AT: Week 6 - Read & React

Reading assignments this week:
Digital Diet
   Chapter 2 - Searching
   Chapter 3 - Social Bookmarking
Art Education, Paul Duncum Article "Seven Principles for Visual Culture Education"

I want to reiterate how hard the Digital Diet chapters are to respond to for me. So many of them illicit a response of just, "Yup. That's about right." But, I'll give it a try.

Ch. 2 - Of course having gone through college during the digital age, I had to take a class in doing searches. But, its funny, because I teach a subject where research is not a focus (or at least traditional research methods aren't), I had forgotten about searching this way. Forgotten isn't the correct term...let's see... I had overlooked having to emphasize searching this way. Typically the research we would do would be such a minor part of the overall unit / project /event that it doesn't take an in depth search. But that might all change if my district starts to implement a big research project for every subject once a year.

Ch. 3 - Social Bookmarking. Well, I have to say that I have always been hesitant to "open up" on the internet. I am by habit, a very private and even shy person until I know someone. So tagging and making things public on the internet has not been my personality.  I don't know you, so you can't  know me. However, the social bookmarking site that I have really embraced has been pinterest. The difference being that you can't necessarily link it to anything deeper about me and yet one can't help but have it be public. It seems less invasive and had connected me to so many professional collaborations. I love it! One would think that it would make me more comfortable with other tools, but no. It doesn't. Weird.

Paul Duncum - Ok, Here's the meat of my reading this time.
WHOA. So the context of my life around the time I was trying to read this was really holding me back. I had to attempt to read it 3 times before I could sink down into what it was really saying without my thoughts detouring into my own life and questions I was pondering. I've been researching, and thinking and immersing myself into how Common Core could really propel our district into evolving our secondary art curriculum. I was thinking, even before this article. that now is the time to find a more relevant way of teaching art than through units on the elements and principles. But I feel like that is hard for me. I need an environment where I am led into the word of higher order thinking about visual culture and how art is integrated into our world today, beyond just that which creates artists. How does the typical citizen interact and react to art around them? And then, Bam! Here is one possible avenue.  These 7 principles were interesting to investigate. I found myself wondering about the examples the author gives his students. It made me question, "Are these assignments for college students? or were they given when he taught high school courses? Was it a mixture of classes or one in particular?" Although it doesn't give any credentials other than his current position as a Professor, I came to the conclusion that there was no way that this could be taught with full understanding to high school students using these examples. They would not a) have time, b) fully grasp the entirety of the concept, c) explore it to its end. At least, not in one year. This would be a major undertaking. BUT. but, saying this, I don't think it shouldn't be attempted. I think that it would be a major shift in thinking for students. I mean, it would be exhaustive in terms of how much thinking students would have to do in exploring these principles. But, I think these are important topics for students to begin thinking about. Analyzing the world around them and thinking deeply about their choices and what people put in front of them. I believe our society would be much better off with a little more of this. Or at least, I would feel better about my community and its choice come election time if I knew we all thought a little bit more than we do. ;)
I'd like to investigate the Gude article referenced by Duncum here. Especially with the symposium this spring coming up wth Gude. I would love to invite her to my high school and see how she would modify her post-modern principles to meet the challenges of a M-F, 50 minute class period, and all-the-other-nonsense secondary teachers deal with in order to teach. Not saying it can't be done, just genuinely curious how she would handle the variations from her intensive summer program because things are so different in theory vs in practice.
In closing, this article had given me a lot to think about as I review our curriculum and materials in conjunction with common core. I found the 7 Principles to coincide with many of the anchor standards I had modified to fit Visual Arts. I see many things coming together in the near future.

AT: Week 8 - Creativity Books & Creativity Projects

Creativity Projects:

Book #1: Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity

Here is my first Creativity Project: Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity

I didn't find it very inspiring so the 'project' itself is very uninspired, I'm afraid.

The second book, however, was very inspiring and useful.

Book #2: A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative
After reading it, it is easy to see why A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative has been a bestselling creative thinking classic for over 25 years.

