What Does Technology Integration Mean to You?

When asked a question about our contemporary society and the changes that happen within it I have to answer twice.  I identify myself as an art educator and an artist.  At times these personalities work incredibly well together, but there are those moments when it’s not the best to cross these paths.  When asked about our society and the current move toward technology integration, when asked what it means to me, I have to answer twice.  Luckily, this is one of those times in which my answers benefit from each other.  As an artist technology integration means a drastic shift in creative medium, and as an art educator technology integration means a more accessible curriculum.

Traditional art has always been held in highest regard by the social consciousness of humanity.  Oil paints gently brushed on to stretched canvas, marble finely chiseled into the likeness of another, and inks of various colors pulled across paper to form a composition that speaks to the very soul.  These are the things we think about when we discuss art, at least, they were.  Now the digital age has brought about tools that can near perfectly mimic traditional mediums, and with those tools the clever of us have created new types of art.  The greatest moments in art history, the times in which the world was changed by art, were all caused by boredom with the known.  It is when someone does something new, makes something unexpected and unseen, that the world notices and remembers.  With technological integration the world of the past has become available in the palm of your hand.  Any artist can use new devices to replace entire tool kits of artistic materials.  Any artist can find that new way to create something, that unexpected and unseen thing anywhere they are by merely having the right type of tool.  And so many tools have become available as we understand our technology more and further its reach back.  Many of these tools make art creation an available pursuit for anyone.  Of course the truly great will take their time to experience their craft, hone their ability, and learn all there is to make something great, but it won’t cost them a life savings and a lifetime anymore.  As an artist, technology integration means that art is becoming something beautifully new, something that has more mastery over a universal language than it has ever before.  Technology integration means art can be for everyone.

The art classroom is a place that teaches to tradition.  We teach the famous artists of old, discuss why they are so famous, and wish to understand how our own work can speak to as many people as their art did.  However, classes find themselves limited.  The arts are never placed in high importance when it comes to funding, and art educators know this all too well.  With the push in schools to have a 1:1 ratio of available technology to students it means that technology integration allows for greater access.   The art classroom can now be created through the use of devices that mimic the expensive tools and materials used in art creation.  Students won’t have to study just the artists that are in their textbook.  They can explore the world of art through their digital device and discover what type of art truly speaks to them.  I have been wishing to move the art classroom to a more contemporary mindset, helping students understand that traditional visuals and the importance placed on traditionally “good” art is not what matters.  What matters is making something that speaks for you, about you, something that you feel good making.  Through technology integration students have the entire history of art in the palm of their hand.  They have access to every artist new and old.  They have access to every work that has ever been made.  They are no longer limited to what is held in a school-mandated textbook when they have the ability to read any book.  Now I am not speaking against traditional art in any way.  The fine forms and figures devised by artists of old still allow us to create amazing work.  We still need to understand these principles and elements of art to speak properly with it, but we do not need to use the tools of artists before us.  We have access to new tools, to entirely new mediums.  Technology integration brings us the entire world of old art and all that is new art.

As an artist technology integration means a drastic shift in creative medium, and as an art educator technology integration means a more accessible curriculum.  Young artists are mastery the old world with new tools and students are discovery so much more with what they can access.  Technology integration brings an end to many things as traditional artists and traditional teachers, and many of us fear the loss of those aspects.  We fear the change that is coming.  But, those of us that can grasp this change and focus it within our classrooms can help our students understand so much more than we ever could.

Supporting K-12 Learning in Michigan

The website Supporting K-12 Learning in Michigan, found here, is a nice resource that can help in understanding how to best integrate the online learning graduation requirement into your main curriculum for students ranging from Kindergarten to 12th grade.  Starting with the 2011 graduating high school classes in Michigan, students are required to have completed and online course.  Presented here will be three scenarios from the site and answers to the questions prompted in each.

The first scenario, found here, has to do with the implementation of the online requirement by the state of Michigan into K-12 learning.  Students have 3 options on how to meet this requirement: by completing an online course, by completing 20 hours of online learning in a face-to-face classroom, and/or by adding technology infused lessons within the classroom where the students use online resources to complete learning objectives.  The resources included in the scenario bring an educator to the updated list of Michigan Merit Curriculum Guidelines and ways on how to best integrate them into the classroom.  At the end we are prompted to, "Brainstorm some challenges that students might face in each of the methods of meeting the State's online learning graduation requirement."  Now the biggest challenge with many schools, especially older schools, with the first method would be the integration of online learning courses.  Many are strictly face-to-face learning experiences and the administration could be stuck in their ways.  This would prevent the school form offering courses online and thus hinder that method.  However, many schools and administrators are embracing online courses and understand their necessity.  Method two and three can both be challenged by the classroom teacher.  If they have not been trained in how to properly incorporate online learning into their classroom then the student requirement will suffer.  This is very much up to collaboration between the administration and the teaching staff to train in online integration and help learn how to best utilize this resource.

