Lesson aim

To transform a regular poster into a propaganda poster using algorithms created by the students.

Thinking aim

To test and refine their algorithms

Lesson outline

The class need a short amount of time to complete their algorithms at the start of the lesson. I then gave each group an image of a poster that they were to transform into a propaganda poster using their algorithms. The class were excited about this challenge and motivated to get started. They had to re-draw the poster so it became a propaganda poster trying to follow only the steps in their algorithms. When they became stuck they were to note down what should have been in the algorithm to help them. Essentially what was missing. Not all the posters were completely finished but almost all groups had a constructive discussion about how they shoudl go about this task. At the end of the lesson we compared their posters with the original poster to see if it had in fact changed, and discussed where the algorithm had helped them and what they felt was missing. They then had to re-write their algorithm so that it could be used to create a propaganda poster from scratch.

Reflection

Almmost all the groups were successful in transforming their poster, although there were different levels of success. The one group that ended up with a very similar poster to their original one was the group where there was virtually no discussion before starting or during the creation of the poster. This group also needed quite a lot of help from me to help them identify which values their parameters shoudl have. For example they had message as a parameter but no idea of the value, or values,  that it should have in order to be a propaganda poster. In fact they actually struggled to even come up with a message that would be suitable. Most of the other groups realised early on that this was the most important parameter and affected, or influenced all the other values of the other parameters. I think now that perhaps message should have been the element in the ENV model rather than the much broader propaganda poster. I also wonder if it woudl be a good idea to create a variety of tasks that could be in a resource bank in the classroom, so that when students were stuck they select a similar task to help them. An example of this would be a collection of images where the message was all the same and they were then to identify the values of just the messages and look for a pattern between the values. They could either be unit specific or general to art. When the class read out their final algorithms that they will use when creating their own poster, the were all quite similar with message and composition being the top places to start.