Skocko's Blog
As if I really have time for this
07/08 School Year: June 20 | Oct 17 | May 14
06/07 School Year: Sept 16 | 18 | Oct 4 | 13 | 27 | March 22 | June 7
May 14, 2008
Thanks to state cuts in education funding, my position at Cuyamaca College (that I was certifiably insane to have accepted in the first place) will be eliminated in the fall. Thank goodness! But, ironically — and unbelievably, the department chair informed me that the college is expanding their graphics program next year to include 3D Animation and, get this, "We'd like you to teach the course."
Who is writing this crazy script?!
As exciting an opportunity as that may be, I think I'm going to pass. I'm going skip the summer job with DMA as well to focus on the kids here. I've got big plans for students in the Mac Lab next year and it's going to take the bulk of the summer to write and record the hundreds and hundreds of new video tutorials that'll be needed for that next phase in the process.
Oh, and this year? I always get hung up on the kids who under perform (I'm still silly enough to want no student to be left behind, as absurdly quixotic and absolutely unrealistic as that notion may be) but it's hard to overlook the increased rate of student success stories in here. The Mac Lab's still a work in progress but it is working for the kids. Check out the new best of video for a bit of proof: 900 x 800 | 720 x 640
Meanwhile, a parent telephoned yesterday. She said she'd read that some electives were going to be eliminated due to pending cuts in education and she wanted to know if my classes were secure. Turns out she drives her son quite a distance to attend Valhalla and the Mac Lab is the only reason they chose this school. (Parents may choose from a number of schools in the area.) A small but growing number of parents have told me the same thing. Nice to know the Mac Lab is making a difference.
In that same vein, here's part of an email I received from a different parent yesterday (the student's name is edited out):
On a personal note... I have to thank you for being such a wonderful teacher to [my son]. He loves your class, and he has become so excited and so knowledgeable on the computer. For a parent it's really exciting to see this kind of enthusiasm and growth in your child. [He] has always been a good student, but he has never "loved" school, but he has loved your class, so I thank you for that!
Contacts like those (above) and these help me to believe I'm doing something right.
Speaking of something right, a student I was lucky enough to have in here the last two years applied to and was accepted by every school he contacted, including the USC School of Cinematic Arts, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts for Filmmaking, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, and Loyola Marymount University. Quite the clean sweep! Loyola Marymount won the Adam Lee sweepstakes by awarding him a Trustee Scholarship covering 4 years’ room, board, and tuition — the equivalent of a $200,000 scholarship. Other awards and scholarships are finding their way to Adam, including the ACLU's 2008 Youth Activist Scholarship. Here's an article and a nice story about Adam. And don't miss his portfolio. (If nothing else, be sure to watch A Modern Day Witch Hunt: The Dale Akiki Story as it is an unbelievable story and has been accepted into numerous film festivals across the nation.)
One day I'm sure I'll say, "I knew him when."
Oct 17, 2007
Hey, it's October. How'd that happen? Here's a recap of what I remember since that last post...
Kept making tutorials that week rather than studying for that <insert colorful adjective> test (but passed it anyway). Kept making tutorials up until the day I climbed on a plane to teach Flash for DMA. First at Stanford. Then UCSD. Then back to Stanford. Flew home and jumped in a rented mini van the next morning for a 2 week family adventure to Yellowstone and the Tetons. 3,000 miles, 1700 pictures, and a million good memories. The best, most exhausting vacation of our lives! Two days to recover then back to the Mac Lab to set it up for the 246 students I have this year.
Oh yeah, and there's also that class I'm teaching at Cuyamaca College. It's a lot of fun but why oh why did I think I had time to take it on? Lucky I'm teaching it online next semester. Wait... That's gonna mean a lot of work to set it up...
Oh well. Lucky I have all this free time. Who needs sleep?
Next up: An updated best of movie to show you the fantastic work the kids are doing. They've risen to the challenge I threw down the first week of school and they're giving every indication that this will be the best group of artists the Mac Lab has ever seen.
It's gonna be a great year!
