From the Desk of Mr Daniel

Was doing tech support for a teacher with regards to the LMS. She use Google Search to look for our school website and claimed that our school website beat Damai Spa on the search results!

I was curious and did a search myself using "Damai" as the keyword... And here are the results:

It is true. We are listed 1st above Damai Spa. Live Search and Yahoo! Singapore Search list our school as the 2nd. This shows the popularity of Damai Secondary School's website on the internet!

Announcing the new identity of DMSS Media Club. To generate awareness in school and foster sense of pride among DMSS Media Club students with regards to their projects, a club identity is created. The logo can also be use for production branding, club t-shirt as well as publicity materials.

The first project to carry the club identity will be the upcoming sports video productions for iSports Media Challange.

Click Here to read the meaning of the logo and view how the logo will look like on a t-shirt.

This afternoon, we have a number of Sec 1 and 2 students coming in for the UNSW Computer Skills Assessments.

Students who have went through the Microsoft Office training during their PW lessons or remember what they have learnt during their primary school's ICT skills training will find the test easy. Most students are able to complete the test within 40 minutes.

Good luck to all students! :)

Dear Sec 2E students,

In term 1 & 2, I have went through:

1. A comic drawing introduction
   
2. Comic scripting
   
3. Elements of Comics
   (Speech balloon, letterings, sound fx & graphical reinforcements)
   
4. Paneling & Thumbnailing
   
5. Perspectives
   
6. Human figure
   
7. Human facial
   
8. Movements and positions

We are now at week 6 of term 2. You have done alot of practise on human figure drawing. This week, we will be moving on into the drawing of your comics based on your thumbnails.

Here are the instructions:

• To help you with the production at a later stage, each panels are to be drawn on one A4 paper.
  
• 2 members in a group will work on one page.
  

As you work, remember the elements of comics, paneling concepts and perspectives. In addition, take note of the human figure proportion and facial proportion. Good luck with your drawings and Be Creative!

Ouch ouch... Sunburnt from this morning's Dragon Boat Race filming assignment at Bedok Reservoir Park. I choose a good spot for filming and unfortunately, there is no shade. I only discovered my burnt skin after I came back home. I guess my tanned complexion hid the redness and the coolness of the office airconditioning system marks the pain. Luckily Kirk offer his umbrella for shading. If not I will confirm get a bad headache. Drank lots of H20 later that day to replenish the water lost.

I have been tasked by one of the teacher-in charge, Miss Lee SF to do up a video presentation of the recent China trip which took place during the March holidays. I have been busy with other duties and priorities for the past 2 weeks therefore am only able to work on the video on Monday.

Monday - 1st Draft (Too many photos, boring... need to add some videos)
Tuesday - 2nd Draft (Ok, must add captions later when free)
Wednesday morning - Edit the video (alert of typos and inappropiate photo)
Wednesday before noon - Render final video and rush to hall for assembly

I stayed at backstage throughout to help with the presentation and laptop switching. Glad that everyone like the photo/video presentation and the songs used. At the backstage me, Shenghock and Xuewen discussed about the usage of Windows Movie Maker and observed how the audience react.

The past 2 days was tiring and rushing but worthwhile. Here are some highlights of the video. I am not able to upload to Youtube due to copyright issues as well as it being a large video (8 mins, 2GB). Enjoy it!

Got a request from Miss Poh on Thursday to restructure the website content and to feature Friends @ YOG section on the landing page. Wait until Saturday then do it as I took the day off during yesterday's Good Friday holidays.

Besides featuring Friends @ YOG section, I also took the opportunity to feature Damai Secondary School's Sports Channel (I will blog more about it in another day) and Students' Resources. I did two more extra features so that the website layout will be balanced and do not look wierd.

Thursday morning's PW lesson is with Sec 2E4 and afternoon's PW lesson is with Sec 2E5.

