“Hedgehog in Fog” cartoon was produced in 1975 by Yuri Norstein (director), Francheska Yarbuzova (production designer), Serhy Kozlov (script writer).

In the year 2003, basing on results of a survey of 140 cinema critics and animators from different countries, “Hedgehog in Fog” was declared the best cartoon in the history of animation.” -article

It’s perfect.

Today we had new student orientation and a packed campus. I am happy to say that Web Design & Interactive Media had 8 new students starting! I believe that puts us at about 32 students (my numbers may be off a bit). WDIM is always a small program, which is crazy since it’s the place where money is made right after college. I prefer to think of my students as part of an elite few, we only let the best in! Actually Ai Austin has reached over 800 students! This apparently is amazing in comparison to other new Ai campuses across the US and Canada. Our campus is growing so fast and we are busting at the seams. Wow, now that I think about it, WDIM makes only about less than 5% of that group?! Did I do my math right? Wow, that’s weird to think about. The new students seems eager and ready to go. Two were in the Associate’s program and the rest in the Bachelor’s. The ratio was pretty even between male and female. I like that I have a good group of females, ladies in technology rock!

Next week, classes start. Here is a list of the courses I am teaching:

• Digital Imaging I – 2 sections, I have already taught this class before, so I feel pretty comfortable repeating it, I will be making some changes though. This class revolves around learning image or graphic manipulation using Photoshop. Students from all programs can take it, and usually get a lot out of it.
• Digital Imaging II - 1 section, first time teaching it. I have support from the previous instructor (he moved on to other classes) so I am nervous, but feel confident since I have someone to talk to and answer questions. I feel I have some big shoes to fill since I know students really liked him, hopefully I will measure up with this new crowd. This class will focus on Photoshop technique and more in-depth digital compositing.
• Introduction to Scripting – 1 section, 3rd time teaching, or is it the fourth? Last quarter I felt like things went askew due to time management issues in class, I will need to work on that. This class focuses on learning the basics of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript (although, every quarter we usually don’t get to JS).
• Intermediate Scripting – 1 section, more advanced web design course. Here students use Dreamweaver to create websites and can incorporate their knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash. I bring a client they work with to create a site. You can see last quarters client site here: Adrian and the Sickness (I apologize if this site gets changed, it is currently on a student server and will be on the real band site soon).
• Independent Study Portfolio II – ??? I am unsure if I am the adviser for this student, I guess I’ll find out Monday!
• Independent Study Digital Imaging III – ??? Again, heard it through the grape vine that I would be an adviser…but still unsure if this is true!

As you can see, this quarter I will be super busy! This week we didn’t have classes, so I took the time to work on revising and researching for my new courses. Of course, time flew by and I wish I had another 2 weeks to prepare. I am excited, I really do love teaching!

Face Painting

The college also invited folks from the community to join in the festivities. I was impressed by the student participation and how many stuck around throughout the evening. It wasn’t a real carnival (with rides) but there were lots of fun things to do.

Like face painting! I was surprised at how many students (and younger kids) wanted their cheeks covered in stars, peace signs, hearts, and arrows (I guess like the Airbender cartoon?). The booth was run by C.H.A.T. (Celebrating Hispanic Arts and Traditions), a club I am an adviser for). I think Alex and Cristina did a great job face painting, and Alex did a great job with the sign. Hm, I must post a picture of it soon…it’s coolio.

Bungee Run

Also, they had an awesome bungee run! This was sort of off to the side of the carnival due to space. I bet had it been a bit more visible, students (and instructors) would have been all over it. Did I do it? Nah. But I would have, if I had a good adversary that matched my speed and cat like reflexes. I saw those little kids fly back as they try to reach the goal (they had to stick a flag thingy to the end). It was pretty funny, but at times looked a little painful. Maybe next time.

