Daly's Online Space

As part of the current remit, I have been taking a P6/5 class for ICT, providing McCrone cover for the class teacher. There’s been a big push for the Scottish Homecoming to be marked in the school, and it has been quite positive all round – it seems, at least, a step further than forced Burns recitals and such; and the idea of embracing our collective Scottishness has been well received by teachers; and by pupils too, I think.

As part of this, I had the idea that it would be a nice idea to explore this in ICT lessons too. My initial plan was to have the children in the class gather images that define Scottishness to them; I would then have them load the images into Animoto and make a slideshow. While I was playing around with Animoto myself, I had cause to think about what music I would use as a soundtrack to the slideshow. I could download something, maybe let the children choose a song and have the MP3 available in the school’s shared directory for them to upload. But then, it hit me that while the whole school is preparing songs to sing at an assembly, it would be worthwhile to record the class singing their songs and have that as the soundtrack. I thought that it would be a nice idea also, to film the recording of the songs to make a Band Aid style video to open or close the project.

Of course, with that thought, I had let the cat out of the bag. Since I want to film some of it, it would be pointless not filming the rest of it! Maybe it would be an equally good idea then, to have the children talking on camera about their feelings about Scotland and what defines it for them. The idea was born then, for the children in the class to make a short film called ‘My Scotland’. In it, I aim to gather a collection of interviews with pupils (across the whole school) and members of the wider school and local community (touching on Enterprise), still images selected (or better, taken) by pupils in the class, the class singing and my living out my rock and roll dreams with a lilting guitar strum in the background.

I would like the children to be as responsible as possible for the production of the entire thing. The school only has access to Windows Movie Maker on its computers, which I don’t have much experience with. Not having a Windows machine at home, I’m loathe to try it in school, especially with the restrictive network lockdown meaning that I’d be unlikely to make any sort of camera work with it without calling in the IT guy. Easier, I think to let the children use my Macbook (in a very strictly supervised way, you understand!) and we can edit the piece on iMovie instead. I’d like the class to script it, make up interview questions and carry out the interviews; be responsible for setting up the tripod and operating the camera – especially since I won’t be around much of the time bar Tuesday afternoons, they’re going to have to be able to work on this independently as much as possible.

I rolled the notion out to the class this afternoon and they seemed quite excited about it. We discussed things that the children might want to see in their film, and we made a basic mindmap on the board. I had hoped to make it on mind42.com but there were some technical issues with regard to getting the whiteboard to work, so once again, analog technology saved the day! We talked about the types of jobs that we would need to do and I was pleased to get a few volunteers to be writers, and completely unsurprised to see that everyone wanted to be a camera operator. It was decided that everyone had to get a shot of doing that!

Finally, the children had to receive ‘the talk’ about the value of school equipment and looking after it, after a little bit of silliness resulted in the tripod taking a dunt while the children where around it and I was pointing out the features of the camera. Understandable really, I think they were quite excited; and they’re not really used to seeing that sort of thing in their classroom. The fine line between excited curiosity and ‘being a bit silly’ got a little blurred. I always feel that I don’t want to start a project off with a threat; so I look on it as more of a general reminder about the value and importance of mutual trust between pupil and teacher when it comes to tasks like this one.

Lessons animoto, burns, cameras, editing, filming, homecoming, ict, mind42, mindmaps, movies, music, plans, scotland, songs, soundtracks

I am absolutely fascinated by chip music, to the point where I worry a little bit for myself. For the unacquainted, chip music normally refers to music made on, or synthesising, the music chips found inside 8-bit computers (e.g. ZX Spectrum, the original NES, Sega Master System, and the classic black-n-yellow Gameboy.) Here is a collection of Christmas Carols and songs, rendered as such for your listening pleasure – with nostalgic 8-bit gaming puns for you to spot too!

http://www.doctoroctoroc.com/video-games/8-bit-jesus-full-album-release/

(at time of writing this site was getting a bit hammered by traffic – so be patient with them!)

music 8bit, carols, chipmusic, christmas, gameboy, games, music, nintendo, sega, songs, spectrum

More last.fm:

my last.fm top 22 for 2008

This is a more interesting chart, I think, than the artists one, since it better shows up the ipodification of my listening, where tracks often have more value than albums (and even artists for that matter), simply because it’s just as easy to listen to tracks than it is to listen to albums these days, there being no need to physically switch media.