Creativity Project #2: A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative

AT: Week 6 - Technology Bootcamp 3

Organizing and Utilizing Inspiration -

My Inspiration Board: This is an inspiration board for an art work I would like to begin, originally inspired by the connections I am making in my head to the Oscar Wilde novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and our consumer culture. It is the beginning of the Pinterest board where I am digitally housing things I see that I am making connections to and using as source material and/or stimulation. 

Dorian Gray Inspiration Board

Visual Thinking - 

Inspiration:

Okay, so I opted for Webspiration instead of Inspiration because it was web-based, accessible from anywhere, and then it wouldn't take up memory on my laptop (which is killing me right now!) So I hope that is okay! Somebody let me know if this looks dramatically different, and I will go back and add Inspiration.

 I started out using it to mind map what I'm thinking in terms of my artistic endeavor. I don't like this. I'm way more visual. This is too linear feeling - too structured. 

Popplet:

So now on to Popplet. I like this better. Although, I guess essentially it is the same. I think it is just a bit more loose and I like that. Maybe more intuitive. 

This time I decided to try spilling some thoughts I'd been having with my curriculum work and how I see big ideas connecting to some essential understandings and our "power standards" in visual art. Here is the link if you want to see it large and in charge. Just keep in mind it is a work in progress...I'd also love to hear if / how any of you are using Big Ideas in the art room. 

Intertext:
(Continued!)
I did my intertext on a portrait of Matisse we looked at as part of our investigation into the effects of color.
I created my intertext on Popplet here.

I could spend hours upon hours linking connections I see. In my mind this is infinite. I wonder if given this assignment, what connections my students would make. I wish time, space, and curiosity were endless so on top of the time we spend creating and producing we had time to do these investigations in class too!

AT: Week 4 - Technology Bootcamp II

Hello fellow technology bootcampers!

Please find some of my technological dabblings below:

Skype:
I skyped with Amy and she was kind enough to record it. You can see it on her blog here. You can also get a look at my daughter Gigi - she's my little cutie pie.


Screenr:
This is what Amy used to capture our skype conversation. If I was thinking about it (and not how to escape to a quiet room for 5 minutes) I would have recorded our conversation too. Oh well!
What I did use screenr for was a short introduction to my class website / blog. I didn't dive too deep but used it just to give a peek to ridlen.weebly.com. The Screencast can be found here.


Voicethread!
Here is the Voicethread I am thinking about using in class. I would like my students to see each other's Haring Symbol Drawings and comment on at least one offering feedback in a less intimidating critique-like way. I'm thinking of having them use the TAG Review format: T = Tell Something You Like, A = Ask a Question, G = Give a Positive Suggestion. I'm wondering how the use of technology might increase the dialogue. I also fear it might loosen up their manners as well as their lips without having a physical person to talk to.

I've included two versions, the "clean" one that I will use with my students (Haring Voice Thread Critique) and one for us to play with! Feel free to leave comments as if they were for my students, or discussing things more relevant to us as art teachers.  This could be fun! Artistic Thinking Haring VT

AT: Week 4 - Read & React

Read & React to:

1) "Teaching with the Tools Kids Really Use" Chapter 5: Social Networks

2) "The Digital Diet: Chapter 5: VOIP, Chapter 6: Twitter, Chapter 8: Social Networking, Chapter 9: Voice Thread

Okay, I'm going to tackle this a little differently. Let's discuss the Discussion Points from Brooks-Young book and handle the topics from the Digital Diet book through this lens.

