: Use the MYP Design Cycle and your computer skills, design and create a suitable product that reflects a culture other than your own, in response to the guiding question/problem for this project.

Possible Interdisciplinary Links: Language B, Humanities (World History and Geography)

MYP Technology Design Cycle Outline:
Criterion A: INVESTIGATE

1. Identify the problem (say what the problem is)
2. Explain the problem and say why it is relevant (important)
3. Find information about the problem from many different, good sources
4. Summarise each source
5. Evaluate those sources (say why they are good/better/best) and state how you used them
6. Develop a design brief: Say how you will solve the problem you identified, in general terms.
7. Prepare a design specification: a detailed description of how your solution must be so you can solve the problem, everything you need for your solution (or to make the product) and what your solution can and cannot do. What you write here has to be important for you (the designer) and the user (the person/people who will use or be helped by your solution or product). All your suggested and appropriate solutions will need to meet the terms of the design specification.
8. Describe (say in detail) how you are going to test your product against the design specification (how you will check whether you product sticks to the specification)

Criterion B: DESIGN

1. Compare each possible mode (media) against your design specifications
2. Create at least one original design for each mode
3. Choose one mode and justify your choice in terms of how it meets your design specifications
4. Make several different designs for the mode you chose
5. Explain how each of your designs meet (or not) the design specification (you can show how you are going to implement each design specification element in each layout/design)
6. Choose one (or more, if appropriate) design and explain in detail:

• Why you chose that design and not the others
• How and why it meets the requirements of your design specification better than the others you dropped.

Criterion C: PLAN

1. Make a detailed plan of steps (in proper logical order) describing how you will use:
   • The resources (everything you’ll use to create your product and/or what you need to implement your solution)
   • The steps you need to take (what you will do) to create the product
   • The time (timeline, Gantt chart, when you’ll do it)
2. Explain and evaluate your plan (pros and cons / strengths and weaknesses, what if… alternatives for the weak points)
3. Justify any modifications you made to your design (the one you chose in the previous step)

Criterion D: CREATE

1. Follow your plan, justifying any modifications you make (if you deviate from your plan and/or your design)
2. Document the creation of your product using a journal (Format: Date, Comments, Screenshots, explanation of screenshots, problems, how you solved them, and any modifications)
3. Your product must be as good as possible (of “Appropriate quality”1) using the resources available to you and/or those resources you have chosen to use (in the planning section)

Criterion E: EVALUATE

1. Objectively evaluate your product/solution based on:
   • Does the product do what you said in the design brief?
   • Does the product meet your goal and solve the problem?
   • The results from the ways of testing2 the design specs.
   • How would you improve on these ways of testing the design specifications?
2. Explain how your product/solution can be improved based on the feedback and evaluation you have done
3. Evaluate your own performance at each stage of the design cycle (compare initial and final Gantt charts, talk about strengths and weaknesses, etc.)
4. Suggest improvements to your performance at each stage of the design cycle
5. Explain how your product/solution will impact/change/improve (people’s) life, society, and/or the environment
6. The usefulness of your project for your intended audience
7. Your use of the IT tools that were available to you
8. Your ability to follow the design cycle & the links to the AOI’s
9. Users of online social media, IT lab and software, Internet and library.
10. Promote awareness of health and social issues related to the topic.
11. Ability to research effectively from various sources
12. Refine publishing and presentation skills
13. Expose students to “product testing” and feedback

* Appropriate quality: This is the best product/solution that you can produce, taking into account the resources available (hardware, software), the skills and techniques you have used, your educational development (what you know and have learned), how the product/solution addresses the identified need, and aspects of safety and ergonomics.
^ Product testing: Here is where you show people your product and give them the tests that you created at the end of your investigation section. You can also check if the product solves the problem / fulfill the need, applied to the context and presented to the end-users or target audience.

Current Project: How do I see myself & others?

Context and challenge:

Investigate and reflect on the influence that peers, mass media, prejudice, and stereotypes play on how we see and think of ourselves and others; how does this affect the way we interact and treat one another? What is your response?
Use the MYP Design Cycle and your computer skills, design and create a suitable product that promotes a healthy self image.

Guiding Question/Problem: How do I see myself and others?

Link to an Area of Interaction: Health and Social Education

Develop a sense of responsibility for your own well-being and for your psychological, physical and social environment.

Links to Approaches to Learning:

All; emphasis: Reflection, Organisation and Study Skills, Information Literacy.

Homework:

Bring two possible topics for next lesson, so we may start with the Investigation stage straight away.

Download the corresponding MYP project planner here

Please head to this webpage for a list of links and information on Free Web Creation Software.

http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmleditors/tp/freewineditors.htm

If you need free software to burn your CDs/DVDs with your products and soft copies of your work, you may use

• Burn for Mac OS X or
• CDBurnerXP for Windows (works on Windows XP, Vista, etc.)

August 20, 2009 The 2009 International Olympiad in Informatics has been won by the 14 years old Henadzi Karatkevich using Free Pascal. For this contest only the gcc and Free Pascal compilers were allowed. Lazarus was available as editor.

Today I caught a TV programme that may be useful to some of you.

Channel 71, Discovery Science: The Reinventors, Season 2, Episode 1.

Deals with the machine gun, so get your research cap on and check it if you think it may be useful to your particular topic!

For year 4 students, here are the resources for our first MYP full Design Cycle project.

• MYP Planner (Aug 2009)
• MYP project annotated assessment rubric

Nothing terribly subject related, but still worth checking out: