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Journal Entries
These pages are dedicated to documenting my ideas, information, concepts, musings, contacts, and methodology involved in the process during the development of my thesis project. The logging of data and images will be in the form of entries which will be added at regular intervals and dated to provide continuity. Here goes ..........
TO START - March 22nd 2001 ......................
One of the first thing that I will be involved in, will be the method of organising this information into a web page system format. This will need to include data entry points which maintain some sort of continuity - a design problem? Gosh how do you something quick on a computer so that it allows for free expression as a sketch does - so a sketch will have to be the method. Then how to get it onto the computer to show the details? Well here goes. The intention of my thesis is to develop new ideas for learning environments..........so here is my first link - my initial idea of how the proposal is situated - The Thesis Proposal - This focus is driven by a passion I have for changing the environment where an education can be experienced. Our students are poorly resourced at the moment. It is interesting to note however that the current environment resembles the genre of teaching methodology that exists in learning institutions and this will need to change if we are to meet the needs of the next generation of kids. I can't wait to get into some new ideas for spatial and component design. entry April 6 ... I am starting to organise the web site. I am building it in Go-Live and have had a good talk with David Merritt about style sheets and HTML editing tools - he has given me a lot of ideas for cleaning up my site with the use of a style sheet editor. At the moment I am still trying to come to terms with the NEED for a style sheet system - it seems to be quite a bit of work for just to get everything looking the same in every page. I thought that this would be easy by just sticking to a general format for each page or using a template arrangement... I guess i can see that it would make life slightly easier for placement of text elements etc on a page. I can also see that most big sites use a style sheet of some kind by checking source code on these sites eg www.vodafone.com. It is interesting to note that I haven't used any graphics on this page so far??!! I will need to copy some stuff that I have been doodling with from my visual diary.
Just in case you get bored i will include some links to escape this peril - possible good thought? Home | Contact | Products | Services Research | Journal | Feedback | Thesis Plan entry April 23 ... At last I have cleared the Cultural Investigation assignment, although I'm not sure whether it has fulfilled the expected requirements. Only time will tell! I am sitting here at 10.00 pm listening to the sound track from 'Sleepless in Seattle' a great movie. A track comes on and starts "It's so important, to make someone happy, make just one someone happy ...........", great thought. I have finally linked my initial thesis proposal page to this page in the first entry. I can see that this proposal will change a little as i progress. The emphasis is starting to evolve as i go on. I guess this reminds me of Richard Kimbells Model of Relationship to hand and mind. In this he explains how we tend to start with a hazy cognitive idea of a possible outcome to any given issue. This then evolves as we experience a lot of rebounding between cognitive and concrete proposal development. THE MODEL - GRAPHIC. The ground appears to have opened up to what this proposal has or could inherit, e.g. a change in the way school desks are designed - for portability, the way partitions can be designed for more flexibility of work spaces. the way virtual systems can be installed for the maximum benefit of all schools - local and global, for discussion/information about learning experiences, a teaching profession that recognises real learning experiences, spacial design that reflects the true learning organisation that aspires to collaboration, creativity, inquiry, community association etc. I could go on for a while about all of this stuff!! - I think I will start to come up with some ideas for some of this stuff..... to come........... The web site has suffered a little over that last week so i am going to have to get back onto it's development. I believe I have met the requirements of my initial proposal by producing seven pages by April 21st. entry April 24 ... i am wondering whether to make this one long page or to break it up into a main page that feeds into all of my entries - a design problem. My thought on this are to leave the page as one big set of entries and maybe place anchor points at the top after making acertain number of entries or by months of the year. I have some graphics to get onto this page that will make for more interesting reading and viewing. There is one problem i have encountered and that is how to organise and create my bumblebee animation that i would like on the front and subsequent pages. The question I awsk myself is "am i starting to talk to my computer"? This dialogue seems to be a bit of a one way conversation!! Oh well asynchronus CAN BE some respite.
entry April 29 ... nearly the end of the month and i am still procrastinating over what I will focus on for the interdisciplinary practice. I think I will direct my attention to one area of a school that is changing quite a bit at the moment with a new curriculum and a radical change in environment is required. Not to say that I am going to let go of the other aspects involving thoughts I have had above. I want to make more progress on the web site now, I have been playing around with the Flash tutorial and also looked up a site that has all of the CGI scripting that I might need for my 'guest book' etc. It was good to have a chat with the rest of the class last Tuesday. The formal presentation of our TIA proposal went quite well and i was pleased to hear from Francis that i don't necessarily have to write all of my own scripting. Hence the location of a few sites to scrounge some scripting assets. A good one appears to be Lycos.com. I have come to the conclusion that i am thinking ahead of the time with what my proposal for school design is. As my 'cultural investigations assignment' has pointed out, there is a major movement (excuse the illiteration) of traditional or conservative culture in schools and this is unlikely to move for quite a while. My intentions are to focus on those schools that will be aware of the benefits of active learning and continue to develop my promotional material for international appraisal. I have processed my thesis plan and have it ready for interdisciplinary practice
first entry... I am going to try and keep a good log of my ideas through adding images, text and research to this part of the site. I am keen to start this as I have been tending to put all of these ideas and information into a design journal which is very autocratic. At least with this type of discourse I can expose my thoughts to others. Hopefully this will encourage interaction about the development of the ideas > I see a similarity to what computer programmers call "open source" development here's hoping some form of interaction will commence.
some doodling from the diary - this is the beginning of my logo design and web page layout. I have had thoughts about using a buzy bee to fly around the place on one part of the web page. i see this a considerable significance because a be is a little creature that cross pollinates beautiful environmental things. i would like to think that i can resemble the little bee and try to dispense good ideas for generating ideas for more effective learning environments
further exploration of logo designs - variations on a theme
Some scribblings for the construction of my thesis plan. Trying to work out the logistics of the compilation of material over a two year period is mindblowing
Link to my thesis plan
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