Our Client Header: The Final Post

This’ll be structured as question-by-question, so let’s get started.

 

  1. You can click here to see the folder with the pictures of my process. I started off with a main theme: nature. I don’t know Advaitha particularly well, but being “energetic and open” was listed as one of her hobbies, so I started with that as my central theme. I added a banner and scrolled through a series of colour choices, going from a starkly contrasting black-green to a more soothing dark green. I added a smaller sub-image to the banner, but quickly deleted it, as I wanted it to be as simple as possible. I scrolled through the backgrounds, until finding a “galaxy” theme I quite liked, as it emphasised my focus on simplicity. I then layered a few more backgrounds, from papyrus to metal, to make the image less stark and more easy on the eyes.
  2. Here is the final product. Of all the five design principles (balance, repetition, contrast, dominance, and hierarchy), I found that hierarchy worked best, as I managed to make the rest of my image (the background) tan and soothing, making the banner itself “pop” out more, but not as loudly or disrupting as it would’ve been otherwise.
  3. Here is the post I made on Adam Grant of TED. I thought that in this task I was, unfortunately, a taker, though not as much as humanly possible. In fact, some times, I was even a giver. I helped in the group, of course, but I also often found myself banking on the work other people would do, instead of actively helping them. Definitely something to work on.
  4. Here is the client specification. Unfortunately, I’m not awfully close to Advaitha. In fact, I don’t know here very well at all. Fortunately, Veronika, who was in our group, knew Advaitha far better than Taran and I, and helped us direct our products to fit her hobbies. While it was tough, I felt that I tried my best to include, even if not explicitly, her hobbies,  such as trying to make best use of contrast of the turquoise-green we had agreed upon as a colour.
  5. I think that I would stick with Picmonkey, as it struck the perfect middle ground between being easy to use, and complex enough to really make something cool with (such as the ability to layer multiple backgrounds).

Drama ATL’s

So, as basically everyone who lives within a 10 kilometer radius of the school knows, ATL grades, as well as attainment grades, are coming out next week. Because of this, all teachers are asking us to reflect on some of our Drama ATLs. Fortunately, this is pretty easy for me, as I’m currently working on the piece of work that is my Drama project (the Cat in the Hat), so it’s pretty easy to rate my performance. I’ve set a goal for each learner profile, seen below:

Self-Management: Help others organise themselves, but being careful to not be patronising or overbearing (aiming to be achieved by the end of the month).

Collaboration: Try to be more open and supportive to others, encouraging growth and development (aiming to be achieved by the end of the unit).

Communication: Listen more attentively, as to respect other’s ideas more (aiming to be achieved by the end of the school year).

Adam Grant’s Talk

Dear Me,

If you only remember one thing from Adam Grant’s talk, it should be that it’s, on average, matchers are most successful. This is because, whilst Takers tend to rise quickly in their areas of work, they also are susceptible to falling just as quickly. Givers, on the other hand, tend to be so absorbed into other’s problems that they often tend to suffer on a personal level because of this, unable to complete the work that was assigned to them, due to them being so wrapped up in other problems.

This is because people are, fundamentally, opportunists, and when a giver only gives and refuses to take once in a while, people can, and will, attempt to take advantage of them. However, to truly prosper, a giver must be willing to continue giving, as well as being able to take once in a while.

Yours,

Me

Drama Practice with Artist in Residence (Shane)

The main themes of the workshop were time and space. To reflect these themes in our activities and work, we had to be very physical and evident in our choices, as it was difficult to be subtle in physical movement. To express Time, we had to focus attention on storytelling devices, such as Tempo (pace of the piece), repetition (expressing an idea through constant repeating of a single scene), and Duration (how long scenes and actions last to express an idea). For space, instead, we worked on Spatial Relationships (how the distance between actors and objects affects a play), Shape (how things are represented to signify a theme), etc. In an exercise, we had to display all these techniques, even though it was technically walking the space. We had to have control over ourselves and awareness of our surroundings (my peers) to generate the subtle suggestion of the theme that Shane told us to describe. We had to be suited to committing rapid changes in pace (e.g walking to running), listening to be more aware, and being able to react to changes in our activity. There are two spaces we can work in; Online (Flow, In the Zone, Present, Connected to the group, Generative, Right Brain) and Offline (Reflective, Analytical, Out of the Zone, Left Brain, and revision).

Is gender moulded by your environment? How so?

For a long while, I have been rather neutral in the heated debate between empiricists and nativists. However, after being exposed to the documentary on the curious case of David Reimer, as well as doing some additional research by my own accord, I have arrived to a conclusion on the debate. After a long period of thought, I have concluded that I agree more with the nativists on the topic, and stand by my own claim that gender, while able to be modified by the environment you grow up in, is still inevitable determined by genetics. This stems from two major points: the first being David Reimer himself, the second being the study conducted by Dr. Milton Diamond. To begin with, let’s talk about David Raimer; a man who was born female but, due to a circumcision gone wrong, became a female through extensive hormonal therapy and gender reassignment surgery. The first quirk from the traditional man-chooses-to-become-female formula we’ve become accustomed to is the fact that David didn’t choose to become female, rather was assigned that gender. Later in his life, he confessed to being bullied due to a choice his mother made for him in his childhood, and eventually decided to return to the male sex. Tragically his life ended in suicide, aged just 38. From this, we can detract two points to support my claim. The first is that he still identified as a male, despite the hormonal therapy and surgery he underwent as a youth. This means that, despite what can be done after birth (aka nurture), genetics win out in the long run (aka nature). The second point is a more complex one, and is a more of a moral dilemma than a scientific one. It being: what are the psychological consequences of gender changing surgery? David suffered from depression and gender dysphoria (though from the gender he had been assigned, rather than the one he had been born with). Could these be a consequence of his difficult childhood, or perhaps a byproduct of his extensive gender-change process. The second point of article I mentioned was the study conducted by Dr. Milton Diamond on how hormones affect gender. While I won’t bore you with the tedium of the entire study, the basis of it was injecting female rat embryos with testosterone (a male hormone), then seeing how the rats developed. Strangely enough, the female rats behave markedly by males, at one point even attempting to mate, despite their lack of organs to do so. To conclude, it is my firm belief that nature wins over nurture in the determination of gender.

Smartphones: Are they making us smarter?

To find my audio recording, click here.

Quotes:

From the second lesson:

“People are becoming precisely networked beings.”

From the TED talk:

“The only people who refer to customers as “users” are drug dealers and technologists.”

From the SLATE article:

“We ingest so much material that it’s impossible not to learn something.”

I used to think that smartphones were distracting, trivial things, but now I think that they are simply just that: tools. The fault of dependency is not on the phone, but in the user; in the children we haven’t taught to wonder, to create, and to aspire. Blaming phones for “killing a generation” is the equivalent of cutting yourself on a knife, then blaming the knife. It has no logical sense, and to make a significant change, we must get to the root of the problem; kids who don’t feel interested in creativity

Sources:

•Photo Credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/46646401@N06/36238945240/”>amira_a</a> Flickr via <a href=”http://compfight.com”>Compfight</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>cc</a>