Finland's school system accomplishes some impressive feats: so what makes Finnish students so successful?
"Students get plenty of teacher interaction: Finland and New York City have the same number of teachers. But Finland has nearly half the number of students. Standardized testing is kept to a minimum: before a New York student reaches high school, he or she will have taken 10 standardized tests. Collectively, US students take 100 million standardized tests a year. Finland's only standardized test is taken when students are 16 years old. Kids have more time to be kids: an average us 5th grader has 50 minimum of homework per day. Finnish students rarely do homework until their teens. And while us elementary students average 27 minutes of recess students in Finland get about 75 minutes a day). Finland knows good teachers are essential: teachers in Finland are all required to have a Master's degree (which is fully subsidized by the state)."
(OnlineClasses.org, 21 January 2013)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Universal Everything & Field: Deutsche Bank Hong Kong
"FIELD were invited by Universal Everything to bring their concepts to life using realtime code. A unique and unrepeatable experience amazes staff and guests every time they walk by this 12m wide screen installation at Deutsche Bank Hong Kong. The 8 ever-changing video artworks show atmospheric cityscapes, hand-drawn sceneries, patterns and landscape animations. All generated in realtime, passers-by are invited to discover new details every day."
(Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn, 2010)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
River of Wisdom: animated version of a Song Dynasty painting
"After debuting at the Expo 2010 Shanghai China (2010上海世界博覽會) and traveling to Hong Kong and Macau, an animated version of the Song Dynasty painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival (清明上河圖), by 12th-century artist Zhang Zeduan (張澤端), is on show in Taipei. The 25cm by 529cm original is a panoramic portrayal of everyday life in Bianjing (汴京), today’s Kaifeng (開封), the capital of China during the Song Dynasty. Despite its name, the scroll depicts the architecture and scenery of the period and the apparel and activities of the rich and poor, not the rituals of the Qingming Festival (清明節), otherwise known as Tomb Sweeping Festival. Thirty times larger than the original painting, the animated version, which is titled River of Wisdom, is beamed onto a 6m by 110m screen by 12 projectors. The entire work was digitalized by Crystal CG (水晶石數字科技公司) and its subjects and backdrops move and make sounds."
(Lin King, 29 July 2011, Taipei Times)
CONTRIBUTOR
Guannan (cassie) DuSHARE
Tunnel Vision: Metro Zoetrope
"I first noticed subway tunnel wall animations in Boston, where the long gaps between stations on the MBTA Red Line provides a captive audience. The animation, composed of dozens of stills that simulated movement as the train zoomed by, was an ad. The message: visit Vermont and its great outdoors, which certainly must have resonated with more than a few claustrophobes riding the crowded rush hour rails.
Animated ads in subway tunnels are expensive, both to design and install, which helps explain why the Vermont ad's successor, a campaign for a movie 'coming to theatres' last February, was only removed recently - with no ready replacement. But the medium is a popular one, if only because it's relatively novel and rare. Examples from Budapest, Hong Kong, Kiev, L.A., Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. have been enthusiastically documented for upload to YouTube. And given that cash-strapped transit agencies have allowed almost every other subway surface to be colonized by ad space, including seats and whole exteriors of rolling stock, it was almost a logical next step.
Much of the credit for introducing these flipbook or zoetrope-like ads goes to two independent innovators: New York astrophysics student Joshua Spodek and Winnipeg animator Bradley Caruk. Spodek's ads debuted in Atlanta in 2001; his company, Sub Media, continues to produce similar ads today. In 2006, Caruk won a Manning Innovation Award for his concept, which his partner, Rob Walker, first thought up while staring at the blank walls of Paris' Metro. The company they co-founded, SideTrack Technologies, set up its first system in Kuala Lumpur and has since opened others across the United States - and beyond, to London, Rio de Janeiro, and cities in Mexico."
(Christopher Szabla, Urbanphoto, 20 November 2010)
Fig.1 Bill Brand, "Masstransiscipe" New York subway installation.
Fig.2 New ad-places in the tunnel. // Новые рекламные площади в тунеле киевского метро. Между станциями Лукьяновская и Львовская Брама
Fig.3 "Something Cool in L.A. Subways", Uploaded by TransformedMan on 23 May 2008.
Fig.4 "Tokyo Subway Ad ", Uploaded by ivanptse on 19 Apr 2008.
Fig.5 "Target ad, on the washington D.C subway.", Uploaded by kikyobackfromthedead on 1 Sep 2006.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Creative Tools: a handbook of 15 methods for design practice
"Creative Tools was co-authored by Alex Fung, Alice Lo and Mamata N. Rao based on their teaching and students' learning experiences in the Design Thinking subject. Foreword by Dr. Edward de Bono, this handbook is a comprehensive guide to 15 creative tools that help develop students' creative thinking, not only for design by other disciplines. Each tool has an introduction followed by a demonstration of its use with reflection."
(香港理工大學/Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Alex Fung, Alice Lo, Mamata N. Rao (2005). "Creative Tools", School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