Loudon Wainwright III has stormed straight into my top 20. Dead Skunk is a song that Gill’s dad used to have on in the car a lot when she was wee, so I have her to thank for introducing me to it. Albeit a bit of a novelty song, it has all the hallmarks of a great singalong song in that it’s funny, and easy to sing. Similarly, #2 on my chart, Frankie’s Gun has similar qualities. The Felice Brothers do commit the crime of being absolute Dylan copyists, but Frankie’s Gun is excellent; and again, is endowed with a catchy, singalong chorus and some clever lyrical hooks in the verses.

The JP Daly prize for best pop single of the year goes to #5, Neon Neon’s I Told Her on Alderaan. Neon Neon are a collaboration between Hip Hop producer Boom Bip and Super Furry Animals’ main guy Gruff Rhys. I Told Her on Alderaan is one of the more accessible points of their album Stainless Style (a concept album about the life and works of time-machine manufacturer John DeLorean). An upbeat pop rock song with an impeccably authentic sounding 80s pop production, it’s almost like a time machine in itself. It’s also one of the very few Star Wars-referencing songs ever to be any good (although I am open to being convinced otherwise if anyone knows any better.)

Other notable entries are Half Man, Half Biscuit whose ‘All I Want for Christmas is  a Dukla Prague Away Kit’ appeared as a last.fm suggestion and seems to have stuck, although I remain unconvinced about their relative merits in spite of that song. Bonus points to anyone who spots the Lloyd Cole / Camera Obscura continuity.

music 2008, charts, lastfm, lists, music, scrobbles, tunes

One of the great things about a service such as last.fm is that it allows an almost scientific look back at listening habits over a period of time. I’m the kind of guy, you see, who had certain CDs that were hidden away from the rest of my collection – always a few guilty pleasures hidden away from the prying eyes of visitors. I have, of course, grown out of that very teenage mindset (honest!). These days last.fm captures everything I listen to. As a result it provides a quite interesting way to look at my listening trends and habits – and there’s nowhere to hide (there, that deals with ABBA right out of the box!).

last.fm artist stats for 2008

I was quite surprised by some of the results. I wouldn’t have said that 2008 was a particularly Beatle-y year for me, but I think I can attribute their runaway success to one rainy afternoon on Arran where the laptop played the three Anthology albums back to back while we… dealt with the conditions. One thing 2008 has been, though is the year where I started to understand what the fuss was about with the 1960s and 70s American folk rock and country – something I’ve always been quite unsure of. This explains the appearance of Bob Dylan and Loudon Wainwright III on my chart. Those two, along with Glenn Campbell, Sufjan Stevens and Paul Simon make an incredible FIVE singer-songwritery types to appear in my top 20 – something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. All in all, though, 2008 has been quite predictable in terms of bands I’ve been listening to.

I think I can explain away quite a few of the high placings for some of the artists. The reissue of the 1972 Santa Monica gig near the start of the year explains why David Bowie’s in the top 20, as I hammered that for a few weeks after it came out. Likewise, I got a hold of an excellent Yellow Magic Orchestra box set which resulted in a lot of play for them for a few weeks.

A worrying trend, either to do with my listening habits, or (I hope) the state of music in general, is that the vast majority of the top 20 are artists whose careers are oldies – people who, if they are still working have their best days well behind them. Maybe it’s time for me to start reading the NME again?

I really wish I had had access to a service like this for the entirety of my music listening life. There are lots of things I don’t listen to much now that it would nice to look back on. In truth, I don’t listen to music in general as often as I once did. Podcasts make up a lot of my commuting listening these days, and a lot of the time that I would have spent listening to music is often spent in other ways. A slightly younger me would have had much higher stats than this, which has led me to set a challenge for myself for next year. In the almost 2 years that I’ve been using last.fm, I’ve scrobbled almost 5,000 tracks. By 31st December next year, I’d like it to be at 10,000. 5,000 songs over 365 days works out at 13.69 tracks a day – should be easily achieveable given my commute. If you have anything you think might help me here – track or band recommendations especially, please leave me a comment

Tomorrow – my top 20 or so listened to tracks of the year. Hold on tight!

music charts, lastfm, lists, music, scrobbles, stats, tunes