Ict project - Festivals

While I explored into music and gathered my ideas I have decided that I will be creating and working my ideas to create my own festival of artists that inspire me personally, I plan to create a poster which is to promote the festival and I will also be creating a festival top to accompany this.
I have chosen to do this idea as I personally enjoy the sense of place and the feeling you get when you attend a gig. When a person is in a gig all their thoughts go away and its all about the artist performing and the music that fills the venue.
As I plan on creating my own festival I have began researching into festivals that interest me most, two of the three festivals I am currently researching I will be attending over the summer and I have been watching on tv for years.

ICT project - Chosen idea

While I explored into music and gathered my ideas I have decided that I will be creating and working my ideas to create my own festival of artists that inspire me personally, I plan to create a poster which is to promote the festival and I will also be creating a festival top to accompany this.
I have chosen to do this idea as I personally enjoy the sense of place and the feeling you get when you attend a gig. When a person is in a gig all their thoughts go away and its all about the artist performing and the music that fills the venue.
As I plan on creating my own festival I have began researching into festivals that interest me most, two of the three festivals I am currently researching I will be attending over the summer and I have been watching on tv for years.

ICT project - Mind mapping

The idea I have chosen for my project is music. I plan on exploring into the different genres that I personally listen to and the artists that have inspired me to personally want to make and perform music. I also will look into the gigs that I have been to and the gigs and festivals that I will be attending over the summer. I found that this is the idea that has excited me the most and I find it is the most inspiring to myself as music is something that is part of my daily life.


As my idea of music is a large area that I am exploring I decided to make a mind map of what I associate with music. Firstly I explored the idea of gigs and festivals and how you feel part of something bigger than you when you go see a performer live.
In the mind map I also made a list of some artists that inspire me which I will be researching into through the project.

Ideas for ICT project

For my ICT project I began to think of ideas that I could use to create my project, I done a mind map of ideas to get my creative ideas flowing. This method helped me figure out a few ideas that I had for the project, once I mapped out my ideas I then narrowed my ideas down to a small handful that I felt were personal and had a sense of place to me. 


My first idea for the project was family, as I am close with my family I felt that it was a personal subject I could do a project on and then design an end product. As I explored this idea more I found that even though I could link all members back to myself I found that my family was too big to be able to include all the family members I wanted to include. Also I felt that some subjects that would come up in the project were too personal to discuss in the project.


My second idea was Wales, as I and my entire family are born in Wales I began exploring the idea of doing a project about Wales and the traditions that we have. I then began to explore into Welsh music from this idea, I researched into Welsh music and found that most of it was indeed in Welsh. Once I had began to explore music I then came onto my third idea. 


My third idea was music, music to me personally is one of the biggest things that is part of my daily life. I listen to music every single day without fail regardless of how I am feeling or what I am doing. Although it is a large area to explore I feel that I might explore more into this idea opposed to the others.

What is education - Guest lecture 9

Our ninth guest lecturer was Jane Davidson, she was once the Minister for Education and who is now part of Trinity College. She spoke to us about the history of education within the government, this lecture was very interesting as she was once a very influential person on education. 
Firstly she went through the national curriculum that was brought out in 1983, she explained the different areas that were to be studied and the exams and SAT’s that pupils were to undertake due to this.
Jane then discussed the change of government which led to the curriculum being criticised for being structured and not very educational for children, due to this the referendum for the Natioanl Assembly was brought out in 1999.

What is education - Guest lecture 8

Our eighth guest lecturer was Alice Davies who is part of the South West Wales reaching wider partnership project. She spoke to us about increasing opportunities for people with different backgrounds that may be at a disadvantage of furthering their education due to various reasons. Their main aims are to encourage progression to higher education by assisting children through certain stages of school, for example GCSE, A levels and Ucas applications. She explained what the teams do with each age group to help them to further their education, for example, setting up extra revision classes where pupils can express their personal concerns.

What is education - Guest lecture 7

Our seventh guest lecturer was Nick Bennett who is the principle of gower college. He discussed further education policy in Wales with us. He gave us various statistics of students in further education now, once we had viewed the statistics he then taught us the key factors within the program set up by the Welsh assembly government in 2011. He explained how improving on our own education can help us with our employment opportunities and offers. 
He also discussed the priorities from Leighton Andrews on further education, some of these are maintaining the volume of learning, increasing the amount of welsh speakers and promoting individual progression.