The second scenario, found here, focuses on students that are not prepared to participate in online learning. Many students are unprepared for the more independent learning environment that online integration brings with it.  There are "soft learning skills" that can be fostered within students that will help them succeed in this independent learning atmosphere.  These focus on proper time management and self regulation.  Orientations should be given for students that focus on these "soft learning skills" that can act as an introduction to the online learning experience while helping them understand what they will personally need to bring to the table.  This orientation should also include introduction of and instruction in all the tools they will be using in their online experience.  This orientation can be gradually introduced throughout the early years of schooling and more effectively taught in higher education.  The resources provided help identify and describe the characteristics needed to be successful in an online learning format.  These help build an appropriate orientation for students that are not as of yet ready.  At the end we are prompted to, "Create a list of strategies that students could use to develop independence, self-motivation, self-regulation, self-direction, time management, and other soft learning skills."  Within the art classroom a great way to build soft learning skills is a weekly sketchbook assignment.  Completed outside of the classroom time, students are required to create a work of art that is mildly regulated by a rubric or instructional worksheet.  This helps the students understand that they must choose what to draw and how much work to put into it.  Timed drawing exercises also help with these "soft learning skills."  By having progressively difficult drawing exercises done in a timed fashion students understand that they need to regulate their work and focus on what is most important for the given assignment.  Group projects also always help foster motivational and directional skills.  The groups work together, judge their strengths and weaknesses, and decide on how to best complete a project.  This helps individual students understand their own abilities and how they must be responsible for their own end of the work.  These are just a few ways to help foster "soft learning skills" in the art classroom.

The third scenario, found here, focuses on how students can seek resources outside the physical appearance of a teacher.  Online courses generally have built-in tutorials that assist the student in understanding the course as well as contact information for any teachers that can answer questions via online and offline messaging sources.  Accompanying the course should be instruction in effective search strategies for appropriate online sources to assist in learning.  Students should be given a list of local teachers and tutors, as well as fellow students within the online course is imperative in aiding the students learning.  Through these resources they can seek out "study buddies" or tutors to help with problem areas.  It is the appropriate use of supports with the online course content that will be most effective in student online learning success.  The resources added to this scenario help understand how best to locate supports for online learning and identify what supports are needed in online learning.  At the end we are prompted to, "Identify what your school is doing to support students in their online learning.  What are some things that your school could do to better support students as they meet their online learning graduation requirements?"  Mona Shores Public Schools has an amazing setup when it comes to online and digital integration.  At the higher ed level all students are given access to Google accounts that allow them a quick and easy introduction into online schooling tools.  Each teacher provides a blog site and Moodle learning site to accompany their physical classroom.  There is even a move to getting efficient 1:1 technology to the students in the coming school years.  However, many of these classrooms only provide secondary or supplemental material, and don't fully access the flipped classroom aspect that online resources provide.  I think instating a required unit or lesson that integrates the flipped format will do wonders for helping foster positive online learning skills.  There aren't required classes that focus on positive online presence and citizenship.  Classes like these would be imperative for any student wishing to enter an online course, or truly any individual in general in this technologically advanced day and age.

The website offers a great deal of resources for anyone that wishes to enter or create an online learning format.  It works as a great introduction to the requirements of the teacher and the student in an online learning environment, and helps understand how best to accomplish those requirements.  Personally, I think it could use some visual work but hey, it does what it sets out to do.  Doesn't always have to be aesthetically pleasing as well as utilitarian.

New Year Better Than the Old Year

We survived the apocalypse to find that a new year is ahead of us.  A new semester of study, a new calendar of personal growth, and a new time of experience is what awaits the next 365 days (358 because it's already the 7th).  I wish you all a fantastic new year and hope it is better than the last.

 Promotional image from Melaleuca Freedom Celebration

A Post Apocalyptic Post

Well hey, people!  Looks like we survived the apocalypse!  

Now as I've got a good deal of ideas on how to generate lesson plans around fear and collective fear I feel that the death and destruction of everything we hold dear needs to be addressed in some way.

