Teaching Practice Report

Teaching Practice Report

Core plan and the teaching practise report aid the student in self-evaluation and in gaining awareness of his/her pedagogical thinking. The teaching practise starts with a start-up seminar and continues with individual schedules in the selected school or institute. A closing seminar, where students exchange their experiences, concludes the teaching practise.
The contents of the practise report should contain the writer’s views on teacherhood in general, one’s view of himself/herself as a teacher as well as one’ progress as a teacher. 

• Compared to the core plan, how well do thing you have succeeded in carrying out the a) planned teaching training: b) selected teaching methods and c) student assessment? 
• What feedback did you get from the students? How did you gather the feedback? 
• What were the group’s learning outcomes? 
• What ideas for further development did you get based on the success of your training period? 
• How do you evaluate your own progress (self-evaluation) and the matters that affected your progress? 
• What is the view of your own learning that evolved in your mind during the training period? What kinds of future visions did arise to aid your further development as a teacher? 
• Length: 10 pages or so is suitable. 
• Return the practise report to your tutors well before the final seminar.

Here is the link to my Teaching Practice Report based on my practice at Art School Maa, Espoo International School and observations at Aalto University Media and Photography department.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983Cnuam9UU2NJNnVpZ3c/edit?usp=sharing

Reflection on Introduction To Intercultural Communication course

Reflection on Introduction To Intercultural Communication course at University of Jyväskylä

I have an interest in intercultural communication through my studies and work experience in teaching. Intercultural communication is a topic in our pedagogical studies, called Global and Multicultural Activities where the learning objectives are: 

“The student teacher understands the role of the cultural background in the human behaviour. The student teacher is able to support the student’s adjustment process in a new environment. The student teacher is also able to guide and enhance the learning of a multicultural group. The student teacher knows the various sectors of the school’s international activities and is able to enhance his/her own globalization processes as well those of the students”. (VOC2, iVet course).

I found the course very interesting and I learned a lot about the meaning of intercultural communication from different cultural perspectives. For example, Professor Galina Elizarova’s video lectures were very interesting, as I saw that there were some comparisons between Serbian and Russian culture. Especially in the attitude to arguments, these can be also described as lenient or holistic. ‘Russian language has the more holistic approach to arguments were the rules of traditional logic may not apply and the arguments are drawn from many different areas and fields’. ( Elizarova, video lecture, date of retrieval 28.05.2014). This I believe is also the case with Serbian language as well.

I learned a lot from Benet's developmental model. We looked at the model of intercultural sensitivity that has six stages: denial, defence, minimization, acceptance, adaptation and integration. I think that I am in the acceptance stage and moving towards adaptation and integration. Sometimes the work culture can be very different in smaller and bigger organizations. Smaller teams may discuss more personal issues which some cultures might find uncomfortable. These are the areas that I find challenging.

I would actually like to show a video with Benet's developmental model to my students. I believe that they would benefit from seeing the importance of adaptation and integration of cultural differences. They are studying in an International IB school and must see the importance of these values and build on their personal experiences of different cultures.

All education should look at the global educational needs and emphasize skills in educating about racial tolerance, empathy and human rights. The knowledge of these areas is important and it can be taught in the context of individual subjects.

I guess the subject of arts and photography is perhaps more natural way to introduce the concept of intercultural competences as it has a long history of looking at cultural differences, telling the story of a certain culture and how it has evolved through history. So this is a way also for me to definitely put to use the things I have learned on the course.

Politics has pervaded our life and it is also present in education. One can’t deny that and teachers will inevitably have their own political views. Educating students to objectively read the media articles can then lead to better understanding of culture and cultural differences. There has been a shift with constructivism in education to create more active approach by students in education and a more socially and culturally aware “pedagogy of freedom”, which was promoted by Freire. So through “dialogue, caring, community, courage, ethics, and responsibility toward society” we can be questioning the status quo. (Howard, 2013, date of retrieval 17.03.2014)


References:

Elizarova, G. Video lecture. University of Jyväskylä. Date of retrieval 28.05.2014

http://moniviestin.jyu.fi/ohjelmat/hum/viesti/en/ics/7

Howard, L. A. 2013. Connecting the World to the Word, Living Newspapers and Intercultural Communication Pedagogy. Communication Pedagogy Journal of Intercultural Communication, ISSN 1404-1634, issue. Date of retrieval 17.03.2014

http://immi.se/intercultural

Teaching Digital Photography as a short elective at Espoo International School.

