Bill Gates on creating great teachers

Some good statistics here and definitely a good message. I am in agreement.

BP15_2009103_ReflectiveMediaAsset_Animoto

Animoto for Student Art Presentations

Video created by Kerry Marquis using Screenflow and Animoto.
Painting by Kerry Marquis.
Photographic images retrieved from Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannonlite/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristavandervoorden/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apropl/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizdale/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizdale/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

BP14_2009103_ArtisanCam

ArtisanCam

http://www.artisancam.org

I must have looked at and explored 20 or 30 new Web 2.0 tools today alone. I was not going to just select something at randome. I wanted something that really got me and I found it. It’s not a wiki or a blogger or a personal learning environment, but it is something that I would find quite useful as an art teacher.

Artisancam is a website that allows students to explore art “hands-on.” It is actually a collections of little software programs, videos and images that students can use to learn about all sorts of art forms, art careers, art techniques and art media from  jewelry making to pottery to painting. It was quite obviously developed in Britain as the artists and narrators in the interviews and videos have British accents.

I find this a very useful site, as students can do the activities as precursors to the actual art activity, then the demonstration that I do as the teacher or the instructions that I give make more sense as students have a context for them. Also, students could visit this site when completing early from a project and get exposed to many different art forms. In my district, I only have my elementary school students for 40 minutes a week. In this amount of time, it is difficult to expose students to all of the skills, activities, media and art adventures that I would like. Sometimes, really skilled students complete work early, or students who are not skilled complete early. This site could enrich that time during class when they are finished and others are not.

One of the activities was a weaving activity, demonstrated by an artist. I had been looking for a weaving activity that could be done by my students and this one was perfect. There are a number of steps to the project. By having those steps in a video format that students can simply scroll through, students who need to see the steps more than once or who need to see them at different times, can do so. The artist had also posted some examples of her work which were so good, that they would inspire students, I am sure.

This site will become a useful and used resource in my toolkit!


Credits:
Video created by the author and posted on YouTube.

BP13_2009103_ResponsetoClassmate

Micheline said:

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Web 2.0 tools #2_http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

This web 2.0 tools is hosted by the New York Zoos and Aquarium which includes: The Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, Queens Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo, and The New York Aquarium. The intended audience is children however I think any adult using this page would have fun at least one time. The purpose of this site is to promote literacy, provide information about animals, identify anatomy, as well as encouraging play and creativity.

The page opens and the user is prompted to make several selections to “build your wild self.” Get started by inserting your name on the template and selecting gender and skin tone. A blank body will appear and then the user must continue adding parts. Each time you make a selection the user gets to hear a funny noise, which usually identifies the animal the part came from. This feature can be turned down. Once your creature is complete press I am done and the learning begins. The user is now redirected to a page that provides information about each animal part that they have selected. The image can be saved, printed, and emailed.

This tool has many applications for the classroom. Literacy is a main goal in many school districts. This could be used as a reading activity that would then be followed with a writing assignment.Students could make up a short story about the creature they have become. The fun part is that the creature can be printed out for an illustration. Students could share their stories with the class to practice reading out load.

There are also applications with science. The web tool is sponsored by the NY zoo system and includes links to each zoo. This site can be used as an introduction to animal classification or a pre-zoo visit. When the student is building their creature they are learning anatomy by identifying different body parts and where they should be.A more creative focus for an art teacher would be to I am an first have students “build their wild self” on this site to warm up and practice and follow up by asking them to draw or sculpt a creature in a similar concept.

My response:

Micheline, I like this application. I went to the site and created on, too. It was very cute; both of my teenage children were over beside me before I had been on the site for 2 minutes. I can see that this one would be very engaging. I currently do an art lesson in which students create a character (we reinforce ideas of fiction, characters, writing), make up a name for the character and write a short story about it. This takes about 3 classes to do, then another part of a class to tell some of our stories. This would be a wonderful way to do a similar lesson, maybe starting out with a Maurice Sendak story. We often start or finish a lesson with a book in the early grades. I do this one with first through third and sometimes fourth.

The information in the sidebar about each animal is written on about a second or third grade level; that’s appropriate also.

Once a student is done, there is an option to send a copy to a friend. A picture of the creature is sent. I sent mine to myself and copied the pic; I will paste it in my blog. A student also has the option of printing his or her picture. This is a quite nice little software program for using with elementary students and I plan on using it.