June 20, 2007
I'm immersed in the process of making the new CS3 tutorials for the students—110 videos and counting. Heck, I didn't count 'em. Had the computer add 'em up. Hey, I wondered, and did a search to see how many video tutorials I'd recorded for the kids in the Mac Lab over the past few years...
2,152
Wow! And that doesn't include all the early stuff like this. Man, was that labor intensive! Six pages of screen captures, text, and mini movies to drive home the lesson.
I have to stop now to go to a class at the district offices to learn how to teach English language learners. It's a review for the 7 hour test many of us have to take this Saturday. Some politician's notion of making us better teachers, I guess. I'm being asked to memorize and regurgitate names, terms, acronyms, dates, strategies, etc. that have little or nothing to do with how kids learn in this room. Heck, most of it deals with teaching elementary school students to read!
So I have a choice. Spend the next 3 days memorizing that gibberish. Or continue to work on the very thing that helps all students—especially special-ed and English language learners—to succeed in the Mac Lab.
Time is too precious and I have little to waste. One guess as to how I'll be spending the next 3 days.
June 7, 2007
This year was a grand experiment and the results are rolling in. When a first year student produces something like this, you know you're doing something right. Of course, after the first two days of finals, the gaps in student achievement also stand out. And I see the problem. Oh, the new tutorials I'll be writing!
Next year the Mac Lab will rock like no high school computer graphics lab ever has!
Why, you might wonder, would I make such a bold (or foolish) pronouncement? The answer's twofold: First, we'll finally have current hardware and software—something that's never been the case in my 5 years here. And, the infinitely more important second reason, I've finally nailed how to teach Flash. The revamped workflow is introduced in the new Flash CS3 tutorials that I'm currently recording (and will be unveiling in August).
The existing tutorials work. No doubt about that. See these comments from happy folk from around the world. (There's nothing like starting the morning with one of these wonderful emails!) As for my students, the proof's in their work. And it's never been better. Here's the reigning champion of Flash. (Note: You'll have to spend some time to discover everything Daniel's packed into his final site! Lots of hidden gems if you launch his Web work nested deep within other projects! But alas, also a few missing files from years gone by.) Dan's reign, like his predecessor's (who also has missing files), will be short though as there are several contenders returning next year. So, with all the good news, why mess with what's working so well? Well...
When a student masters the Mac Lab Fundamentals of Flash, he/she can concentrate on learning to express his/herself via Flash and the other programs we're using. The key is Flash because we use it to build our portfolios. When a student can "think" in Flash, a world of expressive interactivity opens up. When he/she can visualize the concept, building it becomes child's play once the fundamentals are in place.
I've been streamlining this process each year and the final pieces of the puzzle started falling into place this year. I kept making the kids learn new Flash workflow all year. (That didn't make me very popular with some of 'em!) That, coupled with our transition from our Rube Goldberg contraption we called the Mac Lab (a collection of 4 to 7 year old computers with a failing network) to it's new incarnation, well, let's just say that the kids dealt with a lot more than just the curriculum. But dang did they learn!
There were so many first year student success stories it's hard to point to one as the best portfolios were so varied but, in addition to creating a string of unique, well-crafted portfolios, Lauren was also the kind of student that teachers dream of (and I was lucky to have more of those than ever before this year). Be sure to click the animated versions when viewing the thumbs at the lower right of the interface to see her compositing skills. Other students will be featured on our home page as I archive the best work (something I've foolishly failed to do, for the most part, in the past).
So, before I sign off for the 06/07 school year, I just want to say it once again...
Next year the Mac Lab will rock like no high school computer graphics lab ever has!
March 22, 2007
Things have been happening. Students are creating fabulous work. Some of it can be seen here. Some can be seen gracing our walls thanks to our new Epson 3800. Other prints are finding their way into GUHSD offices and, believe it or not, some of our State Legislator's offices (or so I've been told). I'll upload some Web versions soon so you can see 'em. Some students have even begun to sell their work! The tutorials to make your own posters may be found here. Exciting stuff.
