Along with updating my Blackboard site, my unit plans and assessment tasks, I thought it might be time to upgrade the look of my blog was well.
I’ve been trying to catch up on reading my RSS feeds and I took note of a post from e1evaition on ‘Top 10 Free WordPress 3.0 Ready themes’ via specky.com. I ended up with Suffusion which I like because it is quite flexible enabling me to customize the look. It’s clean and has options the older theme didn’t offer. So Voila! Here is the new look blog.
Time is running out and graduation is just around the corner. As part of their post-exam activities my AP Studio Art classes are staging an exhibition of their portfolios this week. They have also each designed a clock to sell to raise money for charity. I have been impressed with their enthusiasm for the event and feel like we struck the right balance in combating ‘senior-itis’. Part of the fun has been having them use Illustrator to design an individaul invitiation to the show with at least one of their artworks on it. The plan is to invite friends and teachers along on Thursday during lunch and after school on Friday when they will be available to talk about their work with their guests. What could be a more authentic culminating event for these young artist than an exhibition they have organised!
Cover design by Kaori in AP Art
This year ASIJ as a school has made a conscious effort to ‘go green’; we have had solar panels put in, we don’t use heat or cooling for a month of the year, and the worm farm is consuming scraps from the kitchen. Likewise the Yearbook has followed suit. Our attempts to make small changes with an eye for the environment have included reducing the total page count to 178 from last years’ 208 pages. We will also be printing on 100% recycled paper and the cover will also be a recycled product (called Tyvek) made from PET bottles.
It sometimes feels like the problems to do with the environment are too big to make a practical difference to, and that our individual efforts are isolated attempts that don’t amount to much. There is, however a growing community of artists, designers, scientists and educators who care about the environment in practical ways. I was very inspired by WilliamMcDonough & Braungarts’ book, Cradle to Cradle; an account of how they, an architect/designer and a scientist, are changing everyday designs for a sustainable future. The book itself is not made of paper (it’s a polymer) their desire is to make things that have a continuous cycle–that the product can be broken down and be fully recycled with a minimum amount of degrading of the components.
I hope that each year we can move closer to this ideal. In the mean time my class captured some of that sentiment for the front page of Chochin.
A book with a theme to match the one of the school year. A book created to preserving your memories of ’08-’09, a year dedicated to preserving the environment. Even the less awake of us, or those suffering from senioritis, may remember the lack of heat, the wind turbine spinning, and for those in cooking, trips to the compost. But after you say goodbye to ASIJ, these memories may not stay with you. Even if you don’t remember, the earth will; these small contributions annoying to some of us, have had significant results.
I’m glad it’s finished for another year 
The next few post will be about how ASIJ is tackling the ‘Green’ theme.
Having students take the initative is always inspiring & so when a group of students sponsored a ‘Green’ Fashion show to reinforce the recycling campaign it was one of those moments. An assembly period was given over for the high school to see student designers present garments made from reclaimed and recycled materials such as paper, plastic bags & recycled fabrics. It was a fun and creative way to raise awareness.
Next, what Yearbook is doing for the environment.
I’ve been enjoying using the color mixing tool Kuler.Adobe (screen grab below). I have been playing with it to help sort out color options for some pattern designs I am working on. What I like about it that it offers you a selection of themes others have already come up with, as well as the option to create your own schemes. Colors specs are offered in HSV, RGB, CMKY, Lab and HEX. It is a neat tool to offer student too.
In 2007 we shifted to an in-house production of the yearbook at ASIJ. I found the artificial deadlines that a ‘yearbook company’ imposed frustrated the process and the opportunity for students to gain a ‘real world’ experience of producing a publication. Making the switch resulted in huge benefits; we had more control over the production, and the printing quality improved while reducing the overall costs. Obviously printing companies don’t want everything arriving at the same time. If their main work is yearbooks then they have to collect work periodically to spread out the flow. There have been no regrets with making the shift.
I recently watched Johnathan Harris’s talk on TED about some of his work. As a result of having some genuine questions about ‘what’ his work is myself; art or something else? I decided that UNIVERSE would be an interesting piece to base a Socratic Seminar on.
A couple of the Program Outcomes for the Computer Art & Design course directly influenced my planning; they were “Examine and interpret various art and design work from cultural and historical contexts”, and “Know that art and design is a part of world culture and is continuously evolving and influencing aspects of society.”
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