In truth I was disappointed that the reaction to the "End of the World" wasn't a little more than it was the other day.  Actually I'm proud of the collective population being reasonable for an unreasonable moment but for the sake of comedy I wanted to see some kind of exaggerated reaction to this once in a lifetime event.  Just think about that, we had the "threat" of world destruction, the end of it all, looming over us just a few days ago and then nothing and everyone went back to it all as if nothing happened (well nothing did happen so I think that helped).  I'm not sure where I'm going with this right now.  Oh, ideas for lesson plans about the end of the world!

So the Mayan Calendar created a big hub bub so why not make your own doomsday clock!  Students can generate their own inventive and personal apocalypse and then generate the artifact that lead to the social belief in their respective ends of the world.  Opens up for some interesting 3 dimensional work.

Image of Mayan Calendar, provided by Voxxi.com

Let the Music Paint a Picture

So last night I went to a concert at the Pyramid Scheme and saw The Protomen.  After an evening of amazing times I woke up and thought about how their particular brand of music (rock opera) tells a story and can paint a very vivid picture in the imagination of the listeners.  Now that thought got me thinking on how music could be a key component in an art making lesson.

It starts with showing off a selection of work for the students and then having them choose one and pick an appropriate song that fits with the work.  The student will explain why, because that's important, and then we'll move on to the main part.

The student will choose a song that they enjoy, aiming for a song that holds a narrative, and generate a piece of art that illustrates that song.  Now I think the visual component of the piece can be opened up into photo collage, painting, and illustration.  I think a 3 dimensional work would be awesome to see but I want to focus on having some limitations with something as open as depictions of songs.

So I'm going to think about how to make that into a full fledged lesson plan and how to incorporate FEAR into that.  I'm going to leave you with a song The Protomen performed last night and I rocked out to.

  

 

"Light Up the Night" by The Protomen

Scary Stories to Tell in Class

Lesson idea, creating scary stories to go along with personal fears to have the class share those fears.  Then generate illustrations to go along with those stories that help in amplifying that fear.  Much akin to Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell

Illustration by Stephen Gammell

SEE!  LOOK AT THAT!  THAT'S HORRIFYING!

 

I Can't Stand to Fly, I'm Not That Naive

I'm More Than a Bird, I'm More Than a Plane

Above is a link (if you are a fellow user of Netflix) to the film Waiting For "Superman" which is a film about the public and charter schooling systems in the United States.  Director and documentarian Davis Guggenheim portrays a frightening picture of the United States public school systems and their currently failing conditions through interviews with students, teachers, and parents.  The movie is in few ways uplifting and in many ways bleak, getting the point across that the current system is not working and needs a drastic change.  This change comes in the form of charter school systems and the fully encompassing academic life they offer.

Personally there is something oddly bias to me about Guggenheim's treatment of the charter schools he displays in the movie.   Yes the practices they have are impressive and have shown the results that are needed, but after watching I felt that he told me that the charter schools were the only way to save our nations public schooling systems.  I'm not sure if others felt that way, but I did.  Here's a trailer (to get you interested if you don't have Netflix).

Waiting for "Superman" trailer, Youtube.com

It's a Funny Thing

Humor is a very human construct.  Something that can change our attitudes so quickly from negative to positive.  Something that can make us forget, even for an instant, about the unfortunate things in life.  Humor is an incredibly positive thing to me.  I've always attempted to place humor in my work, even if only a bit.  Something to crack a smile in the viewer, to get a laugh out of the audience.  I find that it helps in the understanding of artwork when a positive set of emotions is evoked.  I'm not trying to say that artwork made to evoke negative emotions is bad, I just personally enjoy the positive set more.  So with that in mind I do believe it would be best to, as I do with my art, use humor in the classroom.

Now here's what I find funny.  If you type "humor in the classroom" into a search engine you are given approximately 12,000,000 results.  Each of these results is an article or paper or instance of humor in the classroom.  So there is no shortage of precedent on the positive impact when you crack a joke in your lectures.  Though really the important part is what the best way would be to include humor in the classroom.  I'm thinking a mix of not being so serious and adding humor as a main topic in my lesson plans.  I've got time to really work the kinks out, so no real pressure on that.  I think I'm a humorous kind of guy, though it could be that people are laughing at me and not with me.  Yay, just made myself really self-conscious.

I leave you with some comedy. 