Jalapeno Eating Contest

C.H.A.T. also put on a Jalapeno Eating Contest! At first, no one wanted to sign up, but soon they had about 9 people total. Students had to race to eat the most jalapenos. Okay, so they didn’t know how many would try, so it ended up that whoever ate 8 whole jalapenos first would win. Milk was provided just in case things got too hot. The contest was over in less than a minute! Sadly, I didn’t get to take a photo of the winner. One of my previous students, a female no less, won! These weren’t the small jalapenos, they were big and pickled. Yuck! She, and the runner up, won a free flash drive from the college. I forgot to ask her if she had any “issues” later that night!

Photo Ops

Students served up everything from popcorn and cotton candy to snow cones and hot dogs with fortunes (or misfortunes). The Dean opened hers up to find: “A giant spit wad is heading towards Austin right now!”. Don’t worry, the fortunes were in an attached stick thingy and not in the hot dog. The audio production classes provided the sound for the live music. I wanted to mention “Tejanosarous Rex” mainly because I think their band name is so funny. They are still a new band looking for a label and management and fans…but they got the name down alright.

I got to hang with other instructors, like Julie, an audio instructor.

Gina and Julie

She’s cool and I didn’t notice till we took the photo that we kinda match. I guess she got the memo. In the photo we kinda look alike, except I’m bigger, browner and…..curlier? Why does my head look twice the size of hers?!

I’m glad I didn’t have to teach that night, because I know a lot of students were missing class to chill outside and enjoy the great weather and carnival.

Wise Latina t-shirt

But sadly, the news has turned bleak again for Latinas. Most recently, the focus is on the dropout rate among this particular group being up 41 percent. Dropout is implied as students unable to complete high school within 4 years.
Here are links to the studies completed bythe National Women’s Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) to show this trend:

• MALDEF: Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation
• National Women’s Law Center study

“Many Latinas are influenced by family and societal expectations, often based on stereotypes of Latinas as submissive underachievers and caretakers,” the report said. “When these stereotypes are internalized, they may cause Latinas to doubt their chances for academic and career success.” – CNN Article

The report did give some recommendations to provide support to one of the largest female groups in US schools . The recommendations include (summarized on the CNN article):

• Congressional investment in Latino children through early education initiatives and child care, and outreach to Latino families.
• More outreach to Latinas in schools, including providing them with role models.
• College preparation by schools for Latinas, with funding from Congress.
• More school measures to stop discrimination in educational programs and activities.
• School use of comprehensive, age-appropriate material to teach sex education to avoid the rising pregnancy rates among teen Latinas, and additional support for those who get pregnant.

A professor at the Art Institute is working towards his PhD. He has been doing studies on Hispanic males in high school and trying to find ways to help them graduate on time. Most recently he has felt hopeless, his studies show that even intervention programs are not making much progress. They are of value, but not to the extent to make a large change. The only findings he says show actual progress is simple, parental involvement. Things like showing interest in your child’s life, helping them with their homework, reading to your child, and asking how their day went. While that does sound simple, there are realities that make it difficult. Single parents trying to balance work and home, grandparents raising grandchildren, or parents with several children. Not to mention, parents educational level not up to par as their child.

With this information the outreach recommendation stands out to me. I encourage everyone to become a Big Brother or Big Sister. Something as simple as just hanging out with a young person can make a difference. By you being there, you are not only showing support, but also giving them another perspective, another person with experiences that may be far different from their own. You are a role model, and you fill holes that you may not even realize are missing in that child’s life. To respect her privacy, I won’t post a picture of my Little Sister, but she is awesome and I love her.

While this post may be about Latinas, we can’t forget the other half. Recently, BBBS of Central Texas told me they desperately needed Big Brothers. They have to start paring Big Sisters with Little Brothers because the volunteer number in males is so low. Taking one day a month (or more) can making a difference in any child’s life (whether latino or other), believe me, you won’t regret it.

Below is a CNN video discussing the Latina dropout issue:

Looking at all the experiences I have had in education, I can narrow down over-arching themes I pulled from working in the different realms.
Let’s start with my first educational job at a community college.