BP12_2009103_Animoto

Animoto

Animoto is a presentation software that takes photograph and turns them into a video presentation set to music. I tried it out here with a few pictures of my children from years ago. It took me about five minutes to upload 12 videos, select music from some offered on the site and click the button to create the video. Wow! I was impressed! I really liked the video that was created. It looked like something that you might create with iMovie and stills if you really know how to use the various transitions and such. Here’s the one that I created here.


For 30-second video clips, the application is free. If longer videos are wanted, there is a fee.

What I like about this application is that creating the presentation doesn’t involve learning a lot of technical procedures. In an elementary or middle school art class, students could use this in several ways.

One would be for the student to write a short poem, then pick out 10 or 12 images to illustrate the poem. The selection process of images would be what the lesson would focus on; the uploading them to the Animoto site is simple and quick. The point could be read into GarageBand with a musical background and exported as an mp3 file, then uploaded to be put with the images. This lesson could be modified for different ability levels pretty easily.

Another use would be for a student to do an autobiography, selecting pictures and artworks from different ages, as well as other autobiographical images. The student would then select the music and hit the button to create.

Students could create 30-second video portfolios of work that was done that year and set it to a brief spoken bio or artist’s statement and uploaded to a website. Just off of the top of my head, I can think of many variations to these projects in which the learning is in the selection and decision-making process, not the learning of the technical skills. Often we put so much emphasis on the technical skills part that we neglect to work with students on the “heart” of art making as much as we might. I think that this tool offers the opportunity to do this. 

Credits:
Photograph is property of the author.  © All rights reserved.
Movie is property of the author. 

BP11_2009103_Pencil

Pencil

Pencil is a 2d animation, open source, cross platform free software program. It is simple to use and there are plenty of videos on how to get started. It just seems perfect for beginning animators in the art class. It is easily downloaded onto a computer and students who have ever used even a “paint” program on a computer can learn it right away. The task of drawing each image over and over in order to create the movement in the animation is wonderful practice for drawing skills. Students from about fourth grade and up would be absolutely delighted with this activity.

In my fifth grade art classes, I recently asked how many students like to doodle. All hands went up. We went on to talk about doodling creatures and continued on a project in which they turned their “doodle creatures” into a surreal painting. They turned out great. I can see that these students would be totally engaged in making an animation using their scanned in surreal paintings.

This is a wonderful tutorial that was done by a young person on using Pencil. It is easy for follow and is very charmingly done.

Once the animation is made, it can be exported as a sequence of PNG images, or as a Flash movie or a QuickTime movie. Then the movie can be shared on the web. Wow! Instant animator. These can then be viewed and a class critique done OR, if we have blogging set up or portfolios on Flickr, students can post their critiques in the comments.

This “pencil” art lesson can not only help students better drawing skills, but also can include art history, with surrealist painters, animation artists such as Disney and more recent filmmakers and animators.

The drawback is that there may be problems getting permissions to download the software or posting the videos on the web. I believe that these could be managed. The software IS free and open source. If permissions cannot be gotten to upload to the web, the movies can be copied to a folder on the server accessed from the school computers and students can view them that way. I believe that I will find a way to use this one!

Credits

Photo obtained via Flickr. Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/hownowdesign/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

BP10_2009102_FavoriteWeb2.0App

XTimeline
Here's an application that I feel could be used very effectively in education!

BP9_2009102_FlickrLessonPlans

Art Lesson Plans Using "Flickr"

I did a search on “lesson plans,” “Flickr” and “art,” but only came up with a couple using flickr as an online gallery and critique tool. These are great uses for it, actually. Students upload their work into their own Flickr site, then share their best work with the class group. Students can then write about their own pieces and the rest of the class can read this. This can lead into a critique in which students share ideas. Better art, or at least more reflection, grows out of this. In fact, it was just in September of this month that Flickr “announced a new feature they're simply calling "galleries." Using Flickr's galleries option, anyone can assemble a gallery of up to eighteen images. You can arrange galleries around a theme or idea and add your own commentary about the collection. Galleries can be made from images you've uploaded to Flickr or you can use public images found on Flickr” (Byrne, 2009, n.p.). Pretty handy for us art teachers!

Another art teacher pointed out that searching the tags “color wheel” brings up many interesting color wheels (such as the one above) for use in the classroom.

