Academic Aesthetic 167 [ 11:36 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2754)

It’s about time I started publishing these again.

Show Notes:

• Today is Day 3 with no intranet in my computer lab.  More like this and I’ll start showing withdrawal symptoms.
• Replacement Technology = switching pencils for pens, but having students write the same things.
• Disruptive Technology = throwing out the pencils and pens to do something that pencils & pens would not help with at all.
• Even with only replacement technology in your lessons, you can be very dependent on technology.
• Always have a Plan B.

Want to know a secret?  A deep, dark secret that I’ve kept off this blog for over a year now?  One that will shock you?

Well, too bad.  I’m going to tell you anyway.

Ready?

Here I go …

I’m not a part of my school’s Art Department.

Yeah, that shocks me, too.  Here’s a guy whose screen name on an umptillion of Web 2.0 sites is “The Art Guy,” who may or may not have been the first art teacher podcaster (at the time I started I couldn’t find another one … that’s far from the case now of course), who isn’t even a part of his own school’s Art Department.

How’d THAT happen?

It’s a bureaucratic issue, to be honest.  I teach in a computer lab in a K-8 Arts Academy.  If it was a high school, I’d be a Computer Graphics teacher.  Unfortunately there is no course number for such a class in middle school, let alone elementary.

Instead, I teach a class called Technology Concepts.  It’s a fun class to teach, if you’re as geeky as I am, but it’s not inherently an art course.  Therefore, I  have no reason (on paper, at least), to be a part of the Art Department.  Instead, I’m a part of the Enrichment Department.

It’s not so bad…

I recently was chatting online with a former coworker from a previous school, and she lamented my change of departments.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “You’re far too talented to not be teaching art!”

At that point I puffed out my chest and my head swelled with pride – and not just because she said I had talent.

“Oh, I’m still teaching art.  Do you honestly think I could stop teaching art if I tried?”

Of course she could not.

I’m an art teacher. I teach art.

Your definitions may vary, but in my book, ART is anything that involves creativity.  I don’t care if it’s a painting, story, play, song, dance, or video game.  An ARTIST is anyone who creates art, and an ART TEACHER is anyone who teaches students how to be artists.

I’m a teacher at a Creative & Performing Arts Academy.  Whatever subject is taught by any teacher, they had darned well better be teaching art as well or they don’t belong there.

Math is art.

Science is art.

Social studies is art.

Reading/Language Arts is art to the point that the R/LA Department should be part of the Art Department as well!

Conclusion

Does it sting a bit to know I’m not part of a department named for my degree and certification?  Yes, yes it does.  But it doesn’t change what I teach.

Art is universal.  Only the styles and media change.

And I’m an art teacher.

School starts on Monday.

No, no that’s not true.  For me, School started several weeks ago when I came in during the Summer to put my lab back together.  (The custodial staff needed me to break it down so they could move the desks and wax my floors.)

I found out only recently that many of the students I had last year will also be returning.  I met this news with mixed feelings.  First, I had some awesome kids last year.  There was more than one time that I took student work to my principal and said “This is why I need majors.”  Seriously, we’re an Arts Academy.  We have dance, drama, visual art, chorus, media production, band, AND orchestra majors – why not computer graphics, too?

That may happen in the future, but for now the red tape is in the way.

Unfortunately, for every student who was absolutely thrilled to have my class there was another who was only there because the Guidance dept. needed to give them an elective.

I don’t fault students for not being thrilled with technology.  It’s my passion, it doesn’t have to be everyone’s.  I was, however, concerned about credit.  There have been two other occasions where I’ve had students put in a class after they had already earned credit.  In one case discipline problems were a concern.

But then again, I’ve been assured that if the students couldn’t get credit for taking Technology Concepts a second time the scheduling software wouldn’t have let them into my class.

And it’s not like I’m teaching all the same lessons again, either.  As technology and my own skill sets evolve, so do the projects I assign.  Granted, some lessons will be repeated – every class starts with students using PowerPoint to introduce themselves to the class – but others were already on the chopping block not because they were old news to the students (I didn’t know I’d have returning students yet), but because they were old news to me.

The media we use will still be the same.  Students will still create animations, avatars, wallpapers, posters, and more.  I don’t think I’m wrong for repeating those things so long as there’s something new about them.  After all, I doubt the chorus majors will be saying “But we sang songs LAST year!”

I just have to keep things interesting, but you know what?

I think I just might be able to do that.

The photo above is the front wall of my school.  On the day I stopped by to interview for my position (one of the best career choices I ever made, in my honest opinion), I saw this wall and thought “If I was a few decades younger, I’d try climbing that.”

