Visual Communication Seminar, Metaphors

This week seminar focused on metaphors, but first we finished off last weeks work and explained why we had chosen the picture, this is our groups works below.

Our main points were:

Time- everyone won'ts to make the most out of thier time.

Money- money is a big part of most peoples lives, most people want more money, and you need to be good at budgeting at university

Wales- because everyone in now living in wales, even is they were not born here

Pictures relating to home- which relates to family

some of the key words which mean a lot to me are 'live', 'dream; and 'you'

After this we then went on to discussed metaphors first starting with song names like:

Rihanna- only girl in the world

Bon Jovi- you give love a bad name

Razorlight- before i fall to pieces

we then moved onto looking at adverts that use metaphors, below are some ot the advertising campaigns we looked at.

And finally we watched Martin Luther king's speech 'I have a dream' and discussed as a class the use and meaning of some his metaphors, such as:

'roll down like water'

'the riches of freedom'

'thirst for freedom'

'lift the nation from quicksand'

But my favorite quote was:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".

Visual Communication Seminar, Photography and Emotions

The emotion i was trying to display was love, i started out very innocent but i soon went down a darker path, i have tried to take photos of things that people love but they should not, like smoking, drinking, unhealthy food and fashion (spending too much on how they look) these pictures are more like addictions than love but you could link then or relate them to love.

Guest Lecturer for What is Education, Graham Allen

Guest lectural Graham allen enviromental manager in swansea metropolitan university

Education for suitable development

His main points were to clarity and extend the ability of students to think for themseleves and encourage them to reflect, he mentions corporate reponsibility and how it effected the education sector, he broke it down into four main catergoires:

·         Community

·         Environment

·         Marketplace

·         Workplace

He then went on to talk about growth. GDP can include activities such as:

·         Deforestation

·         War

·         Divorces

·         Crime

·         Pollution

·         Natural disasters

But does not include:

·         Caring work

·         Loss of forests

·         Non-monetary trading

Instead of growth we need development, the growth we need to concentrate on is:

·         Employment

·         Education

·         Health

·         Prosperity and wealth (in terms of well-being)

Students need to develop bonds with nature and learn how life works on earth, students need to work together on creative solutions to environmental problems. Students need to know that the adults are doing all they can to protect the natural environment and safeguard the future for them. He also discussed ESDGC (education for sustainable development and global citizenship)

1.       The links between society, economy and environment and between our lives and those of people throughout the world

2.       The needs and rights of both present and future generations

3.       The relationship between power, resources and human rights

4.       The local and global implications of everything we do

5.       The actions that individuals and organisations can take in responding to local and global issues.

Visual Communication Seminar

In this week’s seminar with Suzie, we talked about out plans for the assignment and tried to clear up all the confusion regarding the brief. I am thinking I might relate mine to my home county (Cornwall) and the countryside or seaside, because where I come from is a big part of my life.

Then we talked about our lives and what aspects or memories are important to us, we had to write them down and then we folded up, scrunch up or even made something out of then (paper aeroplanes) and then threw them into a pile, so another person finds what you wrote down, we then discussed the differences and similarities. After this we were given a big A3 piece of paper and a lot of magazines/newspapers and asked to cut out relevant words and pictures that were linked in without lives or ‘had a sense or place’. I will discuss this further next week as it is an on-going task.

Quest Lecturer for What is Education, Olive Hopker

Olive Hopker head of planning and development at Swansea metropolitan university

She spoke about ‘collaboration v competition’ within university.

Current collaboration:

·         Research projects

·         Library access

·         Purchasing

·         ICT

·         External examiners

Current competition:

·         League tables

·         Research funding

·         Student places

Collaboration benefits:

·         Greater expertise and knowledge

·         Cost saving

·         Greater efficiency

Competition benefit:

·         Promotes better efforts

·         Provides choices

HEI (higher education institutions)

Small HEI benefits:

·         Small classes

·         Flexibility

·         Tailored programmes

·         Direct management control

Limitation:

·         Small resource base

·         Limited choice

Large HEI benefits:

·         Large resource base

·         Significant buying power

·         Large subject base and range or courses

Limitations:

·         Remote management

·         Large classes

·         Defined courses

·         Rigid procedures

Quest Lecturer for What is Education, Seminar, Week 5

This is our final seminar for this term, it was with Steve Gullick and he followed on from your last seminar and discussed governing bodies, Steve started by stating that there are a large number of governing bodies across wales that are short of governors, in particular community governors, and governors with a business background, the worst areas tend to be the poorer areas.

Next Steve spoke about Professor Stuart Ranson, he explained his opinions and thoughts about the subject. There is a shortage of governors, but the typical governor is white, middle aged and middle class. Professor Stuart Ranson believes there are less black or minority ethnic governors because they feel:

·         Uncomfortable

·         Perception of racism

·         Have to work while the meetings take place

·         Language

He later goes on to explain why there are fewer young or new parents, these parents tend to have less time available because they are either busy with family, work or children. And there are less lower class governors because they need to travel to the meetings and running a car can be costly, another possible reason might be that unemployed and unskilled workers may question the point of education, because of their childhood experiences.

Following on from this we had a hand out by Peter Earley about the types of governing bodies

·         The abdicators

·         The adversaries

·         The supporters club

·         The partners

It turned out that only 10% of governing bodies where partners the majority were supporters club. Steve also talked about the courses that were run for governors he said that out of 22 local authorities 14 of the schools did not send anyone for the training, so a lot of the courses were cancelled.