3 x 45 min

I have been teaching Digital photography at Espoo International School since August 2012, and I would like to demonstrate my teaching practice for the last three lessons in May 2014.

During the year students have covered many different technical aspects of digital photography such as aperture, shutter speed, exposures, editing in Corel PaintShop Pro. We have also looked at themes of portraiture, lighting, elements of composition, landscape photography and during this last few lessons I wanted to explore the idea of merging different exposures.

Lesson on the 5.05.2014 ( 45 min )

Objective of the lesson

Give students an overview of the importance of a wide range of tones in a scene and an understanding of high dynamic range photography (HDR). Recap on the use of shutter speed and its importance in determining exposure.

In the first part of the lesson I showed students a video that I thought would give them an introductions to this topic and at the same time show how the exposures are blended in Corel PaintShop Pro X2.

After the video we discussed the topic and how much was understood, I asked questions related to their previous knowledge: What is exposure ? How to create an underexposed image and what role shutter speed plays in this ?

The material that I prepared for the lesson can see here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983CnuaUxOd0k0Z0ZaeEE/edit?usp=sharing

This was followed by a practical exercise where students went outside to take images. In the last few lessons we were taking images of landscapes and I asked them to focus on landscape for this particular exercise as well. This did not work so well with some students who wanted to take images of other students or action photos. As we had to work with adjusting the shutter speed I decided to allow some flexibility and give some of the students an option to work on a series of action shots as a shutter speed exercise.

Lesson on the 12.05.2014 ( 45 min)

The objective of this lesson was to look at the student's images that were taken in the previous lesson with the different exposures and merge them in Corel PaintShop Pro X2 using a feature called HDR Exposure Merge. Most of the students were able to take images with varied exposures but some of the images did not line up perfectly so there was a slight blurring effect in the final merge. 

We have only couple of tripods in the school so it was not possible for everyone to use the tripod and have perfectly aligned images. I decided to repeat the exercise,  and this time the students who were not able to get good images were using tripod and making sure the images were aligned.

Overall I think that this exercise went well and the students were able to understand the importance of holding the camera still.

Some feedback from students :

http://padlet.com/wall/4hsnxde88hfn

Some exercises with shutter speed and HDR merge: 

HDR Merge example with the use of tripod:

Teaching Photography in Espoo International School

I have been teaching Photography in Espoo International School since September 2012, and I will give an overview of the lessons on video production and editing with year 9 for the last three weeks. I have this class once a week on Tuesdays for a double lesson (2x 45 minutes).

The objective of these few lessons was to show students the basics of filming with the video camera and also editing in Adobe Premier Elements. This was in collaboration with a Drama group students that were working on a Drama piece performance.


Week 1 (2x45min)

Objective of the lesson:

Understanding the process of creating moving images. We  looked at:

•          Camera settings
•          Frame rates
•          Video format
•          Camera moves

The first week was an introduction to using a video camera, so I demonstrated with a slide show: camera controls, frame rates, camera angles, importance of video format etc.

There was time for questions and the discussion as well. Students were curious about frame rates and I guess this perhaps comes from the more digital understanding of video technologies, such as video games where frame rates are much faster. In analogue broadcasting, which I was focusing on, the frame rates appeared very slow compared to video games.

The slide show can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983CnuWWJqdTRHQkNZUjA/edit?usp=sharing



Week 2 (2x45min)

This was then followed by a practical lesson on actual filming with video. I was inspired by a lecture on Immersive Digital Installations by Katariina Nyberg that I saw during my observations at Aalto University. Katariina filmed a symphony orchestra players from different angles and sometimes also with individual players having the camera attached to their bodies for a truly immersive view of their hand movements, whilst playing instruments etc.

I divided the students in groups since we have 5 digital cameras that can be used at School and also the drama group was divided in 3 sub-groups so that we were able to film at the same time, different parts of the performance.