An idea that hit me as a VERY convenient use, is to have art students search through photographs on Flickr to find good examples of the elements and principles of art in the photos. I have done some of this in the past with magazines, but it is not a very efficient way to work. This could be done easily, with students creating “sets” for the concept that he or she is representing. It would be quite easy for the art teacher to see who was “getting it” and who was not as they worked. Or it could be done as a class project that the teacher views afterward. Good examples could be viewed as a class in a slide show to reinforce the concept before an application activity.

References

Byrne, R. (2009, Jeptember 15). Flickr galleries – Art students curate collections. Blog posted to Free Technology for Teachers: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/09/flickr-galleries-art-students-curate.html

Image obtained via Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/23888999@N04/ / CC BY 2.0

BP8_2009102_CommentOnPatriciaMarcinoBlog

Post from Trisch Marcino’s Blog

YouTube is free. With YouTube, you can upload movies created in the classroom with digital cameras, web cams or even create a slide presentation and incorporate music from programs such as Garage band. It has many capabilities. There again, will your school districts allow YouTube? I have loaded YouTube movies onto a flash drive and shown them to my students, totally educational, of course. It is a great way for students to see what other students are doing around the world. I think the possibilities are endless for using this Web 2.0 tool in the classroom. Maybe you are having a little difficulty getting a particular point across in your lesson plan. You could create a slide show, or a movie explaining that point. Since most students are visual learners, and, they like movies, you will be able to demonstrate the point visually. I want to create something that will demonstrate mean, median and mode to my students. I was shocked yesterday when half of my class failed a math test covering this content! I suggested to the math teacher and the math coach that perhaps we could create a slide show or movie that would explain it in graphic animated detail. They jumped at the idea, so that's what we are working on next week. I'll let you know how it works.

Comments

I loved the idea of creating something to demonstrate mean, median and mode! I think that including real world examples of using those concepts that the students can relate to will give it the relevance that they need to even want to know. I would be very interested in seeing your video when you are done! I'm sure it will be fabulous.

BP7_2009102_Web2.0-TimelineCreation

Timeline Creation Applications

www.Timetoast.com

After viewing and trying out several timeline creation applications, I settled on using the Timetoast timeline. With it, timelines with images and texts are easily created and can be embedded into blogs or webpages.

Personally, I have always loved timelines. They give a visual way of understanding that action progression that we call time. For classes or for personal uses, I can see many possibilities. There is the traditional one of the teacher creating a timeline in order to give information to students, but better, I think, is to teach the very simple process of using the application to the students themselves and have them create timelines. In fact, different data sheets could be given to students to research and put into timelines, then students could collaborate on a theme and present it. 

This video gives a quick overview of how to use Timetoast and from it you can see that it is so simple that it can be mastered in a matter of minutes.

This video was created by RadfordEducation.

Here is an example of how it could be used in art class. In a photography class, one group of students could be given the assignment of creating a timeline of the early development of photography and and present it to the class, then another group could be given the assignment of correlating that to historical events happening during the same time period.

Another use in art class would be for a student to do a personal history, using old photographs and childhood art to depict his own personal artistic development or personal history. This could be an artwork in itself.

A use that I might have is to embed timelines relevant to the period of art being discussed on a webpage for students to view if interested.

However it is used, I believe that I will find this application simple, quick to use and very often used by myself or my students.

BP6_2009102_Web2.0_OnlineMovieEditing

Online Video Editing and Sharing Application: Pixorial

I found an interesting video editing and sharing application called Pixorial. Although I was looking for educational uses, when I came across this one, I was excited for personal reasons. Using this application, you can not only edit movie files that you have uploaded, you can send in all sorts of old movie files and they will digitalize them FOR you and put them on your site for 60 days for free. Yes, I had personally been looking for something like this for the old 8 mm film that my family had started taking of our family for about 47 years! I have about 40 small reels in addition to the more recent videotapes. What fun I could have editing and making DVDs for my family!!

But what educational uses can we make of this application? Well, that’s kind of exciting, too. Just a couple of uses that I thought of as an art educator were video of critiques. A ceramics piece is 3-dimensional, so a flat photo never really does it justice, but with video, the piece could be shown, handled and looked at from all angles. A critique in one class could be done, then done in each ceramics class on the same piece. Those videos could then be uploaded to the pixorial account and, even better, shared. The classes could collaborate on the editing of the video! Or each class can edit its own from the same footage.

