Armenian Animations! The Cartoon

Thanks to Ruzanna Sarukhanyan for directing me to this Youtube channel of Armenian animations! I'll trawl through them over the next few weeks, but Ruzanna was recommending the charming 'Gtnvats eraz', about a girl who enters a dream world to find the dream her grandfather has lost...

Thanks to Ruzan! Հայկական Մուլտեր

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHido3SxxrtwZ77_OJM4xtA?feature=watch

Tara Ryan's ALIGN thought for the week...

Your Align Learning Outcomes Thought for the Week – Happy New Week, January 27th, 2014.

cartoon
From:  http://www.assuringlearning.com/

  
And for those of you who like words – here are some other thoughts: 

Learning Outcomes, Qualifications Frameworks and Quality Assurance
“It is almost a truism to say that the absorption and application of the concept of learning outcomes is the most recognisable feature of the recent Europe-wide growth in qualifications frameworks. The notion of what a qualification now represents has been fundamentally reoriented in this process – the EQF Recommendation, for example, defines a qualification as the ‘formal outcome of an assessment and validation process which is obtained when a competent body determines that an individual has achieved learning outcomes to given standards’. The architecture of qualification frameworks (level descriptors, individual qualifications descriptors etc.), at the national and European levels, are also invariably constructed as generic or specific statements of learning outcomes (knowledge, skill and competence).

And yet learning outcomes are not the preserve of qualifications frameworks alone.  The use of learning outcomes to define the expectations of learners and workers predates the recent growth in European NQFs by many years; In the context of the development of the Bologna Process, it is noteworthy that it was a group of quality assurance agencies, known collectively as the Joint Quality Initiative, who undertook much of the groundwork in specifying learning outcomes for higher education qualifications. The group’s key output, the so-called ‘Dublin Descriptors’ – generic learning outcomes descriptors for Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral Qualifications – would eventually become the centrepiece of the QF-EHEA.

In tandem with this work, quality assurance agencies also played a key role, through the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education’s (ENQA) development of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG), which provided for the development, publication and assessment of explicit intended learning outcomes, as a key element of the internal quality assurance of higher education institutions.

Since the adoption of the ESG and QF-EHEA some countries, including for example, Denmark  and Sweden, have introduced formal implementation systems for their higher education qualification frameworks, in which national quality assurance agencies play a central role in evaluating and assessing the outcomes of study programmes. Reflecting a growing awareness of the increasing role of quality agencies as key contributors to NQF implementation, ENQA has also taken the step of organising a number of seminars on the theme of qualifications frameworks and their relationship to quality assurance.  These points are well made in Referencing National Qualifications Levels to the EQF - European Qualifications Framework Series Note 3 (2nd edn., forthcoming 2013).” (Murray, J. 2013)

http://www.eu2013.ie/media/eupresidency/content/documents/QQI-Presidency-Paper-Publication-(12-March).pdf

Quality Assurance in Qualifications Frameworks An issues paper to support the Dublin Conference, organised by Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI), on behalf of the Irish Presidency of the European Council, with the support of the European Commission Authored by Dr Jim Murray (Ireland) March 2013

My New Film is Started!

This morning, after 6 months of tortuous procrastination, I finally recorded the voice guide track for my new film 'The King and the Princess'. The late late (€50) deadline for Fastnet Film Festival submissions is 16th February (23 days away)... Deadline for Yerevan Film Festival is April 15th. Might not quite be ready for Fastnet!

http://www.fastnetshortfilmfestival.com/

http://www.gaiff.am/

5 myths about MOOCs - The Times

Wow - the effortlessly scathing attacks on MOOC models continue, this time from Diana Laurilliard in timeshighereducation...

Mooc students spend the majority of their study time watching videos and reading. To aid understanding they join discussion groups with other students, and they take computer-marked tests that direct them back to material they have not understood. For feedback they exchange assignments with a partner and peer grade them against a set of criteria.

Not all MOOCs work in such an inflexible, behaviourist model. Sure, many MOOCs are overloaded with incessant (and very boring) lecture material (much of it delivered through internet video). These MOOCs are just badly designed and yes, many of them ARE American... The reality is that there's a lot of very very unprogressive learning and teaching being offered in the world, and now, unfortunately, some of this unprogressive lecturing is becoming globalised, migrating to the internet through the power of MOOC technology. Transferring bad lecturing to the web is not progressive education, it's just bad lecturing on the internet.

The so-called 'myth' of OER Open Educational Resources is also attacked in the article...

But the idea that “content is free” in education is one of several myths that have helped to inflate the bubble of hype. Yes, there is a mass of free material on the web. But for educational purposes, web content has to be curated by someone who knows how it relates to an intended learning outcome, and their work does not come free.

Absolutely! I agree! OER's do need to be carefully selected and it really helps when students are 'guided' through their learning project, with constant focus on Learning Outcomes. There's a cost (time, money, expertise) in terms of generating or creating the OERs as well. But there are other models for funding expert pedagogical curation and direction of direction. The potential of the MOOC model is that, used correctly, an expert lecturer can effectively reach, teach and guide a large cohort of interested learners.

Students can support themselves and each other through their learning journeys. The 25:1 student to tutor model mentioned in the article is, of course the optimum but... There are other models. The learning, teaching, assessment and feedback just need to be rethought, with a pedagogical shift away from behaviourist theoretical models and passive learning. Diana Laurilliard's arguments around MOOC participant dropout are the usual crazy, tired complacencies... A Duke MOOC, starting at 12,000, reaching 500 at halfway point. So what? Giving 500 students some teaching and learning benefit is still an incredible educational opportunity! Focus on the potential benefits, not on the downsides!

