Monday November 15th

So I asked Matt and Annie if there was any documentation of the teens past projects, and they directed me to the Ning.  I "inventoried" what I could find on the ning, and this is pretty much it (and most of this is from Annie's ning blog):

• 4 photos, the only other photo documents are from Catherine
• one worksheet
• a post reviewing Jitish Kallat's work in the AIC
• Make-Up assignment possibilities

Matt has posted a flash animation of the students called "Teen Lab Studio Ballet" from the day the students learned to create stop animations.  It could be useful.  So conclusion: there isn't any early documentation of the work students were doing before we entered the classroom.  Also, there is no online "database" for their worksheets and assignments, other than what is already on the Ning.  

As for the students blogs (which hopefully are being updated TODAY because most students have finally started shooting photos for their projects) some of the students have posted nothing, but here is the average information I could find:

• a make-up assignment from last week
• one update on the group project
• questions they had to formulate for the Skype with Jitish Kallat

I will email Hillary about the Skype, and hopefully she will send that our way!!

Also, I believe I have chosen a group for us to focus on.  This group is telling the story of a penguin who lives in a black and white world that is sad and boring.  The penguin stumbles into the color world and is much happier, excited and really enjoys the world of color.  But it must return to its home, and back in the black and white world the penguin starts to spread the idea of color.  Suddenly everything starts changing and in the end the penguins dreary world turns colorful.  Kind of like that movie, Pleasantville.

It's pretty straightforward.  These students (Sophie, Alisha and Khiry) are very far along in their process, though like the other groups have not uploaded their work to the Ning yet.  However, they have planned out their process, their background has been done for a few weeks now, they have a very clean layout and look to their whole piece.  This was the group I was thinking about when it was brought up that we should focus on one group last class, and when I asked Matt and Annie what groups were moving along well, they immediately mentioned this group.  But we can talk about this more in class Wednesday.