Many versions of this could be done. Students could create videos of how to achieve special glaze effects. A student could create a special journal entry using pixorial and share it as part of a portfolio. And these are just ideas of how it could be used in the ceramics courseroom, by students.

As a teacher, I would love to do the more traditional how-to videos on basic techniques. Ahhhh, the time it would save. As the video played, I could walk around the room working individually with students, stopping and starting as necessary. Students who were absent that day could watch the video on a make-up day or after school. Or the videos could be shared on my teaching site!

This is exciting, too, because no software is required and it is VERY simple to use.

Needless to say, I signed up immediately and sent off for an envelope to ship all of my film there in! Soon, my class and I will be stars!

Permission to use the above photograph given via Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/26474431@N00/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

BP5_2009102_Web2.0_Issuu.com

Web 2.0 Tools: Self Publishing

Two publishing Web 2.0 tools which will complement each other for me are found at http://issuu.com and at www.wordclay.com.

At Issuu.com, you can view publications, upload owned online publications for storing and organizing, and upload your own online publications for storage, organizing or sharing. Two uses that I will make for this site right away will be in organizing my research reading library (this will not be share due to copyright issues) and creating a publication of my own as a companion to my teaching site.

A video  here gives a bit of an overview of uses for what is called the “library.”

I realized that this would be perfect for the organization of my resources for my own action research project as I could have all of these in one place online and organized in my own way, available at the touch of a button. I found it to be very visual in organization which suits my own learning style perfectly AND it is easily changed as my project develops.

I can even keep my own writings here, organized in the same manner. For me, this is a perfect tool for this project.

Additionally, my action research project involves re-creating all or a portion of a teaching website that I currently have published online. Several users have requested components such as a teacher handbook, answer keys to activities and a student workbook to go with the digital site. Issuu.com can be my tool for creating these components.

Another publishing tool that I consider a Web 2.0 tool, though it may not meet all qualifications as such is Wordclay. This is a self-publishing tool with which physical books can be made and published. My use for this will be to self-publish the above mentioned teacher handbook, answer keys to activities and student workbook to go with my digital site and these can be printed on demand for those teachers who would like to have them. Here’s the link.

I can imaging that these could be very valuable tools to other teachers, also. Check them out!

Media Literacy

Media Literacy

As I was researching media literacy, I realized that it can be viewed in various ways. The following definitions came from the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE):

Media refers to all electronic or digital means and print or artistic visuals used to transmit messages.

Literacy is the ability to encode and decode symbols and to synthesize and analyze messages.

Media literacy is the ability to encode and decode the symbols transmitted via media and the ability to synthesize, analyze and produce mediated messages.

Media education is the study of media, including ‘hands on' experiences and media production.

Media literacy education is the educational field dedicated to teaching the skills associated with media literacy.

Within North America, media literacy is seen to consist of a series of communication competencies, including the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, and COMMUNICATE information in a variety of forms, including print and non-print messages. (National Association for Media Literacy Education [NAMLE], 2008, n.p.)

One viewpoint is that people should be able to correctly “read” media. The idea is that media can be propaganda and can negatively influence children and that this is a concern for educators to address as demonstrated in the following quotes:

The longstanding and widespread argu­ment used by media literacy educators—about the need for education to be relevant to the lived cultural experience of students with mass media and popular culture—seems to have lost its prominence as educa­tors seek something which is simultaneously more basic and more challenging: to bring online tech­nology tools into classroom to harness their use for socially-connected (or participatory) learning” (Hobbs & Jenson, 2009, p. 5).

Quite a bit of hype has been perpetuated among the legion of advocates, telling us that chil­dren and teens are actively creating content online by sharing their writing, video, music, and photography. But what is the reality? Sadly, neither creation nor sharing is randomly distributed among a diverse group of young adults, since creative activity is related to similar factors as it was in previous times: a person’s socioeconomic status.” (Hobbs & Jenson, 2009, p. 5).

A video from the Center for Media Literacy (2008) web site, "Media Literacy, Education & Choice," very clearly states this argument for acquiring and teaching the skill to "read" media so as not to be unknowingly swayed toward prejudice or unreasonably sold on bad ideas. In the video, Tessa Jolls, the President for the Center for Media Literacy explains the "five core questions of media literacy".