Speaking of exciting, the District awarded me Education Innovator of the Month in February and Valhalla just named me Teacher of the Year for 07/08 (though I'm wondering how they can peer that far into the future... I must do something really great next year).
And speaking of something really great (like my segues?), the marvelous emails keep piling up. One of the best came all the way from Ireland and included a $100 donation to the Mac Lab via our Foundation. Thanks Daithi!
Finally, this whole Teacher of the Year thing has me wondering how something so wonderful can be happening so soon. After all, like I've said elsewhere, I'm just getting started. However, in the process of creating the necessary documentation for the next step in the T of the Y process, I ran across an email exchange a former student and I had a while back. Sometimes it's hard to know if you really do make a difference in kids' lives. Then something like the following happens (misspellings and all) and it suddenly feels like all the extra time and work have been well-spent:
> And since I never gave you homework, you owe me one. Read this page:
> http://www.ix625.com/un_numb/03fresh.html
> Writing, painting, composing -- it doesn't matter. If we open up to the
> experience, we too can become a conduit for creativity.
> And just in case you think I put myself above my own advice, one of my
> favorite quotes is Richard Bach's, "You teach best what you most need to
> learn."
I never would think you one to ever put yourself over your own advice. Me and many others (that graduated last year and the year before), still talk about you at least once a week. Creepy huh?
You have no idea the paths you opened for us in life. Without you, I would probally be more then homeless by now. No joke. You came in, out of NOWHERE, and totally changed the way I viewed and did things and many others will say the same. The programs and things you showed me have saved my hide countless times in life and your advice has done far more.
We will be at a pizza place or walking around Target and somehow your name will always come up and you'd blush at the compliments if you heard them. It's just incredible. We cannot sit threw an entire digital art or graphic class in college because you spoiled us WAY too much. You have given first-year students information that TRUMPS anything a class I take will show me for a long time. After I finish my digital homework in college I sign onto the mac-lab and fiddle with tutorials (as much as I hate doing them) for hours on end.
Awsome link you gave me :) Verry insightfull. Thanks a lot.
But yea, you are creating lives and paths for these kids. And if they are looking for a path, it goes just that much further. Thank you for everything and if you do happen to find ANY files of mine on CD's or whatnot please tell me.
Oct 27, 2006
Phase 1 of the New Mac Lab is complete. Thanks to ROP, we've got 30 new 20" iMacs for the kids to work on. Quite a change as the computers they replaced were almost 7 years old! It was worth all the extra hours to manage the transition. As you might imagine, the students are thrilled. The rest of the lab will be filled in soon thanks to our Governator's sudden interest in the arts. I don't care what the reason is behind the unexpected funding. All that matters to me is that we'll have a fully functional lab for the first time since I arrived here as a novice teacher in January of 2002.
In other news, the email bag has included the always welcome thank you notes from happy people who find the tutorials helpful. I especially like the following email because I've set the bar higher for my students this year based on the strength of the new tutorials. (Here's a visual rubric I made for the kids for their upcoming progress report. Click the A+, A, B, C, D links to see various examples.) Callie's second paragraph is yet another confirmation that I'm on the right track:
Mike,
I am a recent (2005) graduate of Marquette University with degrees in Computer Science and Art History. I have always loved web design, and taught myself HTML, Javascript, and other odds and ends useful in web design, but was always daunted by Flash because it looks so immense when knowing nothing about it. I read many tutorials, even bought a book, and found I was (though slowly) moving towards some comprehension.
Then I stumbled upon your site when looking for a tutorial for masking. I have watched every single one and check the site once and a while for reference. They have helped me immensely -- not just in learning tricks of the trade, but in actually understanding how Flash works, which in turn has helped me learn other items not mentioned in tutorials. I have my own blog and now run a web design business (well, nearly a business), and know how nice it can be to receive feedback on my writing and on my designs, so I just wanted to thank you for all the time and effort you put into these incredibly useful tools. I'm sure you have reached all ends of the earth.
Thanks again!
