Silent reminders from a golden age

Classic Poster - Silent Film

doarcodavelha.blogspot.com

One of the new developments in the OCR A2 Media Studies syllabus is that students have to make two ancillary tasks to accompany their main coursework production.

For those making film and video based work it's interesting that one option is to produce a print design. This ranges from posters to CD/DVD covers, and I was reminded today of how powerful posters can be. Even in an age of online and TV saturation, there's something scintillating about a well-designed poster, that grabs your attention when you're out and about.

I read about the following blog on Twitter and it's full of great posters from the silent movie era. If nothing else, they're great works of 20th century commercial art and I do recommend you check them out.

Enjoy looking!

Using Google Apps in Education

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted. There are two reasons for that.

The main one is that for the first half of the new year, as well as taking on Head of ICT at school in addition to being Head of Media Studies, I've been covering for a colleague who was sick for 6 weeks. So, I found myself running a House. In the British independent school system the House system is a way of splitting students up into smaller units, of around 40 students. The Houses compete against each other, share in daily life, and provide a pastoral backbone to academic life.

However, I haven't been idle and currently we're trialling Google Apps for Education. You can find out more about it here. Basically, this offers a suite of email and cloud-based applications, that provide powerful learning and collaborative platforms. At present we have a selection of teachers and students experimenting with it. Our main VLE is Moodle, but I think that based on early results Google Apps could make it onto our list of recommended tools.

Incidentally, my mobile phone contract expires next February, and I'm increasingly drawn to replacing my Samsung Omnia with one of the new phones running Android, Google's mobile operating system.

In the bigger scheme of things I wonder how long it'll be before the European Union takes Google to court for being a monopoly? Certainly, Google have been canny at making it very easy to upload and export data in a range of popular formats, and most services are free, so it could be an interesting showdown, should it ever happen.

Enemy of the Great Satan enters Videogame arena

www.rasgames.com

I rather like this story that's been posted on the BBC website. It would seem that Iran has taken to producing video games, basing them on the rich legends of Persia.

Games producers from Iran have been exhibiting at a big trade fair in Cologne, in an effort to drum up financing and to raise the profile of their fledgling market.

All of which goes to show that technology can bridge boundaries in so many unexpected ways.

I for one hope some of the games being designed make it into Western stores. Having studied Herodotus and the rise of the Persian Empire against the Greeks at university, I would love the chance to re-create some of the epic myths and historical events in a digital gaming domain.

Satire is alive and well

I'm always happy to be distracted by some of the quality satire available online.

Here are two offerings that have made me smile this week.

The first is from the Onion, mocking Google and privacy:

New Google Service Lets Privacy Critics Opt-Out, Relocate To Remote Village

The second is from the ongoing series that features Hitler being enraged by a topical issue. In this installment he's just found out that Facebook has bought the aggregation service FriendFeed:

Making money out of paper

Source: www.newspaperclub.co.uk

I rather like this idea - give individuals, groups, companies, anyone with a shared interest, in fact, the chance to make their own newspapers. Not some crummy 'I read a Dummies' guide to DTP' output, but something rather elegant and delightful to read and hold.

The brains behind Newspaper Club are British and they're aiming to start up and be operational within 60 days. Their trials and tribulations can be read on their blog. It's a cracking read, especially for Business Studies students.

You can sign up for the Beta at their main website which is here.

At a time when media mogul Rupert Murdoch is claiming all his newspaper titles will be charging for online content within a year it's refreshing to see a consumer led model appearing too. You see, despite the fact that much of what I read is done so on an LCD screen, I still like the simplicity and tactile experience of reading a paper. I also like the way Newspaper Club is proposing taking online ease of design and transforming it into something that can be held, stored and shared in person.

It's an ambitious plan and it will be interesting to see what the pricing is. Newspaper Club offers a new dimension in terms of social networking and user control over content production. I hope they succeed and wish them well.