Art. Education. Technology.
As I was presenting these myself, I wasn’t actually taking the time to give a play-by-play in Plurk. You can see my wikis for Session 3 and Session 4 if you want my take on them, though.
Another option would be to check out Selena Ward’s Plurk log of my Session 3 and someone else’s Session 4 (She didn’t attend mine because she’s already a PLN master). Good stuff, there.
For the 4th year in a row, I will be presenting at MICCA.
For the 1st time (for this conference, at least…), I will be presenting twice.
And as usual, I’m opening my handouts up to everyone who wants to add in their two cents. I feel they’re ready to go as-is, but that doesn’t mean I’m the only person who knows what he’s talking about! (I’m hoping for supplementary information, not for someone to do the work for me.)
My presentations are as follows. Click the links to see, edit, and/or add to my wikis:
…how art lessons in the computer lab can reinforce other subjects.
Paper, pencils, and paints are good, but there are also plenty of free art projects that reinforce other subjects and can be taught using just computers. This session will showcase some tools, tips, and tricks that any teacher can use.
…how microblogs and more can make you a better teacher.
Personal learning networks (also called professional learning networks) are a quick, easy, and free way to continue your professional growth as an educator using web 2.0. This session will explain PLNs in more detail and show a variety of free sites that can be used to build your own.
The first WCIDWT was posted entirely on a whim. The tech person at one of my schools gave me some interesting pieces of plastic, and the pack rat in me just couldn’t say no.
Of course I had no idea what to do with them, so I snapped a quick picture with my BlackBerry and used Flickr to post the photo and my description/question to this blog. The whole process took less than 5 minutes, but the responses were nice enough that I ended up using the same post as a warm-up for my Art Club.
Part 2 was a similar situation, except that the source was waste scrap paper that was just too small for most of the projects I’ve done with my students. Again, 5 minutes of work yielded some awesome responses from both the followers of this blog and my Art Club.
So … I think I’m going to keep this up. As I find new, unusual, unorthodox, or just plain industrial waste materials, I’ll post a picture and brief description and ask for your insights.
Creativity can be an awesome thing. It can be even more awesome in a group setting.
Garbage never looked so good.
I handed colored pencils to my 1st graders today.
This was not too surprizing, as I did the same thing last week. What I have noticed, however, is that most of my teachers with younger students don’t let them sharpen their own pencils whenever they need to.
I, however, do. I would much rather see a student raise their hand because they’re having difficulty with a portion of their composition than because their colored stick isn’t pointy enough. As a result I usually announce in the beginning of the lesson that if the pencil needs sharpening, they can just get up and sharpen it. I even go so far as to explain when a pencil needs sharpening and how to sharpen it so that it doesn’t disappear forever in a pile of shavings. (Colored pencils are much softer than the 2B kind.)
You know what happens next…
Stampeeeeeede!
That’s right, any student who found a colored pencil that was not ready to vanquish a vampire was at the sharpener ready to go! This included those who had white colored pencils. Did I mention this was a lesson where they used white paper? Well it was.
This is the point when the classroom teacher looks at me with a patronizing expression that says “That’s why I don’t let them do that.”
And I look at them with a nervous smile that says “Eheheheh … I’ll be right back.”
The next minute or so is spent turning kinds away that don’t really need to sharpen pencils, as well as enforcing the “Turn it 3 times then check” rule of sharpening.
And you know what? That’s it.
Occasionally a student will have a relapse, but for the most part they know my rules and what’s expected of them. They’re fine with that because they’re getting a cool reward in the process – an awesome art project.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the initial stampede was in fact because they wanted to revel in the idea that they could go and sharpen any pencil that needed it.
You have to ask?
A new tool is a new tool, and new freedoms are promptly exercised. There will be chaos, but if you stay alert it will at least be organized chaos and learning will still be accomplished. Eventually, the chaos will be replaced with something better – a class full of students who are able to learn without raising their hands to ask permission for each step.
I have over 2,000 students (not including teachers who are also, technically, my students) spread out over three schools. This is a daunting task for many reasons, but only one of them irks be to the point that I’ll mention it at the start of this blog post:
I can’t remember that many names.
Oh, I’ll make valiant attempt. There’s a handful of students whom I do know by name, but there’s just no way I can learn who everyone is when I see them so rarely.