I was hired in 2000 by a community college in Austin. I was very excited to get a job in education for several reasons. One, education is a stable career (usually) and two, I liked being part of something that’s sole purpose is to help educate people. A large portion of my job was to record and edit the Board of Trustee meetings. Afterwords I would compress and stream the video on the web, as well as maintain several web pages. I must admit, I was at times bored with the meetings. Lots of talk about grants, raises and building a new campus or two. It wasn’t till I had been there a while that I really started to listen to what was going on. When they talked about grants and donations, it was all to benefit the students. When they talked about raises, they talked about how to help employees without cutting the needs of the students (a very hard task when working in a non-profit). When they talked about new buildings, they were looking for locations with the furthest reach, they wanted affordable education not only for the people of Austin, but also the surrounding cities and towns. Their purpose was to educate people who didn’t think college was right for them. To educate people who couldn’t pay by offering affordable classes and scholarships. So many people diss community colleges, but they truly do provide an important service. Not everyone gets their education given to them on a silver platter (even if they worked hard for it). Also, along with Associate’s programs, they have technical training, so if the regular classroom isn’t right for you, you can get your degree in auto maintenance or air conditioning repair, etc… May sound dull, but a local AC guy came to our house and made $73 on telling us we need insulation! Obviously there is a need for AC fixers and people are willing to pay. I will always push and tell you how important a community college is, partly because I am a community college graduate. I attended Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and received my AA in Radio/TV.

Sidenote: In high school I was told I should just apply there…and I did. Later I came to resent my counselor. I was not offered any other choices because she thought I couldn’t pay for it/do well/have support, who knows why else. I thought it was my only option. I still resent her, but I am proud I went there and am where I am today because of it. You could try and blame my parents for not pushing, but honestly, they didn’t have the opportunities we did and they just didn’t know what was out there.

The over-arching theme I have learned from my experience and employment at a community college:“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free“! Fighting the good fight, educating the masses…
All this of course, is dependent on the integrity of the college and the board who runs it.

Next, my time at a University. I attended two of varying sizes. The first was Texas A&M Corpus Christi for my BA in TV/Film and the second was The University of Texas at Austin for my MA in Instructional Technology. While I was not employed there, themes still stood out. The culture they create is one of strength and empowerment. We were often told (mainly in grad school) that we were lucky to be there, that we were a select few who made it among many who did not. We were told if you didn’t want to be there, to leave, that there were many waiting to take your place. Students felt like they had to take responsibility of their education and do the best they could with the opportunities they were given. I must admit, it was very stressful, but it pushed me to do well. I wanted to earn the right to graduate, proud that I did my best. And I think I did. The cost was much higher (thankfully I received a few scholarships and then a Fellowship for grad school). But with the cost came many more resources, libraries, museums and academic as well as student support. I don’t have the experience of working at such large institutes, but from the student side, the overarching themes were clear.
The over-arching theme I have learned from my experience at a large University: You were specifically selected, we have a lot riding on you, you have a lot riding on you, don’t let us or yourself down. Oh and “ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free!”

In my next post, I will continue my thoughts on over-arching themes that I have observed while working at a public elementary school and at a non-profit college. The differences are very interesting!

XHTML/CSS

The first is my Intro to Scripting class. In the past, my web design classes were very small, just a handful of students. If one started getting behind, I could work individually with them while the others moved on. In such a small class it’s pretty easy to keep everyone moving forward. Interruptions are fewer and everyone is focused. This quarter I have a class of 16 (I told you my other classes were small, between 3 – 5 people!). It’s much harder to help students when they get lost. What happens is the leaders finish early and the slower learners get so far behind. I have been lucky to have very awesome students who offer to help each other if someone is having trouble (not all students are so kind). We are a week behind on what I want to cover in the class and I’m not 100% sure students feel comfortable with what they have learned. The content is pretty straight forward. I’m teaching xhtml, CSS and JavaScript coding, I’m not even sure if we’ll get to JavaScript at the rate we are going.