The model has value for professional development, providing a forum for the dissemination, discussion and development of up-to-date ideas. It could even be used to help academics, teachers and policymakers make technology work in education, and develop effective ways of tackling that huge unmet demand for higher education.

Absolutely! And I agree with the article's assertion that MOOCs can be problematic as an undergraduate learning and teaching model. I disagree with the rather snide end line...

But I have had many opportunities to observe that very intelligent people leave their brains behind when it comes to technology. The Mooc phenomenon is just further confirmation of that simple truth.

It's not about the technology! It's about the education! Technology is a tool, not a phenomenon.

MOOCs have great potential - they are NOT the solution for everything in education and they will not 'replace' conventional higher education. MOOCs can provide great learning for certain students, in certain discipline areas. I'm tired of people across education telling us that we can't do things!

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/five-myths-about-moocs/2010480.article

Yerevan - Sergey Paradjanov

Sergey Paradjanov - the highlights of my entire trip to Yerevan were walking around town for an hour with my 'terrible guide' Ruzanna from YSAFA and the trip to the Sergey Paradjanov 'house museum'. I've been stuck with three film ideas over the past six months, unable to work into the projects, static. Paradjanov's museum, his life and his work have reminded me what this is all about. 'I don't make films, I make collages'. (the actual Paradjanov quote is... 'I was not allowed to make movies and I started to make collages. Collage is a compressed film'). I must now start to make my compressed films...

Tarkovsky and Fellini both got honourable mentions in the Paradjanov museum. I was home! Now in CDG Paris on the return trip. Great trip, great people, Teaching and Learning! Exhausted.


http://parajanovmuseum.am/

Yerevan - Tempus ALIGN kick off meeting

Yerevan! It was great to meet many of the ALIGN partners, as IADT leads the first Work Programme (WP) of the Tempus ALIGN project “Achieving and checking the alignment between academic programmes and qualification frameworks”. A joy to talk Teaching and Learning with some new international friends - especially with our Armenian friends from Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts! Great presentations - and we survived minus 10 and almost 48 hours with one hour of sleep! All good.Today, I might try to locate the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinema...

http://www.yafa.am/en/?p=4924

http://www.yafa.am/en

http://ysitc.am/en/

How To Start Your Animated Short Film

So, you’ve prepped your great idea for a film, you’ve developed your story, you’ve done your designs, your storyboards – you may even have recorded a guide track and completed an animatic. Everything is good to go, but you’re wondering… What do I do next? How do I start?

In stopmotion and CGI (and somewhat in Flash), you need to get your characters built, rigged and into animation tests as soon as you can. Without these, there’s no way forward. The big danger with stopmotion and CGI (this also applies to constructing characters in Flash), is that your project now turns into a modelmaking exercise. You shift from the relative safety and security of pre-production into a similarly snuggly, safe and secure craft-based modelmaking discipline. This takes time. Everything must be perfect – all the characters, the rigs, then the sets and props… My advice is to plough through this phase quickly. Set yourself definite deadlines. Get some of your characters done and get animating. Your results onscreen will inform your modelmaking process. You need to find out early what’s working and what needs more work. There’s NO point in ending up with beautiful looking models in four or five month’s time, only to discover that they don’t animate. Build some, animate early, then build again, based on your animation learning from your tests.

This brings me to the question of time… How long DOES it take to produce a 5 minute animated short film? I would say it takes on average around 6 months. It can take substantially longer – it’s rumoured that Tony Donoghue took 8 years to shoot his beautiful ‘Irish Folk Furniture’. I made my 2010 ‘Mister Heaney, a wee portrait’ in one month and I shot the first full pass of ‘Furniture – Murder and Love’ in 23 hours (including voice record and voice edit and a nice 7 hour sleep). On average though, it takes around 6 months to make a 5 minute animated short. Time is your friend and your enemy and time must be managed. Find out NOW how many days you have to your deadline. Map out the different tasks you need to get done – character construction, set construction, props, animation, animation, animation, compositing, reshoots and reanimations, effects, final edit renders. If you haven’t any previous production experience, guess how much time it’ll take you to do each task. I would say try to allocate at least a third of your available time to animation. At least!

I generally start in the middle of the film and work my way to the end. Then I work back from the middle to the very start of the film. In this way, the opening shots are possibly the best animation, because I’m well up to speed by then. The first shots you shoot (unless you’re flukily lucky) will often be terrifyingly terrible! Don’t worry about this. In a week, or a fortnight, you’ll have ironed out whatever problems you’ve found and you’ll be animating smoothly. Keep pressing forwards, shot by shot. Do NOT redo shots at this point – press ahead with the next shot, then the next shot. You can do your reshoots and reanimations at the end of the first pass.

Keep an edit line alive. I drop my animatic (if I have one) into the edit line and then, each day, I drop the shots I’ve animated onto the edit timeline, replacing the animatic shots. It’s a good idea to watch the entire edit timeline from the top each day, just to give yourself a feel for the overall shape of the film, and to encourage you that you’re making progress in your production.

Animate your first pass as soon as you can, then go back and reanimate the bits you hate the most and keep doing this until your animation time runs out.

In CGI, my advice is to render early – every day if possible. Do NOT leave renders to some vague three week block at the end of your production. Get stuff onscreen, in the bag. It can always be rerendered later, with much more polish and finesse, time permitting. Get stuff onscreen asap. This also applies to complicated comping or effects passes with stopmotion or 2d animation – get them rendered now, get them onscreen now. They can always be tweaked and improved at a later date, time permitting.

That’s it – take a deep breath and start.

I’ll be shooting three animated short films over the next six months – one simple (a second ‘furniture’ film), one secret (I can’t say anything) and one more finished and complex. I’ll keep you posted on progress.