360 - More iPad Art

Day 360. I thought I'd take yesterday's image, which was already quite manipulated, and push it even further. So I passed it through a few more apps but mainly Repix, which has some very interesting effects like bokeh, scratches, smudges and drips. In the end the original image looks even more different.

205 - We Got Rhythm

Day 205. Today's create was made with a fun little iPad app called VidRhythm. You record video of yourself making some noises, then the app sequences them into what you see here. It's easy and fun.

163 - Cinematica

Day 163. Today's create is a short piece of music (24 bars) made in GarageBand on the iPad.  I like to dabble in GarageBand and just put together short tracks, trying to match sounds and rhythms. I think it's a great way to learn more about using the software and a fun way to spend an hour or so.

I seem to discover something new each time I play with GarageBand. It's an incredibly powerful app, and very impressive that music editing like this can be done on a tablet.

151 - Sleepy Head

Day 151. After a bit of a big night, Linda decided she was going back to bed for a while to nap. I snuck up and did this quick sketch of her snuggled up in bed. I drew it with the Paper app on my iPad mini and a Jot Script stylus. Enjoy it now, before she serves me with a takedown notice...

If I haven't mentioned it Paper by 53 is a great app for sketching and, combined with a good stylus, really is the closest app I've seen for approximating the experience of drawing on real paper.

149 - Mr Squeak

Day 149. Our golden retriever Buzz really likes stuffed toys, and he has quite a few of them. This one, Mr Squeak, is one of his favourites. For today's create I propped Mr Squeak up on a table and sketched him using the app Paper and my Jot Pro Adonit stylus. It's a bit rough, but you get the idea.

147 - Step Into The Light

Day 147. Tonight I was just messing about with a couple of apps on the iPad, and I took a #selfie using Paper Camera, then imported it into Adobe Photoshop Touch and added some filters and effects, including this lighting effect.

 

 

140 - Che Guabetcher

Day 140. Just messing about in an iPad app called MegaPhoto+, I took a photo of myself and turned it into this very Che-style poster. I guess you could say I'm leaving my Marx on the world.

 

128 - Slam that!

Day 128. I took a Year 6 class this morning while their teacher was away. This class is part of our BYOD iPad program so, borrowing the Slam idea from the Google Summits, I got them to do an App Slam. Each student who chose to voluntarily participate had 2 minutes to share an app, game, tool, tip, etc with the rest of the class.

I was amazed at just how eager they were to do this, and they were literally falling over themselves to add their name to the list of presenters. As they did their slam (which of course they had to end by shouting the word Slam!) I added their name and demo to a Google Form. When the last student presented I simply published the form, gave them the short URL to access it and let them vote for their 5 favourite slams.

It was a lot of fun and a great way to let them share what they are learning with their iPads.

I particularly liked the fact that, of all the things they shared, I was only previously aware of two of them. Part of the magic of a BYOD scenario is that the kids are discovering apps and things that I would probably not. It's pretty clear that they feel far more in control of their own learning when they are the owners of the technology.I was talking to a teacher yesterday from another school that went 1:1 iPad but their devices were school provided and highly locked down. They had $14,000 in damages in their first year of operation. We have had virtually no damages at all. Turns out students look after this stuff when they own it. Who knew?

112 - I'm No Dummy

Day 112. This fine piece of silliness was made using an iPad app called Morfo. It captures an image of your face, then allows you to map out the main features in order to animate it. Obviously it comes with a bunch of silly costumes, but the potential in the classroom is pretty interesting.

This was uploaded using the YouTube Capture app, with music added from the YouTube open music library.

090 - Storage Solution

Day 90. Today's create is a solution to a problem of storing our classroom devices. Each of your Year 3 and 4 classrooms now have four pads and four Chromebooks for the students to use in class. Rather than buying an expensive trolley solution, I got hold of an inexpensive cardboard storage unit from Marbig, then used bulldog clips as cable organisers.

Cheap. Simple. Robust. Recyclable. Problem solved.

086 - Feeling Loopy

Day 86. today I discovered an app called Loopy, a loop based audio recorder for iOS. Just record a sound, then just dub over and over to create some interesting sequences. This sample was made (as my first attempt, so be nice...) to show how a basic rhythm could be made using nothing but my own voice.