Last week, I taught human facial drawing. The students have been introduced to human figure drawing the previous week before last. This week, the students are suppose to be undergoing drawing excercises but for Sec 2E4 and 2E5, they are still at human head drawing this week because they missed last week's lesson due to the school sports day. I can't finish the lesson for Sec 2E5 because Miss Tay wanted to conduct the literature test review for Sec 2E5 first. We will see how the students progress next week. Miss Tay wanted the students to be able to draw properly before they progress on to comic panel drawings.

Hopefully, after all the drawing practise, most students will be able to draw their comic panels decently. BTW, here is a photo of the class demonstration I did with Sec 2E4. I didn't add the mole there. The dot is due to a depression on the white board. Wonder what shall I name this character?

There are a few staff trainings ongoing on these 2 weeks:

1. LMS (Commontown) Training (for Lower Sec. Subject Teachers) [COMPLETED!]
   This training is to prepare the subject teachers for ISPL (eLearning) week in July.
   
2. Staff ICT Enrichment Training (For all Teachers) [COMPLETED!]
   This training introduces free/open-source applications (Google Docs, Microsoft Skydrive, Youtube Downloader & Freemind) to all teachers.
   
3. Staff ICT Needs Training (For interested Teachers)
   I will be sharing Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 to the teachers because recently, they purchased the academic versions of Adobe Web Premium CS4

Due to the departual of our ICT Executive, I have to take over his classes.

From this week onwards I will be involved in the Project Work lesson of the following classes until a new ICT Executive arrives.

• Sec 1NA
• Sec 1NT
• Sec 2NA
• Sec 2NT

Lesser time for other planning and work. :( Fortunately, my Sec 2E and Sec 3NT Project Work teachers are accodomating and offer to relieve me from 3 classes. We will see how things goes in the next few weeks.

Student, I really seek your understanding as I am not able to be with you all the time. Really need you guys to be more independant and take more initiatives.

Need photos for your assignment or projects? Here are some websites that offers copyright-free photos that you can use.

Free Photos:
stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/)
StockVault (http://www.stockvault.net/)
FreeFoto (http://www.freefoto.com/)
Image*After (http://www.imageafter.com/)
Photocase (http://www.photocase.de/en/
FreeImages (http://www.freeimages.co.uk/)
Piotr.Pix (http://www.piotrpix.com/)
Microsoft Office Clipart (http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/)

For web / graphic designers:
Vector Valley (http://www.vectorvalley.com/)
Free Vector Graphics (http://freevectorgraphics.net/)
Vecteezy (http://www.vecteezy.com/)

Remember: Do not use images that you obtain using Google Image Search. Most of these images are copyrighted and unsuitable for use in your school work.

Important: Referencing your Images - to reference your images, simply add the following to the end of your assignment/project report or immediately after your image.

Image Sources:
stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/)

Image from: stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/)

This week, we started the Internet Usage Survey. I worked with Mr Lee KW last month on the survey questions together with the school counselor Mr Rahim. The survey was created on the LMS during March holidays and was activated this week.

The purpose of this survey is to find out if our Damaians's Internet Usage patterns and see if they show signs of Internet Addiction. The survey will run until the end of April and we will use the results for Cyberwellness Talk after the mid-year exams.

Anyway, for the fun of it... here is another Internet Quiz for you to try. I tried the quiz and guess what... I am 46% addicted!

You Are 46% Addicted to the Internet

You're somewhat addicted to the internet - but who isn't? You can keep it under check, and you're by no means a hermit.

Today is Damai Secondary School's Sports Day. Two days and the day before, Media Club Members who are involved in the iSports Media Challenge 2009 drew filming equipment and temporary store in my workroom. Today we arranged to meet at 6.30am in school so that they can collect their filming equipment.


Later in the morning, Asrio (the TA) and myself installed 3 software in computer lab 1 & 2 for next week's staff training. We spend the whole morning installing and troubleshooting technical issues. I took the afternoon off to settle my university course fee at POSB bank in Tampines. At Tampines central, I met several of my students who were shopping and having lunch there after the sports meet.


Later, I took the opportunity to renew my mobile contract with Starhub. At the same time, I upgraded my mobile plan and handset. Got myself a cool golden copper Sony Ericsson C905 with 8.1 megapixel camera.