"Humor" search first image through google images as of 12/2/12

The Sound of a Teahing Tool

So the other day I was going around on Netflix and saw a movie that I had previously heard about around the internet.  The movie is titled The Sound of Noise and is an artful Swedish/French crime comedy about a group of anarchist percussionists generating musical chaos.  The only person that can stop them?  A tone deaf police officer from a family of musicians that heads an anti-terrorist group for the city.  Below is the trailer.

Sound of Noise Trailer from YouTube

Now there is a reason why I placed this here on an art education blog, other than the fact that I love movies and this is a very fun and fantastically acted movie.  The 6 anarchist musicians find new ways to use everyday objects and produce music.  I think showing this to a class and having a group discussion on the translation of the ideas presented into aspects of art making would make for a fun lesson plan.  Also, music is art.  So there you go.

The Dust Has Settled and the Stuffing is Still Good

It's been a week today since The Happy Holiday Potluck, or Thanksgiving, and I still have a good amount of turkey and such left to snack on for whatever meal I feel like eating a foul for.  This post is not about that holiday, this is about what came after.  By that I mean BND, or for those who may not know it Buy Nothing Day.  Now why, you ask, do I celebrate BND?  Well, this is why.

Video from YouTube

 

A massive swarm of people getting into physical confrontation over a phone.  A.  Phone.  I used to think of Black Friday as People Watchers' Holiday.  I'd go to a mall with some of my friends, grab something to eat in the food court and walk around just watching the people.  Every year I saw the same thing and every year I just got tired of it.  So now I don't buy anything on Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, or whatever other special day is made up with insane mindblowingly good deals that are only once, twice, three times a year.  I especially do not enjoy the fact that it has been slowly creeping closer and closer into the Thursday of HHP.  I lost where I was going with this... OH, okay.  Black Friday: Bad.  Consumerism on the borderline of rampage: Bad.  Turkey: Good.  Stuffing: Great.  Cranberry Sauce: Awesome.

It's not always going to be about art and art related education, sometimes you just have to say something.

It's Just That Easy

I recently talked with a friend about practical applications of printmaking in a high school art education class room.  She told me how she was taught printmaking in high school in a very practical way; Rubber stamp carvings.  Now I was never taught printmaking in any of my art classes prior to college, but I do remember the idea being brought up to me at some point.  That idea being forgotten before the conversation with my friend.

So looking around I found a really fun lesson plan, fun AND thorough, that goes through an easy way to teach printmaking in the class room with rubber stamps.  Practical and effective, gotta love it.

Sometimes You Just Have To...

Struggle

The above link provides an interesting article from NPR about how Eastern and Western cultures tackle learning.  It opens with a story explaining that other cultures instill a sense of struggle leading to greater accomplishments in their students.  With their system struggle is seen as an indicator of passion and persistence, while struggle in our system is seen as a lack of intelligence.  Many people in our culture believe intelligence to be an inherited gift, something that is already within us that must be tapped and used.  Other cultures see intelligence as earned through hard work and the ability to overcome difficulty.

I've always seen intelligence as defined by the latter understanding written above.  Struggle is in no means an indicator of the lack of intelligence.  I find that when one struggles for a project, test, or what-have-you the end result is usually more emotionally charged and meaningful.  The gratification of the finished work is also much more uplifting to the individual.  This was something accomplished through hard work and determination.  With the increasingly negative view of initial failure our society has become one that fears struggle out of a deeper fear of failure.  It is not a bad thing to fail, it is only a bad thing when you fail and do not learn from that failure.

Just Gonna Make That Happy Little Tree Move

A form of sequential art that I've never really explored as a teaching method is animation.  Which is surprising, as one of my college classes at the University of Michigan was about classic forms of animation.  These classic forms consisted of zoetropes (spinning cylinder), kineographs (flip books), and thaumatropes (those spinning bird in cage things).  Each of these would be a fantastic project to develop a lesson plan around.

The zoetrope uses a series a strips of sequential images that can be placed in a large spinning cylinder with a series of measured openings cut into it.  You spin the cylinder and look through the slits at a certain angle to watch the sequential strip move.  The speed of the image is controlled directly by the spinning speed of the barrel.  The most classic of these is the running horse zoetrope, created in 1834 by William George Horner when he created the very first zoetrope.

 Image from Wikipedia

The kineograph, or flip book as it is more commonly known, is one of the most basic forms of animation.  Sequential images presented in a book usually in wide paged format to give a good grip on the edge and flip the book to watch the images change and move.  Usually depending on how drastic the movement there is a certain speed in which you have to flip the book.  The first kineograph was created and patented in 1868 by John Barnes Linnett.