083 - Making Musyc

Day 83. I'm very interested in the effects of randomness on creativity. Or if not true randomness, then at least the effect of what happens when a creator gives up a level of fine control and allows "happy accidents" to occur. Today's create uses an iPad app called Musyc to create a simple rhythm. It's an interesting approach to creating music, by throwing objects at walls to allow them to bang and crash and bounce against them, making sounds. By added sequence generators which spit out objects in a regular pattern, some interesting effects are created.

I really like seeing different approaches to music making. The video doesn't really do it justice as the screen capture must be quite processor intensive as it stuttered a little, making the regularity of the rhythm less regular than it actually was. Still, you get the idea.

075 - Wire Drawing

Day 75. I had lunch today with some friends from art school whom I hadn't seen for quite a while. As we enjoyed lunch and each other's company we talked a lot about creativity and the effect that attending art school had on the way we see the world.

As we talked I noticed some "wire drawings" on the gallery wall, so I thought I'd have a go at making one myself. This "drawing" is made of bent wire (soldering wire actually). After photographing it on the kitchen floor with my iPad mini I used Google's Snapseed filters to boost the contrast, brightness and sharpness.

 

 

073 - Playground Textures

Day 73. It's easy to overlook the interesting things in our daily environment. For today's daily create I wandered around our school playground and took 9 photographs with my iPad mini looking directly at the playground from above. While taking these perpendicular shots I was looking for interesting textures and shapes and patterns. I then arranged them into this 3x3 grid using Diptic to create this final result.

There is something about grid layouts that really appeal to me, even going right back to my days at art school in the 80s. I often found myself coming up with visual ideas that were based on grid layouts. Not sure why, I just like them.
I want to offer a hat tip to Ross Wallis for this idea. Ross is a fellow Adobe Education Leader from the UK. He mentioned this idea to me several years ago at an Adobe Summer Institute in San Jose and he was originally making these photo grid designs using InDesign.

071 - Playing with Virtual Clay

Day 71. The Pottery HD app allows you to make virtual pottery on a virtual pottery wheel. It's obviously not the real thing, but it's a bit of fun to play. It even teaches some interesting things about different types of clay, throwing techniques, and even helps you learn about some art history with the use of different patterns and pot types that were used in different cultures.

070 - Water Balloons

Day 70. I was in Canberra on the weekend to photograph the hot air balloon festival, and I just uploaded a bunch of my photos to Google+. While on G+ I noticed a couple of posts from Andy Inhatko about an iPad app he was very enthusiastic about called Waterlogue. It turns your photos into surprisingly realistic and good looking water colour paintings.

I have a few further ideas about how I might use this app. Meanwhile here's a few samples of what it can do for today's daily create.

066 - Textual Archaeology

Day 66. After yesterday's daily create was crossposted to Google+ it received a comment from +Neil Boyd that referred me to the work of an artist named Tom Philips. In his comment, Neil also used the term "palimpsest", which I had never come across before. Being the curious person that I am, I looked up the term and was fascinated by it. You can read the Wikipedia article if you want to learn more, but it inspired today's daily create.

This was made on an iPad mini using the Notability app and a Jot Script stylus, then exported to the camera roll and applying the Noir filter. The text comes from the Wikipedia article about Palimpsests, which is published under a Creative Commons BY-SA licence.

Thanks for expanding my vocabulary Neil!

064 - Collide a Scope

Day 64. More mandalas today. These were made with an iPad app called TumbleVision, which is basically a simulated kaleidoscope app. After generating a few samples I used Diptic to arrange them in a 2x2 grid like this. Simples!

063 - What Are Words Worth?

Day 63. One very popular tool for educators are tag cloud generators such as Wordle. However, being Java based, Wordle doesn't really work on most tablets. So I was interested to find this app called Word Salad, which does pretty much exactly what Wordle does, but on the iPad. It's really easy to use and has quite nice output, and it easy to customise. Today's daily create is a tag cloud based on the About page from this blog.

057 - Uncle Ben

Day 57. I was messing about with my mum's iPad tonight and showing her how the Funny Movie Maker app works. In the process I made this very silly video. FYI, I like Ben Franklin, but his was one of the few faces that comes in the free version of the app so he got to be the victim of my stillness. Sorry Ben!

PS. Sorry for the VVS. (Vertical Video Syndrome)