Callie
Oct 13, 2006
Who says Friday the 13th is unlucky? Here's this morning's good news from the email bag:
Hey Mr. Skocko,
I was just working the other day and thought I should fill you in on my career. I've moved on from being just a beta tester. I was going to Devry and about 5 weeks into it, a friend of mine mentioned that that the work I was doing was far beyond what was being taught. I was teaching myself Cscript or C# (game code) and learning to use the Microsoft XNA development tools. I'm developing a few games for the Xbox Live Arcade on the 360. He got me an interview with Rockstar games in San Diego and they hired me on the spot. Now I'm working on Grand Theft Auto4 for the Xbox360 and PS3.We are creating the engine on which the game will run. I have a 360, ps3 and pc dev. kits at my office and at home and its a dream come true. But I still owe most of it to you and your class. You are a very good teacher and something about you makes people listen and learn. Well, got to go, my new build of the R.A.G.E. (rockstar advanced gaming engine) is due in this weekend and I also have to send my arcade game to Microsoft for a playtest soon. Tell your students that they really can go into this field if they want, but don't stop with Cinema 4D. Learn new programs on your own time, it pays off. Be talking to you again soon. By the way, would you know what I would have to do to come and visit the school to just walk through and say hi to people again? I'm not sure if you have to call or if you can just show up. Thanks a million.
Your friend,
Phil
Oct 4, 2006
Sometimes the dreaded daily email deluge contains unexpected gems. This one came in this morning and made my day:
Skocko,
I'm working on a new page, for digitalsilvermedia.com. It should be up in a few weeks. There is an under construction page that will give you an idea of what it looks like which is up now. Thanks to my portfolio from the Mac Lab, I'm getting 18+ units waived (6 classes) which is going to speed up the time its going to take for me to get my B. A. in Graphic Design of Communications. I am also thinking of double majoring in art. Right now my design is paying for my education which is unbelievable. My parents are very thankful. I'm going to stop by over Thanksgiving to see how the Mac Lab is doing. I hope you get some of the new Mac Pros. They should be coming out soon, I think. Are there any new promising students coming through? I mean the usual are still there, Kyle, Cory, Daniel. But that is to be expected. I wish the best to the Mac Lab. It has definitely put me in a great position for college.
_brian
Sept 18, 2006
This one is for all you folks in the world outside of the Mac Lab. I'm going to assume you've read the FAQ. (You have, right?)
One of my favorite ways to start the day is with yet another thank you in the Inbox. It really helps to know that so many of you out there have learned something valuable from the Mac Lab site. I've gotten emails from every continent except Antarctica. (Hey, don't any of you intrepid researchers and explorers ever find your way here?) Point is, if it works for so many of you, I must be doing something right for the kids right here in this room.
Then there's the group of you who add the inevitable request for personal help with a specific software problem. Sometimes I'm able to help. Sometimes not. The best way to help me help you (so long as I can find the time) is to attach your problem file. It's much easier to trouble-shoot that way. I'm not making any promises—just trying to streamline the process a bit. First and foremost, I'm a classroom teacher. There's 220 kids in line ahead of you.
And then there's the growing group of you out there who want to give my kids some real-world experience by working on your commercial sites. Altruistic or not, I'm not sure that that's legal and/or ethical. Please do enlighten me (with facts, not opinions) if I'm mistaken.
The most amazing emails are from other instructors who ask permission to use Mac Lab tutorials in their classrooms. I used to get two or three a month. I figured that that's another confirmation that I must be doing something right. This year looks to be somewhat different.
I knew as soon as I uploaded the new batch of tutorials last month (200+ movies I made over the Summer) the site would become more popular but... Short story: two weeks ago I received three requests from fellow high school teachers. Last week it was six—three of 'em from university instructors (one teaching a Masters program and another in the UK). Pretty cool, but... The looming problem is bandwidth as there's only so much to go around.
The problem is still theoretical at present but as I plan on creating many more tutorials soon (Photoshop is next on the list), it's something that'll eventually rear its ugly head as the site gets more popular.
Think I'm making this up? Go to google.com and type: mac lab
This morning I got 48,000,000 results (with SafeSearch on) and number 1 is my little Mac Lab site.
