WALLS

I wanted to continue my work with the group about Walls today, but decided to ease off a bit on the philosophical viewpoint. For a summary of our previous session, which cause frustration on both sides, click here.

Today we started by reading together the Dr Seuss book The Butter Battle Book.

It's an entertaining book with wonderful illustrations and the usual Seuss patter. However, as with many Seuss classics, it also have a deeper message. This one is about the escalation of a disagreement between two groups of people, until the point where both are threatening to drop a bomb which will annihilate everyone and everything.

We discussed the deeper themes of the book, such as how the groups got into the dispute, and also whether it is an easy situation to resolve. We noticed that both groups feel very strongly about which side of the bread the butter should go on, and whether this is an important issue or not, their fervour in pursuing their point of view could not be denied.

It would be too simplistic to ask them to put aside their differences.

 

We didn't solve the bigger issues in the world today, but the discussion was interesting and varied. At the end of the session all the students wrote down a conversation between two people who held different views of a relatively unimportant issue. (Muffins or cupcakes? Apple or pc? Belt or no belt?



WALLS

An interesting topic for discussion this afternoon. We discussed the theme of WALLS - what they are for, why they are built, where they are built, and any famous walls we can think of. We watched a short video about Hadrian's Wall in the north of Great Britain, and discussed some other walls which we know of, such as the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China.

In the course of our discussion, we became quite bogged down. I think it was mainly disbelief that brought us to a rather frustrating halt. Having lived all their lives in a very peaceful country, many of the students struggled to understand how and why the Berlin Wall was so effective for so long, and the dreadful stories of cruelty, suffering and death that came from that time.

It caused me to wonder to myself about peace. Peace is a marvellous thing, but does it mean that our children will always struggle to relate in any way to countries that do not have it? I wondered if I was making too many assumptions about the kind of work which the group (advanced as they are) can cope with. I concluded that they are simply too young, and that empathy will come with maturity.

For more information about the Berlin Wall, click on these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
http://history1900s.about.com/od/coldwa1/a/berlinwall.htm

Exploring the World...

Today we started our session with a think about Music Composers, Artists and Creative Writers. We thought about what it is that they do, and what they have in common. We decided that they all create - they make something new. They have their own ways of interpreting their world, and putting it out there in terms of music, art or stories. Aleks used the word "processing". We acknowledged that to put your work out there for all the critique takes courage, and that many adults are far too worried about what others might say in order to create. Young people are far more willing to take risks in this way.
We finished the session by creating some artwork using a merged background - no palette, just blobs of paint straight onto the card - and then painting a foreground ontop. For inspiration we watched the Khan Academy short video on Dynamism of a Soccer Player, which you can see again by clicking here.
Even though there were "no right or wrongs", it still took courage to have a go.

Pawel Kuczynski

Pawel Kuczynski is a prolific Polish artist. His satirical works can be found all over the internet. His art is usually a reflection of his social, ecological and political opinions.
We had a chance to look at a few of his paintings, and considered the messages he might be trying to convey.

Sam suggested that something terrible had happened to the man, and he was in a depressive state. Hunter helped us all to see that the wall, ladder and fire might all be metaphorical items, all representing something going on in the man's life or in his head. What an interesting (although sinister) discussion we were able to have!

For the picture above, we all wrote down our thoughts about what the artist's message might be, or we wrote a piece of creative fiction based on thoughts and feelings inspired by the work. Here is Isellah's "take" on the painting:

 

The glass had been up for years now, they insisted it was the safest option. But we all know they're lying, we all know they're killing the air, minute by minute, second by second. My husband had already died, his lungs too weak to consume the bleak air around the city. My children were forced to wear contraptions, like masks on their faces. Their eyes were already dead. The world is not kind to us, they choose what happens, we don't even get a say. They are the killers.

What fab inspiration for a novel! :-)

To see more of Pawel Kuczynski's work, click here. Just remember that many of his images will make you feel uncomfortable; I believe that is his intention.

Oh Noes!

We're all getting used to seeing that little phrase on our screen whenever we're typing in code. :-)
This week we continued our exploration of JavaScript code. The goal was to draw the food on a dinner plate using all the codes we've learned so far. We can draw shapes such as ellipses, circles, rectangles, triangles, and arcs, plus we can change the line weight and colour, and add or delete the fill colours.
Everyone had to finish the session with a printed copy of their dinner plate for the Library wall. We had a huge variety of food on show, from Sushi to hamburgers!

Intro to Programming

Today we nearly had a full house for a very cool session on Programming. First we viewed a few Khan academy tutorials about the basics of code and how to command your computer as though it is an obedient dog. Then we got a chance to complete a few challenges.
Along the way, we learned about the parentheses ( ) the semi colon ; the parameters and the functions, and the purposes of each.
In just an hour, we went from drawing this, to drawing this! (Aleks' ice cream)

 

Here's the code for the ice cream:

Next week we will get a chance to extend our skills, and see what else can be done with programming language.



Teeny weeny group today!

We had a sum total of two students in the class today! Our school musical is going to be fantastic, but the dedication to practices does mean that other afternoon classes such as Explore It will suffer losses all this term.
Ivan and Sam already knew a lot about polyhedra... this is a particular 20-sided polyhedron called an icosahedron. It is made of twenty equilateral triangles.

In order to construct a net for it, the boys first had to learn how to draw the equilateral triangle using a compass, then repeat that process twenty times... as evenly as possible!
We actually found that the drawing part was easier than expected; it was the gluing that was tricky. Next time we're going to use a hot glue gun!
We would like to explore stellations. We hope we will have a bigger group! :-)