I must say that I have found the digital art course rewarding. All the lectures have been useful and todays workshop on projecting art run by Rodney has made me realise that I too could incorporate video into my work. I thought I might add that comment to my blog as I have no quibble with the actual course content or teachers, only with the system (which needs fixing).
I enjoy the unmarked components of the course (Illustrator, digital projection). Staff and students relax and we learn just as much (or more) but in a much more collaborative atmosphere.
We got our ‘interim’ marks for this last unit the other day. There is increasingly disgruntled muttering among the students and I have the feeling that many more students are now agreeing with the premise I argued last year, that giving marks impedes rather than encourages learning.
Each time we get marks people compare them and each semester there are new anomalies that just don’t make sense. Everyone knows about them … they are unfair. Sometimes they are grossly unfair.
Last semester in eArt, it seemed that if you could demonstrate that if you had learned the technical procedures required then you got full marks. Essentially it seemed to be a pass/fail mark. I thought that eminently sensible. Some students who had done eArt as a major only turned up for the last presentation and could demonstrate without attending any of the sessions that they were conversant with the techniques. I have no problem at all with that – if you already know stuff, why come and be bored by the lectures?
This term we have been given interim marks. Suddenly we are being marked on things like ‘conceptual development’. Why is this I wonder? I suspect few of us bothered to explain our ideas for our movies as the emphasis was very much on learning the techniques and since there was very little help from staff at the workshops, most of our time was taken in experimenting with the software. We did have a concept in our group, rather a good one I thought, but since no one pointed out that explaining the concept was important, I doubt that any of us did.
I just looked on the wiki blog and I see that there is a note about being marked on ‘technical and conceptual’ development. The blog changes constantly and I am almost skeptical enough to think the ‘conceptual development’ part it might have been put up recently when it became obvious that lack of tuition meant that we could not be marked on the audio part. I attended all lectures and workshops and I don’t remember anyone telling us that noting our conceptual concepts was important for marks.
I am getting increasingly cranky about this inappropriate marking system impacting on our creativity and I am intending to argue for us all to be given a pass/fail mark for eArt. A pass/fail system would encourage the second to last ‘learning outcome’ noted for this class, which is to be able to work co-operatively. I think this outcome is much more likely when the emphasis is not on marks.
I would encourage staff at the Otago Art School to explore the system used by the School of Art Institute of Chicago. You can see it on their school Wiki . The quote below in italics is quote from their Wiki.
Grading System
SAIC does not utilize a standard grading system. All academics are marked as credit no credit meaning C or above is pass, and below a C is fail.[1] It is a practice intended by the school to encourage exploration and growth without worry for failure at the bias of a professor. Most students are drawn to this unconventional structure since art cannot always be graded like traditional academics. This grading system is dependent upon a student’s personal ambition and requires more effort from the student as there are no marks for the student to use as academic measures or comparisons to peers.
Could someone please explain to me why we don’t have such a system? I think a lot of the students who currently do minimal work would be inspired to do much better if given such a chance.
It was good to have the opportunity to fiddle with another piece of software. They get easier to use the more often we fiddle. Learn one and the rest are easier, just like other languages actually.
This is my photoshopped (photochopped?) image. I have added coffee workers (around the tables) and a 1930s coffee drinker (to the newspaper) to my own image, taken in a coffee shop.
Actually the coffee workers were what I really wanted to include in the image to remind us that the coffee we all drink doesn’t appear magically out of the machine.
I included the 1930’s coffee drinker just to practice photoshop a bit more.
Below are the original pictures that have been photoshopped into the large one. Both are from the book Coffee by Claudia Roden (London, Faber 1977). The bottom image (coffee drinker) has been darkened and the contrast increased.
I read in the email from Julie today that the audio has to be synergistic with the video … so I am posting the whole video as the previous post was just some loops.
I must admit I found not having anyone to teach us how to do the audio until week 7 very frustrating. Had I had a bit of instruction my finished movie would have looked quite different, but I just didn’t know how to record onto Premier (or any other medium) so I had to use music from a CD.
Posted by Eliz 
Posted by Eliz 
Posted by Eliz 