The students were working on applying some of the techniques I showed them such as moving around the scene and filming from different angles. Some of the shots were taken outside which was at times difficult since we did not have an external microphone at school, and there is a lot of background noise that can interfere with the speech. In addition to that, it was not so easy to always come very close to the performers because we would have lost  the overall sense of the scene etc.


Week 3 (2x45min)

Objective of the lesson is to understand the basics of video editing in Adobe Premier Elements 11. We looked  at: 

• How to add video files and other media 
• Project assets
• Timeline 
• Trimming and splitting clips 
• Time remapping

In the following week I divided the students in groups that were still filming and the group that would be editing the videos. We have limited external space on the school computers which totals only 50GB for the whole of the school. The whole of this space would have been taken by our video footage. Luckily we had two external hard drives, but this also meant that I could only involve two students in editing. I showed some videos and slides on main points of Adobe Premier. These students have already had prior knowledge of this software as they wanted to use it for one of the Photography projects in order to animate a sequence of images.

In the following week the students that were not filming nor editing joined an art class as our last lesson of the year.

Editing in Adobe Premier Elements 11,  materials that I used can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983CnuWGFlLXhhS1g3Vm8/edit?usp=sharing

Additional training video material was shown from Lynda.com. I subscribe to their monthly service, so these videos can be only viewed with the subscription:

Grisetti. S. Up and Running with Premiere Elements 11. Date of retrieval 3.04.2014

http://www.lynda.com/sdk/Premiere-Elements-tutorials/Up-Running-Premiere-Elements-11/109763-2.html


Assessment:

The Photography class (also using digital images) was assessed with IB school criteria. The last video project was more of an optional project as it was an extra grade or a way for me to give an opportunity to students to improve their final grade. I have included the link to my project customized assessment criteria . Also the link to general information on Assessment procedures in IB schools and a link to official IB Art Middle years program that is valid from September 2014. There is also the link to my Unit plans for the period of two years with year 8 and 9, with different projects in Photography and Technology, that I worked on with students and the assessment criteria that was used.

IB - MYP Unit planners for the two year Photography and Technology electives, schemes of work.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983CnuVWlQcnI4VjlkclE/edit?usp=sharing

IB Assessment criteria adopted to Community and Service Photography project :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983CnuQVdtYzg5QWN5WWs/edit?usp=sharing

IB Art Middle years programme that is valid from September 2014

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983Cnudy1fbVVDYXJGLWM/edit?usp=sharing

Observation - Ethnomethodology – fieldwork & questionnaire design

4.03.2014, Media Lab
13:00-16:00 pm ( Ethnomethodology – fieldwork & questionnaire design,  Professor Lily Diaz-Kommonen
 )
16:00- 17:00 pm Lecture by Katariina Nyberg, Video production, installation in orchestra context, Sibelius Academy .

The lecture was focused on fieldwork and questionnaire design for designers when they are collecting information for Ethnomethodology :"Ethnomethodology is a method for understanding the social orders people use to make sense of the world through analysing their accounts and descriptions of their day-to-day experiences." (Karamjit, 1996)

Some of the important components of the fieldwork methods are  clarity, having an introduction and studying the demographics.

The interview

In designing questionnaires, the essential information comes first, for example what is the first language, age, sex, education. One can prepare a package a notebook, set of software tools, where people can make notes on a weekly basis and disposable cameras that they can use and give to collect visual information too.

In order to study social interaction and how people relate or respond to a software or a product one can use primary sources --- focus groups. It is a good method to have a social interaction. Key studies can be done over longer period of time. Field work can be for example, spending two a three days in the museum, and observing what do people do in a museum and what made them decide to look at one image etc.

Some things to take into considerations whilst designing questions: questions are simple and to the point, each question should address the single issue, check with the colleague if all the questions are intelligible, avoid leading the respondent, transcribe and quote text out, do not reveal the identity of your sources, thank the respondents at the end. Questions can be structured and unstructured. It is also important to codify the interview and make a detailed transcript with time references.

The lecture was followed by examples of students work in game design and also an art project called Race code -- an interactive installation against racism.

This was followed with a presentation by Katariina Nyberg who came to talk to us about her Immersive Digital Installations.