1) My experience with social networking. Yes. I socially network. :) Hard core. Okay, medium core. I Facebook x 2. I have a personal fb account for friends and another account I use as a teacher and professional. My security settings are higher on my personal, making me harder to find (I truly dearly hope.) I open my teacher account to students, former students, and colleagues (minus my big bosses - that'd be weird.) I mostly opened my second account to avoid my oblivious peers posting things that I wouldn't want everyone in my work life to see. I am very compartmentalized and somewhat private at work. It has worked out well. (I also used MySpace back in the day.) I have mostly used fb to stay in touch with students after graduation, and use edmodo to work with current students. This also helps compartmentalize. :) 

   I try to use Twitter. I've been on Twitter since 2008 but never really had a reason to use it. My younger brother tried to convince me to use it more (ironic since his last post was from Millennium park when Obama won the election!) I was not very good at it - I had just had my first baby and didn't think anyone would want to read updates like "spit up on - AGAIN" or "Asparagus affects more than just pee."(Was that TMI? - told you I wasn't very good.) In the last two years, I've used it more to reach out to my Personal Learning Network of like minded Art Teachers. Its been super helpful, but I know I am still not using it to its potential. I am thinking that I will be branching out to classroom use soon though after a bit more practice.

   Pinterest! -  That's a form of social networking, although I don't really use that part of it much. For me its' more of a visual bookmarking site that I share. So in that respect I guess its social. 

I'm sitting here trying to think about how I social network, and maybe because it is so ingrained it is hard to list. Its just stuff I do on the internet. Hmm, food for thought that.

2) Policies at my school regarding social networking. 

    We have a filter that does not allow students to access a lot of social networking sites. It even comes up with a screen that says it has been classified as such. Ironically, teachers have recently been allowed access to these sites like facebook and twitter. On one hand, duh, makes sense. We use them for class so we should be able to work at work. On the other hand, we are using them in the hope to stay connected to our students. And they can't connect. (good thing students these days typically have their own devices with their own access so they just bypass that most of the time anyway. It only becomes a problem when you want to use it for say, anything during class.) I also hear there was some law or some such that prohibited teachers from socially networking with students. >*sarcasm*< Our district already had polocies in place so it didn't feel the need to crack down. Thank goodness. So far so good.

3) What grade level is appropriate for educators to start teaching students how to use social networking sites? Well, According to the Terms of Service for Facebook, the answer is 13. But, I think it is important to start teaching digital citizenship as early as possible. If kids under age 5 are used to playing with Webkinz (which can be a social networking "toy"), they are already introduced to the concept. We need to educate kids to proper netiquette as soon as possible so regardless of when they start using Social networking, they know how to behave. I think students as young as first grade could slowly, and in small mind size pieces, be given assignments that integrate qualities of social networking. My concern would be world wide accessibility so I would limit exposure at the younger grades. 

4) The Role of social networking in the 21st-century in learning environments. I would love to see more interconnectivity globally. I hear a lot about technology connecting classrooms across the globe, but that seems to depend on the teachers connections, not just fishing for a random bite from across the globe. 

   In the art room, I would love to connect to professional living artists. I would like to connect with other art students, networking with like peers that wouldn't be necessarily connected to the same social circles and allowing for alternate points of view. 

   I also see the role of a teacher changing the more the teacher embraces these tools. In a way, it means that you are an educator 24/7. You are connected to the classroom in real time at times you were normally able to shut off for a while. By allowing my students to email me, I now feel more compelled to check my work email after school hours. But I still have to draw that line of when to work and when to not (because I'm sure some of you can relate to teachers working more than just 9 to 5) - gotta learn when to say no, you know?

Okay, something that didn't come up - Voice Thread. I am loving this as a way to provide feedback to my students and to create a digital gallery for my students. Awesome! I want my students to offer feed back to others too in order to offer ways to increase their skills. TO things I don't think they think about in the creation part but might be able to go back and reflect on. I'm thinking of this year's Haring projects and the line quality. Poo! So sloppy and messy! I'm wondering if peers will point out these things if they are doing it digitally and not face to face in class. I'll have to get back to you on what happens.

    I'm curious about these new accounts though. I wonder if schools will start to create digital tech budgets for things like animoto, voice thread, and others. So far, its only been me shouldering the financial burden. More money would be lovely!

AT: Week 5 Media Literate Digital Artizens

What is the role of art education (or art educators) in 
teaching students to be media literate digital citizens?