Media Literacy, Education & Choice

The other side of the coin is that students should be taught to create and develop media also. Michael Wesch's (2008) "A Portal to Media Literacy" presents an excellent demonstration of using a "portal that we play withthat is designed to bring students together, to get them working together in new ways, in ways that actually allow them to explore new media while actually using new media to learn about the subject." The video is long, but gives a beautiful and clear explanation of the differences between education ideas in yesteryear and the possible influence of new media on education today and well worth watching. Also, he defines the "meaning" and shows two different definitions as they relate to meaningful connection and creating what he calls "significance" in learning. Very relevant for teachers who want to truly educate.

A Portal to Media Literacy

Both sides of media literacy are important, relevant and necessary in education today. The question that it raises is how will we do it?

Credits

Photo used with permission of http://www.flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

References

Center for Media Literacy. (2008). Media literacy, education & choice: CML's Tessa Jolls explains the five key questions [web video post]. Media Education Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article709.html

Hobbs, R. & Jensen, A. (2009). The past, present, and future of media literacy education. Journal of Media Literacy Education. 1, 1-11.

National Association for Media Literacy Education. (2008). Media literacy: Definitions. Retrieved from http://www.amlainfo.org/media-literacy/definitions

Wesch, M. (2008, June 17). Lecture presented at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

BP4_2009102_EducationalUsesforBookmarking

Uses for Social Bookmarking in Art Education

Illustration above is a screenshot of a bookmarking page.

Definitions [bold letters added by me]:

• "The term 'Web 2.0' refers to the next generation of Internet applications that allow (even encourage) the average Internet user to collaborate and share information online" (Thompson, 2008, p. 711).
• "Social bookmarking or tagging is the process of assigning and sharing among users, freely selected terms to resources. This approach is a form of user-generated metadata and allows users to locate new resources through the collective intelligence of other users" ((Chei Sian, Dion Hoe-Lian, Khasfariyati & Alton, 2009, p. 1).
• "Delicious is a social bookmarking site that allows a user (or a group of users on one account) to add meaningful labels that describe the content of Web sites. These labels are commonly called 'tags,' and the process is called 'tagging'" (Buffington, 2008a, p. 307).

For teachers, social bookmarking sites are a convenient and useful way of organizing online resources for lesson planning, teaching and research. It is especially convenient because the bookmarks to sites are located on line and are accessible to any computer with Internet access.

For students, a classroom bookmarking site can be used by a class of students to compile sites which relate to what students are studying, thus documenting the learning process. Art teachers can use social bookmarking such as del.ico.us for teaching students art vocabulary, having students work out appropriate tagging relating to art terms such as the elements and principles of art (Buffington, 2008b). "A teacher could show an image to the class and the students could discuss possible terms to use to 'tag' the image" (p. 38).

Thompson (2008) illustrates how one high school science department has made the social bookmarking site, del.ico.us. Teachers in the department have a commons site in which they all collect and "tag" sites related to curricula, collaboratively giving all science teachers access to a very applicable resource. Art departments can create similar sites for district teachers to use and contribute to, correlating links to district art curricula.

Forbes (2004) gives some great examples demonstrating the usefulness across the k-8 curriculum particularly in supporting reading instruction. One great point that she makes is that "[b]ecause all links are previewed before being made available to students, safety on the internet is improved" (p. 149). This is important with internet safety being a high priority with parents, administrators and teachers.

Definition:

• Walker (2007) describes teaching in artmaking with big ideas as "the use of big ideas of human concern such as identity, relationships, humans and nature, power, change, conflict, and so forth as a central focus for artmaking" (p. 190).

Another use suggested by Buffington (2008) is to use social bookmarking as a way of structuring searches related the "big idea" that students are working on. She gives and excellent example in the article, Creating and Consuming WEb 2.0 in Art Education.

To sum up, there are numerous ways that social bookmarking can be used in art education. These are just a few.

References

Buffington, M. (2008). Creating and consuming Web 2.0 in art education. Computers in the Schools, 25(3/4), 303-313.

Buffington, M. (2008). What is Web 2.0 and how can It further art education?. Art Education, 61(3), 36-41.

Chei Sian, L., Dion Hoe-Lian, G., Khasfariyati, R., & Alton Y. K., C. (2009). Tagging, sharing and the influence of personal experience. JODI: Journal of Digital Information, 10(1), 6.

Forbes, L. (2004). Using Web-based bookmarks in k-8 settings: Linking the Internet to instruction. Reading Teacher, 58(2), 148-153.