Indeed, with all of those bricks pushed away from the flat surface, this wall was full of hand holds and toe holds.  Perfect for climbing, except for the concrete and asphalt below you.

No, I never tried to climb that wall.  After a childhood accident where I fell off a porch railing and broke a wrist I decided not to climb things where I could severely hurt myself.  (I did later go cliff diving – repeatedly – but water landings aren’t so bad.)

Flash forward to our school’s end-of-the-year field day celebration.  A couple enterprising students looked at that wall and had the same thoughts I had – without the “Oh, we could probably really hurt ourselves” thoughts to go with them.

Fortunately these students were far from unsupervised, and stern words and looks managed to stop them before they got more than a couple feet off the ground.

So what does this have to do with education?

Everything.

My experience kept me from climbing that wall, and my experience kept those students from doing the same.  They hadn’t yet learned that the benefit of climbing that wall (“Look how high I am!” “Look what I can do!”) was overshadowed by the drawback of a potential injury.

Switch gears to a Kindergarten classroom, where the teacher has decided not to let her kids use oil pastels because the benefits of learning a new media do not (in his or her mind) outweigh the drawbacks of potential hard to clean messes.

Switch again to a classroom where students are not allowed to create blogs because the perceived risks (Do I have to list them?) don’t outweigh the perceived benefits.

I’ve seen many teachers, administrators, and parents that thought of climbing a brick wall with no safety gear in the same light as student blogging, cell phones in schools, oil pastels in Kindergarten, or even letting special needs students use scissors.

What’s the difference?

The difference is that we as teachers would be fools to ignore taking proper precautions before a learning activity.

I’ve blogged about this before.

I argue that it’s not the same thing if we keep safety in mind.  Let the Kindergarten students use oil pastels after setting out “placemats” (newspaper works fine) and reminding them that when a color is done it goes back in the box.  Let students blog in a moderated setting, perhaps even in a “walled garden” environment where only the students, school employees, and parents can see what’s being said.

When a student wants to climb a wall, for goodness’ sake give them a helmet, safety line, and something soft to land on.

Then cheer with them when they see how high they can go.

The image is kind of text-heavy. Click to see the full size version.
If anyone’s curious, this was about 5 minutes worth of work in Frames.  It took longer because I’m apparently very bad at spelling words correctly.

Presented by Ryan Schaaf of Howard County.

The last time I attended a session on using games in education I was under whelmed, but I think that was more from the presenter than the subject.  I am cautiously optimistic.

• First paper handout I’ve seen this conference.  Printed PowerPoint slides.
• “Let’s start with your Door Prize!  … I left it at home.”  It was cards for a contest for a game called “Legend of Zork.”
• In games the teacher is the guide and students learn through exploration.
• “Mirrors how humans think and how the mind works.”
• His slides are walls of text.  I don’t think it’s hurting his presentation too much though.  He’s not just reading the slides, and paging through the handout shows that these are just to front-load background information.
• Gaming appeals to multiple intelligences. (Yay, Gardner!)
• “Teaches without its main purpose as teaching.”
• Can be used to train in low-risk environments. Military, Aviation, Medical, Financial, and so on.
• Motivation, Instructional Strategy, Closure, Assessment, Review, Reteach.
• Current slide is showing the cover of GTA4 (very violent, not for kids) and the hunting scene from Oregon Trail (with LOTS of dead animals).
• Gaming DOES NOT EQUAL babysitting.  (Same deal with TV, movies, Discovery Education Streaming, etc. – It needs a purpose!)
• “The teacher has to be there to guide and direct.”
• Use careful and deliberate search terms to find high quality educational games.
• Showing a sample game on composting from http://bravekidgames.com/
• Lore of the Labyrinth from Thinkport.  I think I’ve seen this game presented at this conference before.  It teaches math but not in a dry style.
• http://shodor.org/activities/ for High School students.
• Quia – pay to make games but play them for free.  I’ve toyed with this before.  They have a free trial.
• Thinkfinity.org – Engineering
• Showing data concerning gaming activity.  Students did not just enjoy it, they also spent more time engaged in the lesson.
• “I’m not saying it should always be used, I’m saying it’s a good tool and at least as effective as other strategies.”

Presented by Roxanne Dean & Linda Jones, both from Baltimore County.