They do know mine though … well, most of them. To some of my students I’m “Mr. Smith.” To others, I’m “The Art Guy.” At the insistence of some teachers in one of my buildings some call me “Mr. Aaron,” though I’m not too keen on that.
In any case, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my “Art Guy” moniker. Originally it was a name given to me by a student, and it sort of stuck. It smacks of just enough irreverence to make it amusing to me even though some classroom teachers who don’t know me try to correct their students when they hear it.
It’s a great nickname to have when you’re the only art teacher around, or failing that the only one that’s a guy. For that very reason when I started my first forays into edublogging and podcasting to find there were no other art teachers playing with the same technology that entertained me so much (at least none that I saw…), “theartguy” seemed like a perfect screen name for me.
And it has been. I have found countless friends and joined more Web 2.0 sites than I can remember using that screen name. It’s how I’m identified by pretty much anyone on the internet who knows me. My target audience has never been limited to just other art teachers – far from it in fact, because in the beginning it was such a rare occurrence to find one of us blogging.
But times change. These days I’m far from being the only artsy person out there with a blog/podcast/vidcast/and so on., and I think that’s totally awesome. When I got started I brought an art teacher’s perspective to these new technologies with which we were playing, because in some cases it was quite different from a [insert any other content area here] teacher’s perspective.
Now, the art teachers that are blogging have their own little corner of the internet to form their Personal Learning Networks. Networks where they don’t have to start off by saying “As an art teacher…,” because their target audience is other art teachers. Again, this is awesome.
But it also means I’m not the only “art guy” out there.
If I walk into a room full of 30 students ready for an awesome painting lesson, I have no problem calling myself the Art Guy. If I walk into a room with a decent percentage of other art teachers … I hesitate.
There is more I want to say, but this post is long enough for now. Expect another installment later.
WARNING: I’m either on a high horse or a soapbox grandstanding with an overinflated ego right now. I’m not always this smug or confrontational (I hope…), but some recent events have led up to this post. Read at your own risk.
I do the impossible. Daily.
“He won’t do any work. Just let him sit there.”
“This class will never be controllable when it’s snowing outside.”
“These special ed. students don’t have the hand-eye communication to use scissors.”
Each of these statements is something I’ve been told by a classroom teacher. Each of these statements have been proven wrong. See that photo? It was taken by a 2nd grader, then submitted to a juried art show. It got in. Don’t tell me photography can’t be taught to 2nd graders. I could add more examples, but do I need to?
It is a personality flaw quirk of mine to, when I hear something cannot be done in the classroom, see that as a challenge. Sometimes it turns out the chalenge issuer was right, but more often than not I get to show them what a little effort and guidance can accomplish. They had given up on those students because they did not think they had the time and/or the energy to accomplish the aforementioned tasks and teach the prescribed curriculum. Understandable how they got to that point – I’d be there too if I was in their position – but that doesn’t mean I’ll let it stay that way.
So…
When a classroom teacher tells me they’d love to include more art in their lessons, but they just don’t have the time / energy / creativity / inspiration to do that and cover the mandated curriculum….
Challenge issued.
Challenge accepted.
Just don’t keep saying it can’t be done after I prove you wrong.
I’m spending most of this week organizing, labeling, and hanging pieces for the Youth Art Month Expo’s juried art show. It’s a lot of work, a lot of fun, and I get to be in the same room as other art teachers. Beware!
While sorting the untold piles of art I couldn’t help but think of my own art classes. Not the ones I teach, mind you – I’m talking about back when I was in high school. Back then I was a bit of a geek.
Um, OK, so I still am.
But while now I’m an outgoing extrovert of a geek with an ego larger than the Hindenburg, back then I was an introvert with very little self confidence. The only class where I felt I could really speak my mind was art, and that was because Mr. Lichner promoted the kind of environment where good ideas were rewarded and negative criticism had no place. When one of us came up with an art project that had nothing to do with his idea for what projects he wanted us to do, he still encouraged us to explore the possibilities allowed to us by the media to which we had access.
If all of my classes had been like my art classes, I can assure you my parents would have been much happier with my report cards.
And so, since I was thinking about this, I posed a question to Plurk, Twitter, and a few other outlets.
What’s something you’ve learned from an art teacher?
The results were rather interesting, I thought.