Thompson, J. (2008). Don't be afraid to explore Web 2.0. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(10), 711-778.

Walker, S. (2006). How shall we teach? Rethinking artmaking instruction. Teaching Artist Journal, 4(3), 190-197.

ETC Page

Pretty useful page in iGoogle.

AR/CBL Page

Whee! I finally figured out how to edit this so that MY delicious came up. Actually pretty simple.

Home or What's Going On Page

Okay, here's my iGoogle Home (WGO, but I like "Home" better) page.

BP3_2009101_GoogleReader

The RSS Feeds that I Chose from My Google Reader

I am an art teacher and an artist. From actually living the life of an art educator, I know how little time there is to actually be a practicing artist. Researching curriculum, writing lesson plans, ordering supplies, preparing and setting up materials, organizing and inventorying and keeping all of the supplies in order, working on all of the administrative paperwork (usually digitally), there is very little time left over for actually practicing art. About seven years ago, I began to create a website with the idea of organizing my lesson plans and embellishing them with just a bit of technology. This developed into a way of sharing with other teachers.

Now, I see that I can improve my own instruction and share that via my teaching sites with other art teachers. Hopefully, this will have a positive impact on their teaching AND free up some time to invest in their own artistic endeavors. Following are 5 RSS feeds to which I have subscribed:

1. One art educator whose web presence I have followed for over 7 years is Craig Roland. Dr. Roland is an art education professor at University of Florida in Gainesville and created the site, Art Junction. His blog, located on that site, is “The Art Teacher’s Guide to the Internet” (http://artjunction.org/blog/).
2. I have also used Academic Search Premier to subscribe to all articles that Dr. Roland gets published in academic journals. It seems he writes regularly for School Arts and I now have access to all of those articles. I admire and respect his work as an art educator and see him as a mentor in the field of art education. Keeping up with Craig Roland directly benefits my profession as his areas of expertise are my areas of interest.
3. Additionally, I subscribed to Education World: Technology Integration (http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/). Education World is an online magazine for educators containing articles, lesson plans and reviews. The magazine once did a review on one of my sites that led to many more educators being exposed to the site. Following the magazine will show me what my peers are doing and using in the classroom. From this I can speculate how I can create my site in order to address what teachers see as needs.
4. Dr. Deason’s Instructional Design Network (http://drdeason.blip.tv/) is a regular podcast with loads of information on different components of instruction. I felt that I was only able to touch upon the subject while taking his class and that he has much to offer. This way I can quickly see what topics his latest podcasts cover and determine which I would like to experience.
5. Another subscription that I started is the Journal of Extension (www.joe.org). This is the journal for “Outreach Educators.” Organizations such as 4-H Club (Head, Heart, Hands, and Health) are considered extension education. As a child, I belonged to the 4-H Club and loved it when we were able to have a meeting. In 4-H, I learned to thread a needle and sew on a button and to make biscuits. I went to 4-H Camp and made crafts and played learning games and learned practical things. These extension education organizations have often been the source of practical, useful knowledge. It occurred to me that public school education could learn something from its format and content. The very usefulness of the programs make them relevant to many. Studying these should give me some great ideas for relevance.

BP2_2009101_Anti-Teaching

Personal Learning Environments and Anti-Teaching

Think about what you have learned about Multiple Intelligences, Brain-Based Learning, and good instructional design. Are virtual learning environments with course management systems the answer? What about PLEs and Web 2.0 tools? Is technology itself enough?

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a digital organizational tool for collecting information for use and research in one place. You can include your emails, blogs, RSS feeds, calendar and loads of other applications so that you have them all together. This can certainly make learning more efficient; the PLE is a time saver. It can be organized according to an individual?s interests or according to a particular theme (Educause Learning Initiative [ELI], 2009).

It certainly does seem to be a wonderful tool for the self-directed learner, but what about the student who just doesn?t seem to be interested in anything but what about the student who did not learn to read well in the early grades and is just drifting on through the grades, perhaps disrupting the class or barely getting by one way or another? Or what about the student who is only interested in video games?