Image from Wikipedia

 

The thaumatrope is a piece of paper or canvas or other, usually small in scale, that has two separate images on each side.  There are ropes or string attached to the sides, or some other device used to twirl the paper, that is used to spin the images.  Each image is horizontally opposite the other so that when the images spin each can be seen in their current orientation.  As the thaumatrope is spun faster and faster the two images merge into a single one.  Easiest example would be a bird on one side and a cage on the other.  The thaumatrope's spinning generates a single image of a bird in a cage.

Image from Wikipedia

 

Each of these classic styles of animation can be used to explore art, from craft creation to critical problem solving.  And hey, once you complete the assignment you have a fun piece of art that is interactive.

A Storm Has Come

So I'm a little late to reacting to this whole Art Prize thing, but being an artists myself with views on popular art in our modern age I thought I head on down and give it a look.  See what the popular pieces are and compare them to what I like.  I'll be back on Saturday with more for this post.

Well, that's a few days late, oh well.  I wasn't able to see as much of this years entries on the more fringe display areas of the city, but I was able to see a good amount within the "main" venues, the art within The Bob courtyard and the UICA.

As expected the art housed in The Bob courtyard was spectacle, large works of metal, craft, paint, and surprisingly illustration that went more for first glance impression than thought provoking meaning.  There was a large piece using a series of portraits that were hung at various heights and distances that all combined to make a larger work of art that was interesting.  As well as a medium size wood sculpture that at first glance seemed like a technically well thought out work, but then you got close and noticed the incredibly detailed carving work in the piece, making in actuality this  massive composition.  Also there was this giant and I mean GIANT 25 cent prize machine, which I loved just because I love that sort of stuff, also made a composition myself that was much smaller with the same statement involved.  It was fun to see what could have been had I the financial backing at the time.

The UICA had a good deal of smaller pieces, really they were more medium in scale, human sized and a little larger, that had deeper thought placed into them.  I liked this venue more, a better place to enjoy the pieces and not be too crowded by the citizen art viewer.  There was a collection of wood cut pieces and found object art that were all collected into this large hallway forming city of sorts.  This pieces intrigued me and if I had the money I would have bought one right there on the spot.  I enjoyed the work that much.

I wasn't able to see Elephant Drawings, the winner of this year, but I did see some other "Top 10" entries and I am glad that it won the popular vote.  Yes it is itself a spectacle piece, an 8 by 35 foot carbon pencil on paper drawing depicting a herd of elephants, a family of chimps/monkeys/gorillas, and other assorted creatures, but the piece was a year and a half of this artists life, and depicts such within the composition.  Several fantasy elements have been involved with the work and much of the imaginative additions having much deeper meaning.  I do enjoy when so called "drawings" win larger art competitions like this because the general populous views drawing and illustration as doodles and pre-work for "higher classed" forms of art.  With such victories the general reaction shifts more and more.  Below is an image of the winning piece.

"Elephants" by artist Adonna Khare

 

It Can All be Done in Three Panels, or More!

I've always wanted to incorporate the use of comics and graphic novels into teaching the arts.  I think utilizing creative writing and mixing it with illustration can produce some interesting lesson plans and fun creative problems to solve.  It's mainly about my love of comics and graphic novels and wishing to share them with more people but it's also about helping people understand how much the media needs to grow away from what has become the status quo of popular comics today.

Now to my surprise I discovered this website of a teacher who has been using comics as teaching aids in his art classes since 2002.  The teacher's name is Jeff Sharpe and he decided to combine his love for reading and creating comics with his love for teaching to help in his students' education.

The site, located here, has a plethora of tools and lessons to help a teacher wishing to explore comics with their students in the art classroom.

It is nice to see that someone with a passion for comics went out of their way to help spread teaching comics in the art classroom. 

Caesar by Jeff Sharpe

 

The Begining is the End is the Begining

I've never been one for blogging.  Sharing one's private information with the faceless masses behind the fourth wall always seemed like a needless task to me.  This, however, seems right.  A place to share information not so much about private drivel (there may be some, at this point I am unsure) but about what I think is most important in the teaching of art. 

Will I be doing this simply for a grade in my Art Education class?  Perhaps, I've never acclimated well to that which is the Blogosphere outside of assigned posting.  I can promise one thing, though, I will welcome this more than previous attempts to record my thoughts and send them out to the masses.  Let's just see where this goes.