Using Video Aids as Inspiration

While searching the Internet fro fun and informative videos, I recently rediscovered a site that my Professors and fellow peers were using in my undergraduate art classes. PBS hosts a website called art21. This site contains videos, articles. And even artist bios. It pertains to the 21^st century and contemporary art. My professors were using this as a tool to guide our thinking about contemporary art and was a good source of knowledge about 21^st century artists to balance out the Masters and emphasis of Art History we were all being surrounded by. My peers were using it as inspiration and finding new ideas to explore. I think that this site would be good to use for secondary students. It is a lot of interviews and videos of artists talking about their work. It is not geared towards younger students and would not be applicable in the elementary classroom. I would use it in reference to artists or styles of work to aid myself during instruction, and also have the students use it to gain knowledge and new ideas.

After subbing for a Middle School art class a few weeks ago, I found myself looking for aids to inspire the students to create original works. The eighth graders were about to start a sculpture project involving cones, inspired by the work of Dale Chihuly. Chihuly is a famous glass sculpture. They watched a short video about the artist to gain knowledge and inspiration for their own sculptures. The link that I have provided for you is of another artist, who is also a glass blower Josiah McElheny. This is just a segment from the video entitled “Memory”. He talks about his experiences with the work and his ideas and inspiration. I think this video would be good to piggy back off of the first video or even just to have as homework or reference for students on the class site. Watching this video will help the students understand how young artist use other artist to learn from and be inspired by, whether it be similar styles of works or using different tools and techniques for the same results. Providing students with materials such as these creates wonderful habits for doing their own research and building their own schema and creating new and exciting ideas for them to explore in the art room.

I have attached two links, one being Chihuly’s website and the other is the art21 site. Please click on the links and definitely explore art21. It is a great little site, and don’t feel a little crazy when you find yourself watching hours of these videos.

Dale Chihuly’s Website: http://www.chihuly.com/

Art21 Video link: http://www.pbs.org/art21/watch-now/segment-josiah-mcelheny-in-memory

Technology is changing; the Art room is not.

The revolution in Education is using new technologies and the web to make learning interactive. Classrooms are using computers, smart boards, Ipads, Wikis, Blogs, and much more to make 21^st century learning more interactive of teachers and students. While art instruction has always been interactive because of the demonstrations of techniques and using certain tools, art classrooms are still not receiving new technological tools to help integrate technology into the art classroom.

A few weeks ago I subbed for an art teacher who went to the National Art Education Association Conference for a week. This happens to be the same art classroom that I started attending about 15 years ago. In the mid-to late 90’s the Internet was making a big push in schools and ways of learning were changing. Since then we have gone from using encyclopedias to Wikipedia for research, chalkboards to smart boards and over-head projectors to LCD screens and cameras, for instruction, and most art rooms, like the one I attended have seen little to none of these changes. This classroom that I spent 6 years in, in elementary school and now teaching in only contains a laptop and projector. This is the only thing that had changed since I was a student at this school, with the exception of the brightly colored walls. I was in shocked to find that after all my learning and research of integrating new technologies in the classroom, that this art classroom has nothing to offer.

I ran into several instances while subbing where technologies such as an overhead camera would have made instruction easier and more capable for students to learn. In the third grade classes we were coloring with color pencils and learning to blend colors and fifth graders were learning about one-point perspective while learning how to draw 3D letters in-the-round. My instruction for these classes involved me drawing on a clipboard and holding it up for everyone to see. For third grade, I demonstrated to shade lightly with color pencils, slowly blending different colors together and for the fifth graders I was demonstrating how to find a vanishing point, holding a ruler and creating three-dimensional letters. On top of doing a class demonstration a few times, I still had a lot of students asking for help. I think the students would get a lot more out of most art demonstrations by using an overhead camera such as an Elmo. These cameras provide teachers to demonstrate techniques and show other details of work by working under the camera and projecting it on the projector for the whole class to see.

There are so many technology aids to use in the art classroom such as Smart boards or overhead cameras for instruction, projectors, and computers for creating, storing and displaying digital works on wikis and blogs, the web to search for images and take online gallery tours. We just need to make them a priority for 21^st century learning. 

Using Twitter in Education

Twitter is a great portal to finding up to date information about anything and everything including expert and amateur posts. While I had a twitter and it was for personal use, I am currently using it to find educational resources for integrating technology in the classroom. I am not sure my followers will appreciate the change, but maybe they will learn a thing or two and help advocate for more technology opportunities in the classroom. I am using the List application in twitter to separate my findings. Before I created this list entitled “teched”, I would search and follow people that found interesting and knowledgeable, and they would tweet constantly! While I enjoy reading what they have to say and the articles that are posted, it fills up my scroll and I don’t always have time to read everything as I get it. Creating this list helps me to follow these new friends without them popping up on the recent posts, and I am able to go back and read when I have a free moment. The list also helps to organize my different subjects that I enjoy following, such as technologist, artists, and other groups that provide current information that aid in my teaching. I found two accounts the really interested me. The first was eInstruction (@einstruction). This site tweets about news shared from this organization and other followers and fellow tweeters. I really like that this organization uses published articles, blogs and other resources to find information to share with their followers. The second account that I really enjoy following and reading is Jason P. Heisel’s account (@TheTechSpec). His tweets are more personal then ones found on organizational sites and he also re-tweets and replies to others posts. The Internet and new technology has provided great advancements in viewing and sharing information. I am using twitter to not only follow and learn from organization and other educators, but I am also using the list application to share what I know and am learning to share with my peers as well. When creating this list, I was really focused on looking for teachers and specialists using new technology in their classroom and experts and articles that support technology and our growth in technological use in education for the future.  I have attached the link to my twitter list, please feel free to check it out and find new opportunities and ideas to grow through technology in your classroom.

The link to my Twitter List. Happy Tweeting!!!

https://twitter.com/#!/brklynmarie/teched