My team was recognised as “Ones to Note” in The Education Foundation‘s 2020 Edtech50 Yearbook! The nomination was for our work on a suite of web applications we develop for use across the Outwood Family of Schools. The Software and Data Team of OGAT have developed software, (oCloud) that has changed how easily the Trust can track and monitor students, ensuring accurate and timely interventions and reducing staff workload alongside....
Half-term included some crafty afternoons around a fire (some sheltering under a tarp!) making shrunken apple heads for Halloween. It’s an easy project, and butter knives work fine for small people to carve a face. Peel an apple Carve a face with exaggerated features Hang and leave somewhere warm to dry & shrink
Tin cans punched with leaf designs. The cans were filled with water and frozen—the ice provides strength while punching holes. Templates for three different leaves & a star are here.
A papier-mâché mushroom with glowing gills, growing from the remains of an old mini-dictionary. Made as a gift for my secret Santa. A battery pack and switch are built into the underside of the book. The mushroom is thick papier-mâché, sanded and finished with a matte clear coat. The gills are folded sections of the dictionary paper from the hollowed section.
A couple of tubes of sealant later, I had 30-some glowing mushrooms and a few fairy street lights ready for installation. Most mushrooms glow with the vibrant & eerie light of amber LEDs, while a few have white LEDs shining through tinted silicone.
After some trial and error, I arrived at a healthily glowing design. The mushrooms are constructed with transparent silicone (acetoxy cure), tinted with a drop of liquid watercolour. I moulded the main body sections by sandwiching the silicone between layers of cling film. The rounded caps are formed by stretching this over a large marble. The stalks by rolling into an even stick with the wires embedded in the silicone....
I prototyped some glowing mushroom caps for an outdoor installation. The caps are clear silicone, tinted with watercolour. They surround an amber SMD LED.
A bit earlier than planned, I’m back in the UK. Arriving at the crack of dawn gave me time to kill. So it was coffee and people-watching for a bit, as the ebb of passers-by gradually increased as Heathrow woke up. I made the most of my unplanned London trip and found a cheap last-minute front-row ticket for the Lost & Found Orchestra, which turned out to be something pretty special....
Finding the top of San Pedro seemed like a good option for my last day in Spain. Lacking minor things like fully accurate directions shouldn’t get in the way. Unfortunately, time ran out again…I came close but ended up settling for some hefty boulders providing a pretty spectacular view of the valley. Overall a good farewell to living in the Spanish hills. Well, minus the menacing cows that prompted a detour....
Discovering I planned to go sightseeing in Madrid, my Spanish teacher went on another of his wonderfully rambling tangents. Today it included an art book, my map of Madrid, touched on communism (he’d argued with a classmate about it on Monday) and somehow jumped to the sacred status of cows in India. Never a boring time in Spanish language class. This time the weather in Madrid was beautiful and I took his advice of both going to Sol and touring the Parque del Retiro with its formal gardens, fountains and shaped trees....