   My role as an educator, I think, first and foremost is to contribute to the development of a well-rounded citizen. And when I say citizen, I think in terms of many communities, not just an American citizenry but a conscious global citizen as well as citizens that I would like to surround myself with in my local small town. I would like to think that after graduation my students go out into the world and see great sights, experience all that life has to offer. But I want them to be equally prepared and suitable for a more low key life too (such as a shift at the Mickey D's - b/c face it, we do hold those fast food workers to a certain standard of intelligence and decency too.) if that's where it takes them. And regardless of what they do with their life, television is the great equalizer. 98.8% of all households have a television (The Heritage Foundation, What is Poverty in the United States Today?). With a staggering number of hours of television being watched by children so that they see, on average, more than 40,000 television commercials a year, the effects this will have on attitudes, perspectives, and development can not be ignored by educators. (Not to mention what the effects of the hours of other screen time may do in addition.)  
   Now, I have to confess, you are reading the opinions of a self-proclaimed television addict. I am a child of the eighties, affected by the deregulation of television advertising and a HUGE TV watcher as a child (we're talking an average 3 hours a day while I was in elementary school most likely - and that was WITHOUT cable and a multitude of 24/7 cartoon channels). I never thought about it having much impact, seeing as how I am a savvy connoisseur with self-control, will-power and what I thought was self-determination. Seeing some of the studies on how children are affected by screen time is down right scary. I'd like to think I really did turn out okay, but my husband laughs when I don't realize I start to prepare the same types of food for a meal as a commercial that just whizzed past that I thought I was tuning out. The DVR was the best invention / investment we could have made for the very reason of not being psychologically manipulated by advertising. I try to limit the time my son watches TV, and even then I really try to limit how many commercials (even for other tv shows) he is exposed to. Even before this, I was trying to limit his exposure to the feeling of the "gotta have its" that commercials induce. Now I will be even more conscious of the correlation on his behavior.  Between these documentaries, the readings, and information I learned about mirror neurons, I am more convinced that people (students) learn through watching others. This might be through real life, or more increasingly, through screens - television, computer, cellphone, etc. 
   A concept that has really stuck with me since reading Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind" and jumped out at me again, was the idea of unstructured play. As a high school art teacher, I feel this could be very helpful to what we are trying to teach in terms of innovation and creativity. But I constantly have to fight my classroom manager's urge to structure it. And students are unsure of what to do with time to play at this stage. I have a hunch that I could be doing it all wrong and that there is a better way to present it to a class to make it more meaningful. I am curious about where my students would be in their cognitive, emotional, social, and physical well-being by the time they get to HS if their time for free and unstructured play has been so dramatically decreased with the increase of standardized testing, pressure on schools to perform, and various other factors that have caused this to happen. I found the statistic of   9 - 12 yos having a 94% decline shocking at first, but then, having access to the elementary areas through my content leader position, realizing that of course its been a 94% decline! They went from two recesses to one! They constantly have testing to monitor their progress, they spend more time in reading and spelling then at specials (art, music, pe) OF course!! And that makes me sad. Sad for the children, sad for the teachers, and sad for our world. What a world we live in when we can't let children play. When we can't figure out how to help kids read (or more accurately - when we can't affect change in our communities / society / governments to come together to do what is best for our kids and our future.) There is not one easy fix and it seems like the burden just keeps get heavier. Are we just trying to perform a Sisyphean task?
  But let me refocus my thoughts to the direction of the question, What is my role as an art educator in teaching students to be media literate citizens? A reading for VTS from Philip Yenawine kept coming back to me during this. He said, "Having Art in our lives is necessary for us to be fully human." He goes on to say that we (as a society and culture) currently marginalize art to a privileged position so that people so infrequently encounter it. I would disagree with that to a point. It is not that people don't encounter it, it is that they don't see it as "art". That they don't analyze it or consider it. And our role as art educators, I believe is, in part, to make people see. We are no longer teachers of art makers solely, but we hold a greater position and responsibility to teach students skills to "use" art. To use it to communicate, to use it as a vehicle for higher thought. We should take on a role to educate students on how visual images communicate. This may be "fine art" like paintings or sculptures, but it also includes the art of photography, video, and design. We could easily overlay the six principles of media literacy into the creation of art works. (And it wouldn't hurt to help the future design DIY'ers for the sake of all our aesthetics!) As consumers, we should also be savvy and discerning, analytical and critical. Teaching our artizens to have these skills could be nothing but beneficial to our global society. 

