Category Archives: Art

Podcast 23: iTunes and Art Club … AGAIN!

Click to play or download.The 23rd podcast is here, there’s no use trying to stop it! In this show I don’t really wax philosophic too much … maybe next time.


Show Notes:iTunes 4.9 Now has me listed in it’s podcast directory, although it lists them all out of order for some reason. (I still think iPodderX is a nicer podcatcher.)

My school’s Technology Coordinator and I cleared out the old “Jostens Lab” to use for the Art Club. I’ve posted photos. There were some ancient computers that were beyond upgrading but we now have 8 or 9 boxes ready for tinkering – including a beige G3 donated by Phil Shapiro! (Thanks, Phil!) Computer and digital camera donations would still be appreciated.

22nd Podcast: iTunes and Art Club

Click to play or download.22 won’t win you a game of blackjack, but hopefully you’ll enjoy the podcast.


Show Notes:iTunes 4.9 is not just an mp3 player, it’s a podcatcher as well! I think the true geeks will keep using programs like iPodderX, but iTunes is a nice way to get podcasting to the masses.

Art Club updates: we’ve got computers, we have space, we have supplies, things are looking up!

You Are Here is a 12.5 meg quicktime music video by Sam Bisbee. His music’s nice, but the video is a wonderful blend of still photography and stop motion animation. He even put the contact sheets online and licensed it under Creative Commons so you can remix it! If you have broadband I reccomend checking this out.

18th Podcast: Making Stuff and Strange Angels

Click to play or download.18th podcast … does that mean it can vote? … most likely not.


Show Notes:School ends on Friday! So, how many educators will continue to blog/podcast over the summer?

Making Stuff – A great blog that documents one woman making all kinds of cool crafts. Reading her stuff really inspires me.

Artboy – This site has all kinds of content, but I mention it because of it’s podcast: Strange Angels. Think of it as the internet version of NPR’s Art & Culture segments.

Education Podcast Network – Another wonderful education resource by David Warlick. This site organizes educational podcasts by category.

15th Podcast: DSL and Creative Commons

Click to play or download.Beware the ides of … podcasting

Show Notes:


A Basement of Broken Dreams – An album by John Holowach, hosted on archive.org. I used his song called My Piano Sings (Part 3).


Thanks for the listener mail, Steve! Comments are always appreciated.


CreativeCommons.org – A nice site for anyone who wants to share their works without making it public domain.Yahoo! Creative Commons Search – use Yahoo’s search engine to look for things licensed under Creative Commons.

Lawrence Lessig – an author, blogger, and supporter of Creative Commons licensing.

T-shirts, etc. (UPDATE)

brushes iconI’m thinking of opening I’ve opened up a CafePress account and started putting some Blog / Podcast / Geek / Teacher / Artist / etc. designs up there. Everything’s being sold “at cost,” so CafePress makes a profit but I don’t. Why? because I’m not that interested in making money here. I just want to get these designs out.

In any case, I’m trying to think of some good slogans. So far, I have:

  1. Blogs in Education: Share the Kool-Aid.
  2. Podcasts in Education: Share the Kool-Aid.
  3. Ask me about my podcast.
  4. I podcast, therefore I am.
  5. Art Class: It’s not just a 2nd recess anymore.
  6. Have you blogged today?
  7. Have you read a blog today?
  8. My MP3s are legal.
  9. Have you told a teacher about podcasting today?
  10. Have you told a teacher about blogging today?

I’ll be posting pictures to Flickr as well. If anyone wants to make their own shirt with my design or wants me to design something with a slogan of their own invention, let me know.

Anyone else have some good ideas?

12th Podcast: Blog Safety and T-Shirts

Click to play or download.12th podcast, now there’s one for every month! (But if you only listen to one podcast a month you’re not truly taking full advantage of the media, are you?)


Take a survey, win a pro account for Flickr.

Show Notes:


A Basement of Broken Dreams – An album by John Holowach, hosted on archive.org. I used his song called My Piano Sings (Part 3).


