Architecture Centre Network -ACN

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At the end of this month I am off to London. Myself and Tassy Thomson from The Lighthouse. We have been asked to run a workshop for Architecture education staff from around the UK.

This is not the first time myself and Tassy have worked together. In fact we are old friends.

The invite came about from working on a workshop last summer in Finland courtesy of The Alvar Aalto Institute. Where we developed resources to allow young people to explore the built environment. I suggested using ICT (no surprise) to record what the young people experienced.

Therefore we have asked to give examples of cheap ways of using ICT to work with young people.

One thing I am keen to do is to get the pupils on Islay to get involved. I have ask 3 pupils to demonstrate the use of sketchup/Google earth via Video Conference and a bridge to the Internet.

Tassy has suggested getting the participants to come up with an educational project proposal using the skills introduced during the workshop and getting feed back from the pupils on Islay. I think this a great idea. It has several outcomes. The first and most obvious is that the participants will take away some real and practical but to me the idea of pupils on a Scottish island telling people in London how to do something and having their opinion listened too is a huge psychological switch. This will boost the confidence of the pupils and make the big city people think wider in how and who they work with.

The app's we will introduce are:

 

Sketchup 3d modeling app which can place buildings into

Google Earth

Picassa Cataloguing app but has some simple image editing

The Gimp full blown image editor – Shame about the name

Audacity – powerful sound editor

Freemind – mind mapping app

Photostory – simple app to create sound, image based video

Westpoint Bridge Design – engineering bridge solutions

Pre installed Windows

Moviemaker

Pre installed Apple

GarageBand

iMovie

and

Useful websites no particular order

http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/ General use for using mobile ICT

http://www.createascape.org.uk/ Great to start off on how to

http://www.geolit.org/RockvilleCSI/ Cemetry Scene Investigation Pupils investigating their own community

http://www.enquiringminds.org.uk/ I love this way of working

http://www.spokenword.ac.uk/padova.php Picked this up at BarCampScotland

http://bridgecontest.usma.edu/ Bridge engineering site

http://www.teachers.tv/ Lots of uses to link to the curriculum

http://www.creativecommons.org.uk/ understanding creative commons

http://www.flickr.com/ of course!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki A great example of a wiki

http://www.wikispaces.com/ a space to create a starting wiki Maybe for the participants on the day

 

So what have I missed out on? Anything I should add in?

 

Technorati tags: islay, argyll, education scotland, architecture, education, ACN

Google Sketchup

 We have been developing the use of Google Sketchup.

I think this is a good way of introducing the concept 3D drawing.

We have been using Pro/Desktop for a few years. This a great application but has a sever learning curve to get you going. Even with the help of the CADinSchool site.

The pro/desktop application from PTC is a full CAD package. In schools this can be bought for £90 for 300 licence's. As you can see this alone makes it an interesting package but you can only get it at this price if you complete the training.

Do you think this a model for the future? Educational use at a reasonable price but only if you have invested the time in learning how to use the app properly.

Google Sketchup I saw as the way of introducing this professional level CAD work in S1/2 but the senior courses are using it too. Do I stop them? Do I direct them to use a much more complex application? So long as the results are what they design and not simplify their designs to make them easier to draw.

The framework to introduce Sketchup in S1 is to take a woodwork model they have already made and redraw it on the computer.

In S2 after drawing the school we are investigating old villages on Islay and starting to draw the buildings in Sketchup. The next part is to place these old villages on Google Earth. The pupils have responded extemely well. They are starting to realise how large the population of Islay was (15000 compared to 3500 now). 

Technorati tags: Google Sketchup, Islay, education scotland, CAD