VTS: Blog Topic #4

Week 4: August 27 – September 2, 2012
BLOG TOPIC #4: Assessing, Reflecting, Planning

· Assessing Student Engagement& Learning:
o Describe student willingness to participate in the discussion.
o What did students notice about the featured artwork?
o Did students list or interpret their observations? (Why do you think that occurred?)
o Describe student interactions during the discussion. How did this impact group meaning-making?
o How did the discussion conclude?
o What do you think students learned from this discussion?
o What did you observe that makes you say that?

Assessing Student Engagement & Learning:

Students seem fairly willing to participate in the discussions, depending on the hour of class (i.e. 1st hour not so much. Slides in a darkened room at 7:20 = zzzzz).

Students noticed details about the symbols in the artwork. They began to analyze what the symbols in the artwork could possibly mean. Students inventoried the scene in the artwork in order to make sense of the story that could be taking place. The students discussed possible scenarios that could be taking place and why they thought that.

Students did a little of both. At first students had to list to make sense of what they saw, but then they interpreted their observations.

Students referred to each other's observations and built upon them. Alternately, they disagreed with each other's observations and would state their disagreements respectfully. They seemed to build on each other's ridiculousness elevating the hysterics. At one point I had to step out of my role as facilitator and bring focus back to the group.

The VTS discussions normally came to a lull where I would close the discussion. I have a habit of letting the dialogue evolve organically and not time them.

Using the conversation as a wrap up and introduction to a future unit, I think students were able to synthesize their information learned from the project and I could then see what they were taking away from their classroom experiences. Students would refer to pictures as symbols for deeper / broader meanings. They were referencing terminology we had learned in class.

· Reflecting on Practice:

o How did the VTS discussion feel and what did you learn by facilitating this lesson with your students?
o Were you able to use the questions and prescribed teacher behaviors comfortably? If you omitted or changed the questions or behaviors, what impact did it have on the discussion? Why do you think that occurred?
o Were there any surprises?
o How might this initial experience impact your practice moving forward?
Reflecting on Practice :

The class I chose to document is my smallest class, but also my most challenging class. They like to challenge what teachers will find acceptable. This is evident in my VTS discussion. One student in particular has issues with social interactions and can not always determine what is or is not appropriate to say. This affects the class dynamic and another student likes to encourage this behavior. The first and third hour classes felt better than this 2nd hour discussion did. It was difficult to get through the conversation with real meaning making taking place.

In general I can use the questions and behaviors comfortably. This was the first time where I felt that the students were not responding to the neutralizing affects of the structure. But I don't beleive that this was neccessarily an outcome of the VTS process but rather a special situation with a special student dynamic.

I was pretty surprised at how this group of students were fairly undisciplined. With most high school groups I can be more relaxed about the structure (of raising hands, calling on them, etc.) and let the discussion evolve more organically. This group I should have enforced the structure more.

This class in general is going to take some more getting to know them in order to discover what techniques and methods work to diffuse their fires in terms of general classroom management. Knowing this and what makes them tick, will I think help me in my image selection and in knowing who and when to call on them in the VTS discussion.

·         Planning:

o   What do you want to work on as you plan for future VTS lessons?
o  How do you think you can accomplish that?

Planning:

I want to make sure I select images that students connect with. I want to make sure I enforce the discussion structure with this group so that the discussions are meaningful and productive.

I also think  my high absence rate actually makes them crave attention from me. If I time my VTS discussions after I have been back for a while, this might improve the dynamic and structure. I will also remember to stop to reexplain the structure before we begin.