We’re excited to announce that we’ve had Michaela Hayes of Radio Nova record our voice over for us!

We were a little disappointed she couldn’t come out to record in the DCU studios and we couldn’t go to her while she recorded it in the spare production studio at Radio Nova, but we’re delighted to have a celebrity voice over nonetheless and it’s turned out brilliantly!

We’ll be spending the next few days cutting the narration to the animation and adding some sound effects. Jordan is also working hard on the music. 

It’s official….there’s less than two weeks left to go until this project has to come to an end….

We have to admit it’s scary stuff. Despite having a few drafts of the lit review done and most of the animation finished, we’re still a little scared about the whole thing. Maybe it’s because we’re panicking about the little things too much or perhaps it’s because we’re realizing these are the last few weeks we’ll spend doing undergrad college work (let’s shove that fact to the back of our minds as swiftly as possible) but we’re feeling a little anxious now.

 

Yes, we’ve posted it before but now that it’s coming up to the deadline, some serious inspiration is in order!

We love this animation! So simple and so effective. 

Watch this!

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

We heard about this project in second year eSociety. It’s a truly amazing story about the universality of children’s interest in, and aptitude for, technology. It’s not really relevant enough to our own project to include in our write-up but it’s an inspiring story nonetheless. 

We’ve been buried under a mound of books and academic journals for the past few weeks! Despite being confused by constructivism, constructionism, cognitivism and dual coding, the research report and literature review are coming along nicely!

We’re quite surprised by the lack of research into how younger children use the internet though. Most Irish statistics start at age 9 and upwards. Nevertheless, we’ve found the AMAS online publication State of the Net very interesting and helpful in gaining an overall picture of the way in which the Irish public use the internet. Check it out!

http://amas.ie/online-research/state-of-the-net/
 

Some accidental camera settings gave us a cartoon look for a while today. We fixed it eventually!

After a horrible week of failed animation last week, we decided to put more effort into the long-neglected website aspect of our project. The Web Department (Niall and Jordan) have been making some real progress on the web side of things. For now, here’s a look at our teeny-tiny-arts-and-crafts-website-design!

Having tried out three different cameras and seven different lenses over the last few days, we’re still trying to find the right combination . 

Lenses with a fixed focal length knock themselves out of focus as they take the picture, zoom lenses move with the clunk of the camera mechanism and causes jumps in the frame. One lens even caused yellow lines in the frames.

Having lost count of the amount of times we’ve had to re-shoot our opening sequence, we’re feeling a little dejected. 

 To cheer ourselves up, we took some nice pictures with the lovely macro lens. 

Teeny tiny computers, tablets and smartphones (and the odd stray monitor).

This week the sunny weather put us in the mood for some arts-and-crafts-fun-time so we started to make all the little bits and bobs for our animations. 

We love the Breaking Bad Valentine’s Day Cards.

Amy has also come up with “So glad I meth you”.

On Thursday, Holy Cross Primary School in Ballycragh, Tallaght, were kind enough to allow us to discuss the topic of the Internet with their first class students. 

The bus trip to Ballycragh didn’t take as long as expected so, with time to spare for a look around the area, adventure was in order!

When we walked into what appeared to be a party supply shop, we were very surprised to find it was actually a pet shop and even more surprised to find that the man working there really liked to hand out bunnies!

It was Science Week in Holy Cross and the 6th class pupils were keen to show us their science projects (Jordan managed to beat their home-made “Buzz-Off” style game and Rebecca impressed the kids with her healthy lung capacity).

There was a cool, relaxed atmosphere in the school and the staff were young and friendly. This fun, exciting learning environment was a world apart from the old, smelly teachers, “bata fada” (for those who didn’t grow up in a country school that’s the stick used to point at things and terrify the living daylights out of ya) and “here - shut up, sit down and colour this in” attitude we grew up with!

The 1st class kids we spoke to were extremely enthusiastic and their insights into how children perceive and use the internet were hilarious at times. We were really surprised by how many of them reported having Facebook profiles and the varying levels of parental control involved - from one little boy whose mum checks his profile twice a week to a girl who claimed to have over 500 friends, some of whom she didn’t know. 

The school visit was definitely worth the trip and has provided us with lots of information around which to adjust our scripts and storyboards. Now to set about transcribing the audio from this visit and hope our second school trip is just as successful!