"She was invited for a six month internship by the digital department of the Philharmonia Orchestra, where she assisted in the Orchestra's digital installation, the Universe of Sound, helped with building their new website and edited films as well as organised film shoots." ( ExClaM, date of retrieval 15.05.2014)

http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/universeofsound

She is also part of the company called ExClaM  who organises events in Helsinki with the view of creating immersive experiences between musicians, dancers and digital artists. 

This is something I would like to explore in my teaching, especially for example in installation art or performance art, there are elements that can be explored in the similar way.  

References

Karamjit S. G. 1996. Human machine symbiosis. Springer. Page 330.

Huffpost Arts & Culture, Satter, R.2012. "Universe of Sound" Installation at London Science Museum Puts You on Conductor's Stand. Date of retrieval 15.05.2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/22/universe-of-sound-london-science-museum_n_1536463.html

ExClaM. Date of retrieval 15.05.3014
http://www.exclam.fi/index.php

Observation-Human-centered design methods

25.02.2014, Media Lab

13:00-16:00 pm ( Human-centered design methods, Professor Lily Diaz-Kommonen )

16:00- 17:00 Lecture by Anton Sormina on Synaesthesia in the art of Jean Sibelius

The students are preparing an interactive design project for Ateneum Gallery, 100 year anniversary of Jean Sibelius.

The lecture was very interesting and it raised questions about serendipity in design. There is usually intention to design something but it ends up being something else since humans are unpredictable. We can use the phone as an example since the idea of the phone was not intended for the purpose it is used today and the 'evolution' of the mobile phone is remarkable since a lot of the work has gone into creating a smart phone.

The same can be said for Douglas Englebart's staged public demonstration of a networked computer system, held at the Augmentation Research Center -- the first public appearance of the mouse, windows, hypermedia with object linking and addressing, and video teleconferencing. It is amazing to think how far we have developed since 1968.

Another interesting Human-cantered design methods Lily showed us was using comic strips to visualize design specification:

Scenario design exercise

1. Context

2. Persona – actor

3. Plot – imagine and depict the sequence of actions and events

4. Interaction

 This is a good way to document how well a product has been made and how people can understand the different processes. There is also the room for serendipity as quite often artifacts are made for one purpose and end up being used for another.

Is the whole reason in design to make life easier?

Kinect for Windows

The lecture by Anton Sormina on Synaesthesia in the music of Jan Sibelius was truly fascinating. The students were invited to create an interactive piece for an exhibition at Ateneum museum celebrating the 100th anniversary of Jean Sibelius.

“For him there existed a strange mysterious connection between sound and colour, between the most secret perceptions of the eye and ear. Everything he saw produced a corresponding impression on his ear … And this he thought natural, with a good reason as those who did not possess this faculty, called him crazy or affectedly original …”

Paul 1891, quoted in Karl Ekman 1956:52

The connection between art and music is something that the students at Taidekoulu Maa have also been exploring though music video pieces and also various experimental audio and sound pieces. I really liked the way Anton Sormina brought many references to art that perhaps inspired Sibelius in his work for example stories of Kalevala. Lemminkäisen äiti (1891) painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, inspired Lemminkäinen suite by Sibelius.

Observation- The analysis of artefacts lecture

18.02.2014

 Professor Lily Diaz-Kommonen
 13:00 -16:00


The analysis of artefacts lecture gave an interesting insight into the ontology of design or the nature of objects. For example first we looked at the design of a cup. We can analyse the cup through: style, manufacture, material, and context (historical –cup in a museum or a designer cup for example).

The cup can be made of porcelain or paper. Form can be cylindrical or spherical. If we analyse the shape we can say that in order to be the cup it has to cover the bottom and be closed at one end.

So we can ask the question, how much do these objects influence our behavior? How is it that we make the shapes of objects?

“Experience design (XD) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions”.

As opposed to the material world of objects there is also the digital domain or virtual world where the  properties of objects can acquire new dimensions, for example we could be teleporting  the cup from one space to another in a game. 

After the lecture we worked in groups in order to go over the properties of different Social Media tools such as ( Pintrest, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc.) in order to define what is a social media tool?

The students on another course have come up with some ideas for these properties such as : intuitive, allows monetization, public, easy to use etc and we had to refine and modify them.

Reference:

Wikipedia. Experience Design. Date of retrieval 14.05.2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_design