There are no metadata tags on any page. I don't promote it or play any search engine games. I just fill it with tutorials for my kids and it's risen to the top of its own accord. Pretty cool, huh?
Type: flash 8 tutorials and my Flash 8 page (still under development) is number 5 out of 64,300,000 this morning. Try to narrow the search by adding quotation marks: "flash 8 tutorials" and it's number 4 out of 50,900—right below Adobe. Once again, just another indicator.
So what can we do about this?
It turns out that our high school has a Foundation (no, smarty-pants, not the cement and rebar underneath the building) and I'm in the process of setting up a way for you to donate if you're so inclined. The donations would be tax-deducible and 100% of the donations would go to support the kids in the Mac Lab (books, software, hardware, etc.). The money would simply supplement my meager supply budget.
What would you get? Well, besides a warm, fuzzy feeling for helping the kids and a tax deduction to boot, perhaps there's a way for me to (legally) send you a few DVDs with all the tutorials by way of a thank you for an as yet to be determined minimum donation. I'll have to run this idea past administration to make sure it stays on the right side of the law but that might help to cut down on traffic to the site.
Fellow teachers—yes, our budgets are pitiful. We try to stretch them in any way we can. What're the Mac Lab tutorials worth to your students? Of that, what would you be willing to donate to the cause? Wouldn't it be better to have the tutorials (on DVDs) in your classroom rather than accessed across the Internet? No s-l-o-w downloads bogging down your students!
Hobbyists and professionals—I know you use the site too. Maybe you'd not want to make a large donation and get the DVDs, but isn't the site worth a few bucks? Don't think these small donations wouldn't add up.
Parents—I wouldn't think of denying you the right join in on the fun! Give early and often! :-) Thanks to Mrs. De Mars for her donation!
So, what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Shut up and write more tutorials?
Sept 16, 2006
It's the first Mac Lab Saturday School of the year, I've got about a dozen things I need to take care of, and here I am starting a blog. Go figure.
Okay, there is a practical reason for this. There are parents, fellow teachers, and a few other folks who might find this valuable in one way or another. See, I'm starting to get bogged down with the sheer volume of email my little site generates—email from around the block and around the world. Maybe some of you good people can find your answers right here instead.
Hey, so I'm an optimist. It could happen.
First, something for all the parents who want grades posted and/or instant progress reports. Have you watched the movies I made for you? General Information about the Mac Lab (276 MB) | Absence/Tardy/Grading Policy (15 MB). This isn't a place where learning happens in short, easy to measure increments. Have you read the class syllabi? Digital Art | 3D Design and Animation | Multimedia Production Success is guaranteed for those who play by the rules. Do you check the home pages for the Mac Lab itself and the individual classes to see what's happening? Mac Lab | Digital Art | 3D | Multimedia Do you watch the movies that accompany the instructions? Do you check your son's/daughter's Website to see if they're keeping up with the assignments? Student Website Links
Yes, I know it would be easier for you to just send off an email. And if you're the type to choose that route you're probably not reading this anyway. But for the rest of you, let me spend more time managing the classroom and generating resources for the kids. Check for yourself before you write. Parents of students who are failing (or in danger of failing) are notified at the end of weeks 3, 9, and 15 of each semester. You receive a progress report at weeks 6 and 12 of each semester. That's a lot of feedback before actual grades are assigned.
I've got 220 students who are working through my tutorials at present. Soon the kids will begin to find their own voices and they'll be shooting off along myriad paths. The Mac Lab is a unique classroom where kids learn how to succeed in ways that aren't necessarily traditional. Assessment is a time-consuming process and it's not always easy to assess in mid-stream. It's a lot of work to run my classroom this way but it's worth it. Many of the kids are/will be producing college-level projects. Have you checked out this movie? Or this page? And the work is only getting better each year.
I know you're busy. So am I. Let's see if we can help each other out so I can have more time to help the kids. Okay?
Now, if you've done all that and still want to write, please don't hesitate to do so. And you don't even need to go to my page to get my email address.
Ah, now I feel better.
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