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“I Teach computing as an art material.”
This is what I tell people I do at UAL. I generally get a perplexed look and I have to explain, when for example down the pub meeting new people, that I teach computing to artists for use in their practice. If I still have their attention and they are curious I will delve deeper…
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Teaching & Supporting Learning
I am a specialist technician in Physical Computing, which is a significant student-facing role. Here, I will discuss an instance of a demeaning student during their tutorials and make some recommendations. Tutorials At the Creative Computing Institute (CCI), we have diploma students which come from all the other colleges at UAL and spend a year…
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Designing & Planning for Learning
As stated in the preface of this assignment, I hold two roles at CCI. In addition to my lecturing responsibilities, I am also an institute specialist technician in Physical Computing, with a significant student-facing role. Here, I will discuss my process for designing teaching and learning from the perspective of a supporting technician, rather than…
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Mini-Briefs
In order to get students up to speed with how things are in the outside world, I brought in a pedology of enacting mini-briefs. Theses are briefs that I have encountered and built in the real world. The students in Creative Computing MSc are a rather large group, ~120 in all. They are split into…
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Thoughts of Race
Working at UAL makes you feel proud, as they put Social Justice at the heart of everything they set up, meaning we put it at the centre of everything we do. Shades of Noir (SoN) is an independent programme which offers safer spaces to have critical conversations and interdisciplinary discussions around everything and anything to…
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Thoughts of Faith
Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education:Having just gone through a bereavement of my father, I have found this section challenging. Faith means many things to many people and is entirely personal to them, being a relationship between what we call a soul, what we call the world and what we call the unknown- and…
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Thoughts of Disability
Film by Christine Sun Kim “Time Owes Me Rest Again” is a powerful and thought provoking film by deaf artist Christine Sun Kim. The film investigates ownership of sounds for the artist, also known as CK, who sees sounds as being for other people. She builds performance pieces using a variety of sound equipment and…
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A case for practicals before knowledge
As part of my feedback from doing the teaching given by my peer, one of the comments was to teach the capabilities of what we are doing in the Physical Computing practical lessons, before actually doing the practice part of the lesson. I used to do this, and found that it sets expectations higher than…
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Tech/Lecturer crossovers
When working as a technician (and not as a lecturer, as I do both) I have noticed a different, more casual behaviour in the students, yet, they do recognise me in both roles as they will come to me for technical AND academic tutorials. In the lectures, I can go over things that I have…
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Quiz or not to quiz?
I like to quiz our students at the end of our structured lessons. This rounds-off the lesson in a fun way and brings joy to students, it might even make them stay. There are some issues with the sheer length of the sessions we run at UAL. I can understand how if a class was…