Lab: Makerspaces – Zine

During our visit to the Art Hive today, we were asked to make a Zine on whatever made us feel happy, whatever we were passionate about. A Zine is essentially a small magazine; magazines are not always very inclusive since they are typically directed towards one specific audience and the content is not relevant to all nor is it written by a wide range of people.

The Art Hive

The second half of our class today was spent in the Art Hive in McGill’s Education Building. I have spent some time in the Art Hive outside of class but it was an interesting experience to hear about it from Dr. Maria Ezcurra, the MAHI (McGill Art Hive Initiative) Art Facilitator. In short, she explained that the Art Hive is a place where anyone can go to feel well. This wellness can be created by simply having a quiet place to sit, make some art, relax on the comfortable pillows and watch a movie, read a book, or even take part in a stretching class that they have a few times a week.

Lab: Scratch

In class, we were asked to play around with the Scratch software to see how it works and develop an understanding for it. We had to create a talking animation; I decided to add music and movement as well. It took a little bit of time to truly understand how to use the system and perfect the timings of certain components but it was a good experience.

The link to my project is below.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/297101950/

Coding and Learning

In class today, we explored two different online coding systems. While both were developed for a younger audience, they were fun to use.

Activity: Infographics

Infographics are essentially posters which give the reader enough information about a concept or idea with minimal words, using shapes, etc. as a means of communication.  We were asked to create an infographic about a topic of our choice: I chose physics.  More specifically, my infographic is a brief history of the most interesting and important breakthroughs, discoveries and theories in modern physics (I refer to modern physics here as the physics we know and study today rather than a common understanding of modern physics as the physics of the past century). 

Bubbl.us

bubbl.us

Whether you have an account or not, Bubbl.us is a wonderful tool for making mind and concept maps.  This open source software is equipped with many keyboard shortcuts to make the process even easier than it already is.  You can move the bubbles anywhere you want on the page and link any bubble to any other bubble with either lines or arrows, zoom in or out of the project, and even scroll around the page (this feature uses a drag and drop method since the default scrolling function is saved for zoom).

Lab: Graphic Design Poster

Using Canva, we were asked to make a poster explaining the different principles of graphic design, namely balance, alignment, proximity, repetition, and contrast. It was one thing learning about the different principles but it was very different trying to apply them to a poster of my own. The poster (attached below) gives a brief explanation and provides an example for each of the five principles. I tried to include all five in the poster itself.

Prezi

https://prezi.com/

Prezi is an online system that allows users to create visually appealing presentations from one of their templates or from a manual design following different paths and zooming in and out of various points on an image. This open source platform can be used either individually or collaboratively for any kind of presentation in any setting you can imagine (business, education, leisure, etc.).

Lab: GIMP

Wilber, the official mascot of GIMP.

https://www.gimp.org/

GIMP is an open source graphic editor which can be used for a variety of purposes ranging from altering an image (similar to Photoshop), converting from one image type to another, or creating an image of your own with the free-form and other drawing tools. In our case, we were asked to create a meme the software.

Lab: Screencast-O-Matic

https://screencast-o-matic.com/

The second software we discussed in class today is the Screencast-O-Matic. This is an open source software that you can download (less than 1MB!) to record your screen. It does not limit you to only one little bit of the screen or the whole screen; you can choose whatever part of your screen you want or just the active window. For the video below, I made the window the size of the website itself on my browser to make for the best and easiest viewing possible.