Peer-graded Assigment 2: Design an online Learning Componment (1)

This is the final peer-graded assignment in a MOOC  -  Learning to Teach Online by University of New South Wales, Australia.

Hello, and thanks for looking into my submission!
The task was to design and describe the online component for your own class that you identified earlier in the course. Building on my experience with teaching Interaction of Color on iPad on Einar Granum Vocational Artschool in Oslo, Norway I developed an online course using the application developed by Yale University press in 2013.

Assignment Questions
Drawing upon the concepts explored in the course, the case studies presented, resources, activities, and discussions include responses to the following in this final culminating assessment:

1. A description of the online activity, assessment or resource including specifics about what the students and the teacher would have to do.
2. A description of how the online activity, assessment, or resource is aligned with the rest of the curriculum in your course.
3. Discuss of strategies you have chose to engage your students with the online the online teaching. 
4. Make a plan for evaluating your online assessment, activity, or resource to determine its effectiveness. 

This is nothing that I´m especially proud of; poor video and bad english. These facts shall not reflect the potential I believe  one can find in new technology and online teaching. Please look at this assignment as a trail with a lot of errors and please do not feel obliged to listen to the bitter end!

Sincerely Rustan

Transcript: Peer-graded Assigment 2: Design an online Learning Componment (1)

Online teaching with Interaction of Color on iPad.

The last 10 years I have been reasonable together with my colleges too develop our teaching in Colour, which is an important part of the first year of foundation syllabus. The subject consists of 5 courses to provide basic knowledge in colour theory, colour mix, colour use and the student's sensitivity to colour-aesthetics. One of these courses is an adaption of Josef Albers famous colour course that he developed in America after he together with his wife had fled the Nazi-Germany in 1933. He had before that been teaching at the Bauhaus for many years. The course was called Interaction of Color and published in 1963 by Yale University Press. The first edition was published in only 2000 copies and is today a very expensive collector´s item, almost impossible to acquire.

Therefor art-teachers for many years used the pocket version from 1971. Fortunately since than, one can now order several complete and inexpensive editions of Interaction on the net. The course consists of a number of exercises done with coloured paper where perception is investigated in relation to different colour phenomena like the simultaneous contrast. The teacher led the course from start to finish giving lectures, briefings, assessments and it always ended in the form of a traditional exhibition in the classroom with a joint review and summative assessment with grades. However, in 2013, in connection with the 50th anniversary of its publication the Yale University Press published an interactive digital version of Interaction of Color in the form of an iPad application. This application, which is now installed on our class set of iPads, has changed the teaching fundamentally in three ways:

Firstly, the traditional teacher-centred way teaching has changed. Previously, the teachers followed the chapters in the pocket book and insuring that the students did the same at the same time as Albers would have done. The application contains exciting presentation-videos with artists, designers and teachers explaining the different elements of the course. This makes the content more vibrant, relevant and giving the text authority. My traditional lectures became more or less redundant. My role as a teacher is now to show the possibilities the app has to offer had to help the students with the technology. Secondly, the various studies presented in Interaction of Color is now integrated in the application and solved interactively digitally in the iPad without colour paper and glue. The hard work preparing for the course by of collecting paper samples is no longer a problem. This save time, but above all the student can solve the exercises when ever;  in the bathroom, on the bus or the balcony. They do not have to be in the classroom to complete the course. Thirdly and perhaps the most exciting thing is that the students through the Web 2.0 can share their work with not only their classmates but everyone else through social media Thirdly and perhaps the most exciting thing is that the students through the Web 2.0 can share their work with not only their classmates but everyone else through social media.

Deltar i en MOOC ( massive open online course ) vid Duke University under ledning av Prof. Dale Purvis under titeln Visual Perception and the Brain. Den 5 veckor långa kursen avsluts med att bekriva en känd illusion; Ponzo Illusionen och vilka konsekvenser den har för vår förståelse för vår perception. Jag vill passa på att tacka min vän  Julio da Silva för konstruktiv kritik.