What is education - Guest lecture 6

Our sixth guest lecturer was Mike day, he is the cabinet member for education in Swansea university, he discussed educational policy with us. He explained what it is and what it aims to achieve by being in place, he also discussed the various areas that the policy covers. Once he had explained this he then questioned us about education, questions such as why is an education policy needed? And should there be a certain age a child should have to go to school?
We did not get to finish the full powerpoint so we were told to look at the rest of the powerpoint in our own time which was to be found on moodle.

What is education - Guest lecture 5

Our fifth guest lecturer was Graham Allen, he is the environmental manager at Swansea university. He lectured us about education for suitable development, we learned about the different responsibilities and what it involves, one of these is the coroporate responsibility. Once we had discussed this he then began to discuss sustainable development, he discussed the three components which are environment, economic and social sustainability. 

What is education - Guest lecture 4

Our fourth guest lecturer was Olive Hoper, she is the head of planning and development in Swansea university. She taught us about collaboration vs. competition, some of the main points that she taught us about were the benefits and limitations of a higher education institute, the issues of collaboration and competition and  employment in Wales.

What is education - Guest lecture 3

Our third guest lecturer was Steve Gulluck, he taught us about governors within a school. He explained the role of governors in a school and what they do specifically to help the school run efficiently and progress. He also explained the difference between schools in England and Wales and how being a governor is different due to the different governments. He also explained how a person becomes a governor, he explained how a person has to be voted to become a school governor which will then put them into that position for 4 years.
We also had a second session with Steve where he done a recap of what we done in the lecture, he went into some of the previous topics in more detail and allowed us to ask questions. We were also given a handout which explained the different types of governors, along with this we also got a handout which explained the contact between the governors and the school.

What is education - Guest lecture 2

Our second guest lecturer was Dr Russell Grigg, he spoke to us about Estyn. He explained what it was and what is does, he also explained why it is important and why it is needed. Estyn inspects the standards in education today and gives advice to the Welsh assembly government regarding this. Each inspection looks at various areas in an educational setting, some of these include teacher training, work based learning and pupil referral units.
Once an inspection has been carried out a report is then written about the inspection and the setting is graded, there are 4 categories. These are excellent, good, adequate and unsatisfactory.

What is education - Guest lecture 1

Our first guest speaker in the What is education module was Ken Jones, he taught us about the Welsh national assembly government and what they are currently doing for education in Wales. He first asked us if we were aware who the current minister for education is, as none of us knew who it was he then told us it is Leighton Andrews. On that note he then continued to explain the role of the local authorities in education today opposed to before. He explained about the different authorities which there used to be 8 but now there are 22 unitary authorities, he also explained the difficulty this has made for schools. Due to the lack of LA’s in each authority there have been many school closures in the rural areas of Wales.

Ken also told us about the programme for international students testing (PISA) which is a test that compares how 70 countries are doing in English, Maths and Science. The countries were then compared and contrasted to see which country is doing the best at what. We looked at the results and there were some less satisfying results for Wales compared to England, here is a snippet of the results.

Adverts :)

In our session with Suzie we looked at adverts, we all looked at various adverts that Suzie had chosen for us to watch. We discussed these as a group then split up into smaller groups to look for and choose a advert of our own. the advert we chose was the cadbury's gorilla advert. Here is the advert

We thought this advert was the best choice as it was popular when it came out, it is also different to all the other adverts on tv today. The song is also a well known song by Phil Collins which most people will have heard at some point in their life.

Suzie's session. Photos!

In our session with Suzie we got to wander around the uni taking photos to show emotions. The emotion I chose was love, i focused on things i associate with love and what I personally love. We had to upload the photos to share them on our blog ready for the next session, here are my photos.

I have a dream

During our session with Suzie we got to watch and analyze Martin Luther King’s famous speech ‘I have a dream.’ We got to watch the speech in full and during this we had to take notes of anything that we noticed. Heres the video we watched.

First session with Suzie

Our first session with Suzie went well, she introduced herself to the class and we all discussed our experiences with art with her and the group. We also looked at different images and discussed what could be the meaning of the images and why, also during this session we watched a video about men going to war. The video included a young man shaving until he bled, this video was a bit gruesome for the first session but we all survived.