BlogMeister – a blogging engine for teachers and students created by David Warlick. I highly recommend that you also check out his other sites, including his blog and his podcasts.


CafePress.com – they make stuff with your designs. You can use it just for fun, or perhaps for a fundraiser. I already have two three designs up, if you care to look at them:Podcasts in Education: Share the Kool-Aid, Ask me about my podcast, and My mp3s are legal.


Podcast Alley: Education Podcasts – C’mon, you know you want to vote for me … right?

9th Podcast: Paperless, RAM, and a Printmaker

Click to play or download.Here we are on cloud nine, even if it does get a little staticy at the end.

Shownote Links:

A Basement of Broken Dreams – An album by John Holowach, hosted on archive.org. I used his song called My Piano Sings (Part 3).

Having teachers email me their paperwork works nicer than having them hand me paper, and I get the same participation rate.

When installing RAM, make sure you do it right the first time. Also, when you don’t have a deadline and a project begins to annoy you, just walk away for a while.

Intaglio and Mezzotint Etchings – The website of a Resident Printmaker and instructor at the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center in Laurel, Maryland.

Podcast Alley: Education Podcasts – C’mon, you know you want to vote for me … right?

8th Podcast: Student Work and Do It First

Click to play or download.Eight is great!

This episode, expect to hear me talking about teachers helping students with their artwork and my “Do it first, then learn about it” philosophy that I sometimes use.

Shownote Links:

Silly Grin – A song by Kelley Vice, hosted on archive.org

Creative Commons – Share your stuff while still reserving some of your rights. (You pick which ones.)

Podcast Alley: Education Podcasts – C’mon, you know you want to vote for me … right?

The New Literacy and Art

brushes iconMr. Warlick has had some wonderful commentary about the new literacy in his blog and in his podcasts. Long story short: old literacy = reading & writing, but new literacy = reading, writing, instant messaging, blogging, wikis, and any other way modern technology uses language nowadays. It’s important to stress the new literacy because it involves skills used in the “real world” but not skills that are traditionally taught in the classroom. Does this catch your interest? Great! While you let David Warlick’s pages load in other windows allow me to entertain you some more.This whole idea of new literacy is interesting to me partially because of the parallels you can and can’t draw to the world of Art. You see, there was a time when the only art that would be taught in a serious school was the kind that would show up in a museum. This was placed into three categories: sculpture (usually stone or metal), drawing (“real” drawings, not those childish cartoon doodles!), & painting. This triad of genres is often referred to as “high art.”

Naturally, everything else fits into the realm of “low art,” although it’s also referred to by that wonderful word: “Kitsch.” Crafts, cartoons, photography, printmaking, advertising, anything that reflected pop culture, etc. – any person that did these things and called themselves artists was setting themselves up for ridicule.

But time moved on, as anyone who’s taken an “Art Since 1950” course can attest to. Many photographers learned the rules of composition from established painters. Andy Warhol did things with silkscreening that made the world question the boundaries of art. Roy Lichtenstein elevated cheap cartoons to the level of high art by hand painting things to look like they were mass-produced. “High” and “Low” are terms still used today, but the two circles in that Venn diagram have been overlapping more and more every year.

Then came computers, the GIF and JPG files, scanning, digital photography, computer generated images (CGI), and much more. Most of this high-tech stuff has come late enough in the game to simply ride it’s way into the art mainstream on the coattails of the postmodern art movements.

So you see, most artists have already won their battle for the new literacy. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for those of a more verbal and less visual nature. What, I ask, is the difference between moving from a textbook to a wiki and moving from a museum to a flikr account? True, the textbook and the museum both still have elevated status in our society, but online ways of sharing information are increasing in popularity and slowly eating away at the market share of the older media.

And through all of this, I still see a comparison to high art vs. low art. Over time it became high art and low art, and today there are many (including myself) who would tell you that high art is low art.

I can’t wait for the written word to catch up to us.

As always, your comments are very much welcome.