I feel I need to revamp my curriculum for larger classes, but how can I do it half way through the semester? Are some students so far behind they will never catch up?

Part of the problem is that I have web majors mixed in with other majors. So I want to go in-depth for that group, but does the other group really need to know the in’s and out’s of code? I can’t just split the class in half and give more work to some. Hm, I’m just not sure how to handle the situation with such a large gap. Also, there are one or two students who are web majors who are having problems too. I have offered tutoring but no one has reserved time.

Part of me wonders if perhaps instead of hand coding everything, I should have started on Dreamweaver (I normally reserve it for Intermediate Scripting). Coding by hand is tedious, but you really do learn a lot about the code. And from my other students who have gone through the class, they like that because Dreamweaver was a snap to learn since they knew what everything already meant. But like I said, with non-majors, do they really need to know it that well? Perhaps if I used a different editor (currently using TextEdit) to write code. There are some free editors that show color coding which I know would help. I could ask our IT about putting that in our mac lab. It is already week 6 (out of 11 weeks), I hope things start coming together!

Photoshop Icon

My other class, Digital Imaging I, focuses on teaching Photoshop as a design tool. I have the same problem between super technology savvy  students and ones who barely know how to open a file. Problems that should be easy to solve by now, are still giving students issues (like making a gradient). How do I backtrack while still moving forward? I have the problem of bored students and the ones who get annoyed at not being able to “get it”.

This is the first quarter that I have had such a big gap. So my classes, which I thought were designed pretty okay, need a lot of revising…but I’m not sure how to keep all students learning (and happy).

Now time for one whine. How can students forget their flash drives (so often)?! Sitting in a 4 hour class and not being able to save anything…especially when doing all this code or digital editing?!

Part of me really wanted to send an angry email to the main company address. I am still pondering it. Anyone who calls that number would be treated so poorly and rudely. The problem I see is that if I complain, they may not hire Art Institute students since she appears to be the internship gatekeeper. I am annoyed because perhaps because our call went so badly, she might nix anyone who applies with Ai on their resume. Or who knows, maybe she thinks it’s just UT! So I am torn between just calling her a crappy person in my head and leaving it at that or emailing the company. Either way, even though there are many other design firms in Austin, I don’t want to burn any bridges at a large one like this. What would you do?