There is no such thing as a mistake, only opportunities to create more. – Laurie Korte
Do the opposite of what you normally do. Completely ended up changing my style and medium. – Judy Shintani
It’s all in the details, take a second look, never be afraid of color. – Selena Ward
“There are no mistakes. Only happy accidents.” Kindergarten art teacher. She was right. Mostly. – Bud Hunt
You can always throw it out and start over :-D – Jacqui Derby, Ph.D.
To properly observe something, sometimes you need to look closer. – Beka Smith
There is no such thing as staying in the lines.. Patti Duncan
[The] law of perspective. Patti Duncan
Part of me feels the need to comment on each of these individually, but I think it’s better to let them stay as-is. What I will say is that each person who responded took something useful and meaningful back with them when they left their art classes.
As the powers that be wring their hands and look at budgets that are stretched too thin to fit everything, it is my hope that they too will remember what they learned in their own art classes.
So what have you learned?
I have 4 of them. They’re hard plastic, @5″ across, and fit together. They are packing material for a printer paper that’s expensive enough to make me doubt I’ll get any more of them.
But they look cool. Any project ideas?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
It’s no secret that I love, love, LOVE paper sculpture. Whether it’s one sheet or 2,000, printed out or made from scratch, to me there’s something aesthetically appealing about taking a planar surface and turning it into a three dimensional object.
So when this showed up in my RSS reader thanks to MAKE Magazine …. well, I had to blog about it.
This sculpture looks awesome. On top of that, it also looks simple enough to have my younger students recreate something in the same style! I’ve been looking for ways to incorporate more contemporary artists into my lessons, and this might just be one of the ways to do it. I like her Artist’s Statement, too – I’m thinking that paragraph alone could inspire all kinds of cool projects.
The only problems I can really think of right now would involve display, as I would need to make sure the student work was structurally sound enough to hang from the wall and not fall apart.
Still, with 20+ students working on the sculpture we’d be able to make something pretty neat looking no matter how long it lasts.
Every now and then a program comes along that is so fantastic, so perfect for what I do in the classroom, that I can’t help but use it. Skitch is one of those programs.
I first found out about it when Bre Pettis started posting drawings he’d made using the program. Intrigued, I downloaded it, played with it, fell in love, and used it in one of my classes the same day. Not only was it that easy to use, it was appropriate, too.
Skitch has a variety of options out of the box. I can start with a blank image, take a screen capture of any size or portion of my screen, drag in a preexisting image, import something from my iPhoto library, or even use my laptop’s built-in iSight camera to snap a picture of myself. That image, whatever it’s source, becomes the background layer.
(The quick math on the side shows the years between the event and the painting.)
On top of that layer I can draw, write, annotate, highlight, whatever, using a small selection of tools. Since all of this is on a layer on top of the image I can erase or cover up without fear of destroying the original image.
When I’m done I can upload the image to Skitch’s own servers where it’ll give me a Flickr-esque code I can use to insert it into webpages. Got a .Mac MobileMe account? It can upload them to there instead if you want. You can even drag the picture to your desktop if you decide you want to upload it through a different service, or simply not upload it at all.
As much as I’m loving Skitch, it’s not all things to all people. As of now I can’t have it record video through my webcam – still photos only. For quick video on the Mac Photo Booth and iMovie are still the way to go.
Have an older Mac or (oh no!) a computer running Windows? You’re out of luck – Skitch will only run on Mac OS 10.4.6 or later.
The drawing tools are also very limited. Adequate for underlining, circling, and so on, but GIMP and SUMO Paint are much more advanced with a wide variety of features.
Text can be added quickly and easily, but there’s a limit to how large or small I can make it and I still haven’t figured out if I have any control over the font.
With all these negatives, why do I bother to use Skitch? Because it’s the best at what it does – selecting an image and building upon it quickly with minimal effort. All the times I used GIMP in the classroom no teacher ever asked me where I got such a full featured application. Sure, I COULD do the same stuff with GIMP or Photoshop, but that would be like using a car to visit your next door neighbor. In most cases walking (& using Skitch) is simpler and faster.
Most teachers ask me about Skitch when they see me use it, because the interface is non-threatening and they see immediately how it can be used to reinforce their teaching styles.
It’s a shame they all have Windows based laptops.