On the Ponzo effect

By Rustan Andersson

Oslo, Norway

When looking at the compositions of lines that we know as the Ponzo effect we experiences two readings that are fundamental different; the lines on the ground in the called the object plane or if you are looking at a picture with projecting lines in 2D projection plane. The second case can be read as a representation of the former.

Describe a plausible explanation.

The immediate and obvious explanation of the Ponzo effect when read as a picture is the resemblance with the linear perspective, a renaissance invention and a representation of the world in a logical coherent 2D plane. I think one can argue that this geometrical construction as an invention is a result of how we experience of vision and in a way circumvent the inverse problem. The geometrical foundation is build on Euclid’s Optics in Elements and founded on the Platonic idea that vision is caused by discrete light rays that emanates from the eye. From this notion Euclid postulated that the visual rays created a visual cone with the apex in the eye and was the first mathematical theory on vision. From this theory he deduced that the angle of the cone determined how big the object was in front of the spectator; lager angles implied closer and bigger object. Renaissance artists like Brunelleschi, Alberti, Leonardo and later Dürer used Euclid in their work on perspective but changed the construction fundamentally by creating a picture plane and vanishing point on the line of infinity where al parallel lines will eventually meet. This way of constructing space has dominated western art for nearly 400 years.

So when we see two lines that in the picture plan tend to converge we immediately in cultural sense “know” that these two lines ideally will meet in “vanishing point at the line of infinity“.

This situation embrace two fundamental postulates in two different geometries; in the Euclidian geometry the fifth postulate says that to parallel lines never meet and in the projection geometry that parallel lines always will meet in a point. One can easily claim that these postulates could be important to explain the Ponzo effect, and the so-called perspective hypothesis.

But the paradox is that these “projections” on the retina are incompatible and neither of them will tell us anything about the reality.

We will empirical never be able to prove that the parallel lines are parallel in either the projective plane or in the reality.

 Outline an experiment that you could perform to test you explanation.

Even though we can´t determine weather the orthogonals are parallel or not and there for prove the axioms in the projective geometry, our experience (trail and error) tells us that diagonal lines striving against an ideal point represent both depth and distance. If we assume that this empirical experience is valid we should be able to manipulate our perception of space.

By using orthogonal lines that converge the spectator instead of the vanishing point, a reverse perspective, will counteract the feeling of depth and appear more parallel in our perception. The space will look closer and consequently bigger.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9023573,12.457294,258m/data=!3m1!1e3

This manipulation with perspective is known and a good example of this is the trapezoid shaped entrance to the St. Peters basilica and the massive elliptical square, the ovato tondo which precedes it.

The paradox is that this is not a fundamentally new way to perceive space unknown to the eye. Bernini “camouflaged” the isosceles trapezoid in our visual experience and we end up with more rectangular and parallel impression, something we know and seen before. The same applies for the ovato tondo; they’re no way to decide whether the ellips is actually an ellipse or a circle. The inverse problem applies, again.

Impact on the concept of visual perception?

The Ponzo effect is two lines (A´B´, C´D´), transversals that look different in length in the realm of projective geometry, but have the same length when measured. To achieve or draw this representation and create this "illusion", in reality the two transversals in the object plane have to have different lengths. If they had the same length the result would simply be a logical distribution e.g. as sleepers under a railway track or a ladder.

Given two lengths (AB, CD), there is only at a certain distance in reality when this effect will occur projected and this is rare situation. I other words, the Ponzo effect is a special case in reality without any significance to understand vision, on the contrary. The paradox is that our perception tells us the truth empirically; the second transversal (AB) both looks longer and is actually longer than (CD) even though they in the projection plane, have the same measurements. On the other hand manipulations of the physical space to revoke the laws of perspective can is still be relevant esthetically and architectural. It will not create anything visually new, only uncommon circumstances for something we have seen before.