Design and Technology Blog

A book you will tell accounts is a fantastic illustrated history of computing and associated advertising, but you will pour over in person reliving those early days of computing.
Beautifully photographed by John Short and written by …

From zero to hero in a week and a half, and with minimal budget.

The Challenge
• Live stream the secondary school graduation of 50 students
• 100 People will be present with social distancing measures in place
• The school has no hardware or software.

A high-quality concert video that successfully shares your hard work, singing and dancing is not created in the edit. It requires forethought, creativity and a little patience. Below are the recommendations I sent to students as they guy the will be editing the school concert video

Sound
• Paul McCartney (@10:20) used to sing in the bathroom when he started the Beatles! This is because the small room with its reflective surfaces has a great natural reverb.
• Mobile phones – these have great built in mics. Stand the camera on something or be careful how you hold it as you want to record your voice not the …

These students designed a computer game to be shown at the Tokyo Indie Fest and Tokyo Sandbox event in Akihabara.

The feature that really helped their game stand out was the use of bananas to play the game! Forward, jump, left and right are triggered by touching the appropriate banana. It did help that the game was highly addictive "just one more go.. honest... just one more! As you can see by those visitors playing the game. Attendees to the Indie Fest were given free game tokens on entry, with the option to buy more. Our entry collected the most tokens! Well done boys and girls.

I run a Lego Mindstorms club with my grade 2 to grade 4 students. This isn't a project we shall be attempting anytime soon, but it's still a fascinating watch.

Although the price is high, so too is value for money and accessibility. Over time I have evaluated all sorts of programmable construction kits for students and Lego stands out as the most successfull. From a school perspective replacement parts which although still expensive are easily obtainable and are well built in the first case. All other electronic kits require the teacher to explain how they work, and enthusiasm can trail off after 30 minutes. With Lego I can simply leave a box in front of students and they will start to create with it.

Sometimes the answers to simple questions can be long and tortuous. I've spent many hours trawling Google for songs and sound effects to legally use in my Youtube Videos. Why I never thought to look at the YouTube page itself for an answer I'll never know.

From YouTube then:
• Free music - The YouTube Audio Library for music music
• Free sound effects - The YouTube Audio Library for sound effects

In a previous post I looked into…

Significantly improve all your photos and videos with this handy gripping tripod. The bendy legs will wrap them selves around pretty much anything. The magnetic feet are remarkably useful too.