• Honestly, could anyone who knows me expect me to attend any other session?  It’s Art! It’s Technology! This is what I do.
• Demonstrating Voicethread used to teach a lesson on drawing a human face.
• “At this point they haven’t thrown me out.” Said RE: How many Voicethread pages she has.
• 5th graders drew self portraits then turned them into contour line drawings and learned about Andy Worhol.
• “Why do you think we need to do this in contour?”
• They reproduced their drawings on the computer.  No scanning or photography?  Would be nice to have the time for that.  In my case I may have to use something like this to digitise student work.
• Showing Art Content Standards.  Yes, this is an art lesson!  It’s not just token “Let’s color something and say we did art!”
• Showing lots of Pop Art.  Comment about how things that Warhol thought were important are not recognised by today’s kids.  Interesting snapshots of the culture at the time.
• So apparently Voicethread lets you record video with your voice.  That could be helpful for students who are ESOL or have certain disabilities.  Seeing someone’s lips move as they talk can certainly help to aid comprehension in some cases.  (It helped me in college, especially with some professors who had strong accents.)
• A cow is used to signal clean-up time.  Students expect it and are used to the routine.  Makes me wonder how I might implement a similar strategy – perhaps with a school mascot?
• Students used the paint brush tool in Pixie to redraw their line drawings.
• Copy/paste used to get 4 identical panels, then the panels were colored separately with the paint bucket.  (Watch out for cracks!  The colors will leak through!)
• While this was done with Pixie, I see how this could be done with other art programs.  GIMP, SUMOPaint, TuxPaint, Frames, even!  … Am I starting to sound like a broken record?
• “Zoho” used to embed art on a site for parents to see progress.
• Showing an example made starting with a photo.  Apparently the photo needs to be “glued” to keep it from fading.  I imagine layer settings could protect it in GIMP/Photoshop/SUMOPaint.
• “Photoshop is a little advanced for 5th grade.”  Not if my 3rd graders are making vector graphics in Frames.  Give me a day or two and they can do it.
• A conference is not worthwhile if you don’t find something you can take with you and use the next school day.  This presentation is all I need for MSET to be worth it, and it’s only the 2nd session!  Can we say this is an awesome conference? Yes we can!

Presented by Diane Boarman, Howard County

This is possibly one of the smallest rooms I’ve ever been in, and there are few if any empty chairs.  Meanwhile the walls are doing little to block out the noise of convention center staff moving things around.  Nevertheless, the show must go on.

• Created her first animation using Layers in Photoshop, but her school didn’t have Photoshop.
• Switched to placing images in PowerPoint.
• Suggests PlayDoh for claymation.  If the lesson takes a while the PlayDoh can dry out, even with sealing it regularly though.  Parafin based clays can be purchased at craft stores and never dry out.
• Make sure slides are imported in order – some programs have a fit and put slide 10 in front of slide 2 because 1 is more than 2, right?  Watch for that.
• Still suggesting Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.  On a shoestring budget I’ll use GIMP.org or SUMOPaint.com.
• Images not in the rectangle for a PowerPoint slide will not show up.  GREAT way to organise elements that will be moving in or out of the frame later.
• “Insert -> Duplicate Slide, then move something.” Repeat ad nausium, but it WORKS and students can understand it.
• What’s also good about this is if students make the switch to Frames these skills should carry over.  Frames is more powerful than PowerPoint but PowerPoint will get the job done with most of the tools you need.
• PowerPoint 2008 no longer supports photo editing?  Ugh, didn’t they learn when Apple cut features out of iMovie?  Hm, apparently they did but they learned the wrong lesson.
• Word Art to make titles for your animation – more flexibility than using the built in title generator in iMovie or MovieMaker.
• “Save As -> Select JPEG.”  Check “Save All” and change the name to prevent overwriting.  A simple “ver1,ver2, ver3″ is enough.
• “Save often.”  Good advice for almost any lesson.
• When you import your slides in set the timing for as short as possible and turn Ken Burns Effect off!  Honestly, that effect is overused and makes your animation into an earthquake simulation.
• You don’t need to use clip art – you can draw things with Autoshapes, also.
• Animations imported into PowerPoint will not be animated when exported as JPEG files.  Don’t bother playing with transitions in PowerPoint.
• “Do we have enough time?” We have 20 minutes left.  She breezed through.
• The video she’s showing is very amusing and a mix of live action and animation.
• Did she just call GIMP “Free shareware?”  She did.  It’s not shareware.  It’s just free.

Twitter.

Almost everyone (online) has heard of it.  Anyone can use it.  But are they using it well?  Some would argue that depends on what you’re using this microblogging platform for, but nevertheless I’ve collected a short list of Twitter dos and don’ts for your consideration.

You may or may not agree with this list, and that’s fine with me.  Still, I reserve the right to say that people who don’t take these points of advice are “doing it wrong.”  Your mileage may vary.

Bullet list rather than numbered list, as these are in no particular order.