• Portfolio I – working 1 on 1 with a student on her porfolio. She is about to get her AAS in Web Design & Interactive Media and we need her to be ready for the world!
• Intro to Scripting – xHTML, CSS and JavaScript
  • For some reason my last class got to JS but didnt’ go as for as I’d like to go. I need to manage my teaching better. I need to be better at JS and by teaching it, I really get a much better grasp on it.
  • I feel much better about this class, this will be my 3rd time teaching it and I each quarter I keep finding more interesting projects to try and incorporate.
• Intermediate Scripting – Dreamweaver
  • Last quarter I brought in an actual client, and students created a website for her. The each designed a mock site, and the client chose the ones she liked best.  The client was “The Suzy Guides”, the author creates walking travel books. It guides your through several big cities around the world. What’s awesome is that she gets to do these walks as her job! The audience for these books are people who have already seen the big monuments and are looking for something more in-depth about the city. Right now she has Beijing and Paris, but is adding NYC and London. Anyway, this is the site the client chose. Right now it is on my webspace from school. Once I have the store open I can move it over to her host. While I would have done things differently, the client loves it and so that makes me really happy. She is also hiring the designer to continue to work on the site, which I also love. I do think they did a pretty good job for just learning Dreamwewaver. Don’t worry, you don’t have to point mistake (like the thumbnails and large image, I know).
• Digital Imaging – Photoshop
  • I really love this class. I love Photoshop, it’s so fun to use (at least to me). And I hope my passion for it is spread to the students. Last quarter we had a great class. Students were great and we brought in a local band to be the client. Students created posters for the band and really created some awesome projects. I saw some work students from other classes did (with no client) and I must admit, my class surpassed them! (Okay, so I may be biased!)
  • Right now I have 3 big projects that they must complete throughout the 11 weeks (we move in quarters).
    1. The first is to create an original movie poster. So they have to think of a movie concept and then create the poster to sell it. Students seem to enjoy this one (especially when it’s their movie idea).
    2. The second project is to create a book cover for their favorite book. This one doesn’t go so well. Apparently most students don’t like to read. For the students who love to read I get excited grins and excellent work, but everyone else is kinda blah about it. I really want to think of some other project. Any ideas?
    3. The final project is bringing in a client – a local band usually. The client will decide on what they want, perhaps a poster for a specific gig or a generic poster for use at any show. Students seem to really dig this and the two bands I’ve used so far have gotten them really excited. I really like this one too.
  • Things I don’t really want to do for a project are like CD covers, or DVD covers. Other classes do this and while I don’t think students mind, I do want to make them think of other things. I wouldn’t do magazine layouts or packaging since that should really be done in Illustrator. Someone suggested doing treasure maps. That’s an interesting idea, but not really popping in my mind. If you have any suggestions, let me know!
• Usability Testing(?)
  • I didn’t really want to teach this class, but due to interviewees not showing up, I think I may have to. I took a whole class on Usability Testing in grad school and that is what I plan to teach. I read a lot of Jakob Nielson and his usability testing and findings. There were others, but he really sticks out in my brain to look to, so I purchased an updated version of one of the books I have. I remember hating Usability Testing. The thing is, it’s one of the higher paying jobs in web, people don’t want to spend time doing it, and when their site isn’t up to par, they have to hire someone to go back and figure out what is wrong – that’s where the big bucks comes in. I disliked it but now I kind of enjoy it. It just saves so much wasted time when problems are found before a site is coded. It’s really the smart thing to do. Anyway, I was hoping to find someone who actually did more than my beginning usability testing for my sites and for my past employers, but that doesn’t look like it will happen. Even this guy from Dell says he can’t do it…and I think he kind of part of his job! But come on, class starts on Tuesday and there is no syllabus for it, yeah I am not eager to try and throw the first day together either. We’ll see if I teach it or not (although I am planning to prepare, just in case).

So those are the course I will be teaching, my plate will be full. I must admit, I have some great co-workers who I have just really enjoy being around. Okay, not all are great, but the ones who are, are supa great

"Herzog" - Saul Bellow

Currently, the Faculty Book Club is ready “Herzog” by Saul Bellow. Sadly, I am way behind. I am only about 1/3 of the way through. What’s funny is that I talked to two of my coworkers…and they haven’t finished it either. Our meeting is on Sunday! Oh well, it is an interesting book, I guess. I think I haven’t read to the more action part. Right now he is sort of a loser. It is an easy read though, just if you have time to site and read it.

XHTML/CSS

A student asked me about the psychology of coding things like CSS and XHTML. I was sort of taken aback. I had never really thought about it in that way. My thoughts were that the World Wide Web Consortium created these standards for us to follow. Because of the changes that happen so quickly, they have to create new standards and leave room for changes or additions to those standards. They tried to make the tags self-evident but they can be confusing so there are a lot of references available in books or on the web. By following these rules, you can make a usable, complient webpage that would be viewable by as many browsers as possible.

I also wondered if perhaps in the class “Programming Logic”, if students got some psychology there? I have not sat in that class so I’m not 100% what is covered. I know the instructor does not cover the coding we use necessarily, but did he cover the thought process behind all types of coding?

What is the psychology of coding? Is that something the programmers decide and that’s why I never really thought about it (since I’m a designer)? And how can I make the learning of web coding easier for students to understand?

Ah, now time for bed and for me to read a little.