Assignment 04/27: Circuit

 

Here is the outcome of my circuit project. I made a street light using the toolkit that I got from the studio. This is my first time making a circuit project and it was a very fun try-out. I appreciate Qing's instructions on how to establish a circuit step by step. I observed her while she made hers, and then I followed her to make my project. It is a great learning experience with peers. 

I took the first step to mapping out the circuit by drawing on paper. Then, I put the metal sticky paper along the line and connect it to the bulb and the battery. For the best effect, I tried a lot to adjust the location of the battery. 

Two takeaways

“Schools can have access to everything in terms of money and technology, but they must have teachers who show how to use them correctly,”

I do agree that the quality of teaching is the key to a good learning effect. Teachers play an important role in integrating technologies in the classes. Technologies themselves can not fulfill certain learning objectives. Only after the careful course design, the adoption of technologies can best support the objectives and achieve better outcomes, 

“The greatest impact probably came as an assessment and communication tool–students were able to document and assess their growth as an artist as well as communicate with others about art. It leveled the playing field for students because each student had a voice and the time and safe place they needed to use that voice.”

It is true that the electronics have affordances for communication and assessment tools. The horizon of students is expanded a lot with electronics and people are connected together. That is why connectivism came out. Connectivists stressed the importance of establishing connections with the outside world. In this way, students can reach out to abundant resources. With the help of electronics, students do not need the super brain to memorize knowledge but need to know how to access the knowledge. 

Assignment 04/20: 3D fabrication

I teamed up with Qing again for this project. We made a seal, which is a device for making an impression in wax, clay, paper, or some other medium, including an embossment on paper, and is also the impression thus made.

In most traditional forms of dry seal the design on the seal matrix is in intaglio (cut below the flat surface) and therefore the design on the impressions made is in relief (raised above the surface). The design on the impression will reverse (be a mirror-image of) that of the matrix, which is especially important when script is included in the design, as it very often is. This will not be the case if paper is embossed from behind, where the matrix and impression read the same way, and both matrix and impression are in relief. However engraved gems were often carved in relief, called cameo in this context, giving a "counter-relief" or intaglio impression when used as seals. The process is essentially that of a mould.

We divided the work first. Qing took the responsibility for doing the design and I took the responsibility for 3D printing. She used Tinkercad to finish the design. Tinkercad is definitely a user-friendly web software for us to do 3D design. Then, I went to the studio and printed it out. I appreciated the help from the studio staff. With their assistance, I figure out how to use support for the overhanging parts of our project. After following the instructions, we finally printed our project out. It looks good! 

Assignment 04/13: 3D design

 

I created a toy bear using Tinkercad. I made this bear following a youtube video. Even though the video is just 3 minutes or so, it took me some time to pause and do it myself. I found the tricky part was the adjustment of the three dimensions. 

I think Tinkercad is a beginner-friendly web app that allows beginners to master the tool very quickly. The user interface is easy to navigate. There are some basic shapes that users can use. I also found that it allows users to import 2D/3D files, but I never tried it. Overall, I enjoy using Tinkercad to do 3D design due to its simplicity. 

Thought of Final Project

The three keywords I got are sculpture, digital drawing, and voice. I am thinking about using digital drawing to make a 3D model to represent the voice and then make a sculpture.

Take-away from the reading 

"The  real  power  of  any  technology  is  not  in  the  technique  itself or in the allure it generates, but in the new ways of personal expression it enables, the new forms of  human interaction it facilitates, and the powerful ideas it makes accessible to children. "

I agree with this point of view.  When we attempt to integrate technologies into education, we cannot put the learners aside and we should always bear learning goals in our minds. Otherwise, technologies won't be an effective way to boost the learning effect. I also oppose that we pay more attention to the interactions between technologies and human beings rather than interactions among people. 

Assignment 4/6: 2D Fabrication

 

I teamed with Qing Tian to complete this mini-project. The outcome is a dice with the patterns of Mahjong.

Mahjong is a traditional tile-based game in China, which enjoy great popularity among people of different ages. In most variations, each player begins by receiving 13 tiles. In turn, players draw and discard tiles until they complete a legal hand using the 14th drawn tile to form four melds (or sets) and a pair (eye). There are several sets of symbols. Pie is one of them. For our project, we chose pie as the pattern on the dice. 

Before we went to the studio, we downloaded images from the internet and processed them into black-and-white. I edited them in Adobe Illustrator to make sure the file followed the standards. 

With the assistance of Kelly,  we successfully finished the presetting. Ready to send it to the machine.

Working...

The patterns and squares were perfectly made. We cut them off the cardboard and glued them together. It is a tricky task.