• Don’t post what you’re eating. OK, maybe if you’re being treated to dinner at a five star restaurant and the roast duck is simply to die for, but that most likely will be a very uncommon experience.  Your daily menu (or daily routine, for that mater…) should not be Twitter-worthy.
• Don’t follow more than 100 people. Personally I get concerned when I’m following more than 50.  This may require you to make some very hard choices, but if you’re following hundreds of accounts then chances are high that you will miss tweets by many of those people for weeks if not months.  Are you actually following them, then?
• Promote other people. If the only things you tweet are links to your own website, people will quickly see you as someone who is self-serving and perhaps a bit egotistical.  Watch your Twitter feed for things worth retweeting, and do so.  (Just don’t forget to give credit where credit is due.)
• Talk to people. Twitter can be used as a bullhorn, but that doesn’t mean you should only use it as such.  Answer questions.  Reply to comments.  If you find a link you know someone’ll like, share it with them!  Web 2.0 at its heart is about communication.  Communicate with people.
• Think before you tweet. Imagine what your mother would say if she found your Twitter account.  What your boss, significant other, stalker, or students would say.  Don’t assume that making your tweets private will prevent any of those events from occurring, as anyone you allow to see your tweets has the power to retweet what you’ve said.  If anyone can see it, anyone at all, the potential exists for everyone to see it.  (Or as Ben Franklin once said, “Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”)
• Leave room for retweets. There is something very satisfying about writing out a tweet that hits exactly 140 characters with minimal effort on your part.  Unfortunately, when someone tries to retweet that they’ll often find that the addition of “RT: @yournamehere” or “(via @yournamehere)” takes them far over the character limit.  If you want what you’re saying to be repeated, keep it as short as you can while still getting the message across.
• Keep it clean. While you personally might not have anything against profanity or off-color jokes, a lot of people do.  Many of us like to keep our Twitter feeds safe for work/school environments.  It is of course your choice if you want to post a series of offensive jokes, but if you do I won’t be following you after that.
• Yes, we know Twitter’s asking you what’s happening for each post.  Writing “Posting something on Twitter” was funny once, just once, and it was done by someone else before you signed up for the service.
• Check your sources.  Web 2.0 allows for a quicker spread of information, but unfortunately also allows for the spread of misinformation.  A famous hoax comes to mind, but there have been rumors of celebrity deaths, “facts” about the recent U.S. healthcare reforms, and more spread through Twitter and other sources.  If you see something that raises your ire, make sure you’re not getting fooled before you hit that retweet button with a vengeance.

Those are my tips.  What are yours?

Just a little case study to show how being paranoid can pay off:

All this winter my screen saver was a lovable group of snowmen ice skating on a frozen pond.  The whole thing was 3D rendered and the younger kids loved it.

It is not, however, the best screen saver to have in March when the snow from our last big blizzard is still fresh in our minds and we can’t wait for the unbearably hot global warming just because it means we don’t have to shovel any more snow.

*ahem*

In any case, I got the snowmen screen saver from Apple’s Downloads section, so I thought I’d head there to see if there was anything more Spring themed.

Apple’s Downloads is a directory of both Freeware (no need to fork over cash for it ever) and Shareware (offered as a try-before-you-buy deal.  If you keep it you are expected to pay for it).  As a self-admitted cheapskate I’m specifically looking for freeware screen savers with a spring theme. Oh, this one looks good.

As you can see from the Download Details This particular screen saver is Freeware, so I won’t have to purchase it to use it.

Also, the company name is not Apple.  Apple.com is providing a link here but the screen saver has been created and provided by “7art-screensavers.com.”

Oh well, that’s not so bad, right?  After all, Apple is known for its ultra-strict policies on iPhone App approvals.  I’m certain they won’t let any malicious company provide software on Apple’s own domain …

Wait, what’s this?

Who in the world is Premier Opinion? Just looking through the user agreement that’s popped up on my screen – before I’ve managed to install my screen saver, by the way – makes me cautious.  I really don’t want anyone monitoring anything I do online, since that involves … oh, you know … banking, sending email to friends and family, student grades, and so on.

Let’s see what a Google Search has to say about Premier Opinion:

Well, that’s interesting.  The first link takes me directly to PremierOpinion.com – no surprise there, but most of the links following that are claiming that the company’s distributing spyware.

If you see multiple people asking for help to get a program off their computer because they can’t do it themselves, then perhaps you might not want to install it yourself.

To wrap up:

• I encountered this software trying to install itself on my Mac, which is historically a more secure platform.
• I found the software linked to from Apple’s web site, arguably a place that should only include safe software.
• I still almost installed spyware on my system.
• If this isn’t a case study for paying attention and not blindly trusting any one thing to protect me online, I don’t know what is.