No, I do not believe that technology is enough. I believe that the PLE is a great tool, but there are other more fundamental changes that MUST be made in the way that we educate if we want to reach most students. Michael Wesch (2009) makes the argument for educational change in his article, Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance. He says, ?Students ? our most important critics ? are struggling to find meaning and significance in their education? (p. 5). Wesch gives a wonderful example of how he created interest and helped students find significance in his college level Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class. The PLE would be a great tool to use here and it appears that he DID use what he called "a hacked mix of online social media like wikis, Twitter, Jott, and Facebook" (p. 6). He went on to call these "little more than simple parlour tricks. They make up a rather creative and interesting means of learning, but not a reason for learning. They do not address that most significant problem, the problem of significance" (p. 6).

Based on the assumption that the educational systems as we know them do not work for the vast majority of the students moving through them, what would work? What are the key components you would include in new schools? Pull from your learning and the sources you have already acquired to support your answer. What are the key components for 21st century schools and learning beyond the test?

I agree with Wesch that a PLE is a wonderful means of learning. I can see that I will love using one myself and I will find it a wonderfully valuable tool for use with students, but somehow the underlying relevance must be found for students to have interest in learning. How will this kind of thinking change our schools? One factor that we will need to address is how we can take the learning outside of the walls of the classroom. The classroom is fine for certain practice exercises and learning, for example, first graders practicing their reading or making art. What about other topics like how to shop? Or what does a fireman do? Or how to clean our room? Or how to make lunch? Or why can we not just take what we want from the store? Much of this would be better taught in the actual environment. Perhaps we would have a small fleet of "classroom buses" with a driver/assistant and one third or so of "learning time" would be taught on the go. Once students had a level of literacy and real world research skills AND interest in specific topics, then a student could be taught enough to use a PLE as a research tool. As each student became more self-determined and self disciplined, the student could do quite a bit of learning via a course management system, implementing that learning into an active life just as online students of Full Sail University such as myself are doing now.

I believe that some of the key components for 21st century schools would be:

• Relevance of material to the student at every level
• Great instructional design that includes at least as much training of the body or mind and body as it does the mind
• Use of learned skills in relevant activities on a regular basis,
• Cooperative group activities with training on how to successfully work within a group as well as on individual projects. This might included training in communication skills, manners, personal integrity, logical reasoning, as well as how to run a business or manage a family
• Study and research skills taught and used for all learning which address more than just verbal learning -- [a great resource for this is found on the Applied Scholastics International website: http://www.appliedscholastics.org/ ]
• Instructor as manager/ facilitator, not teacher (this would require a change in the systems in which we train ?teachers? [Teacher training in this type of method is also found on the Applied Scholastics International website in 2 or 3 day workshops or more intensive programs: http://www.appliedscholastics.org/educator_programs.php]
• Incorporating the arts into as many facets as possible such as the use of music in advertising, graphic arts for web design, etc. as well as engendering a love of drama, art, music and all forms or art for the love of aesthetic communication

Students will not be in the same age classes. Different students will be ready for independent research at different times. Classes, if we call them that, will be fluid, with different students moving through and moving on once the skills or material or jobs have been mastered. Wonderful tools like the PLE or other learning skills will be taught and used to address student interests and basic living needs. The Delphian School in Oregon incorporates these ideas and more as does Delphi Academy of Boston. The philosophy of these school can be found on the following links:

http://www.thedelphianschool.org/page.cfm?p=277

http://www.delphiboston.org/our_philosophy.html

There will be more than one way to address these concepts. I would love to hear the ideas of others on the subject as I continue to explore them also.

References

Wesch, M. (2008). Anti-teaching: Confronting the crisis of significance. Education Canada, 48(2) 4-7.

Educause Learning Initiative. (2009, May 12). 7 things you should know about personal learning environments. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf

BP1_2009101_Educational_Uses

Blogging in the Art Classroom

Lately, I have been trying to work out how to get more discussion and reflection on art into the high school ceramics arts curriculum that I am creating. I also have been wondering what new technology would enhance my program. Among the many tools that I am researching, blogging seems to be a good match. There just seems to be so little time allotted for art that my class discussions revolving around aesthetics and art criticism have been few and far between. This seemed a shame because the depth of thought that can go into creation of a fine work of art seemed lacking, though great craftsmanship was there. So I decided to dig through a bit of research to find out what other people were doing. Sure enough, I found some things.

Overby (2009) found that by using blogging with her advanced placement photography students in critiques of student work, it became easier for some students to open up and enter the conversation. This in turn, produced more reflective and thoughtful responses from the artist. Also, the nature of the blog gave students time to think and to respond in ways that would not happen in the classroom.

Overby described the outcome of her pilot activity with blogging in the art classroom this way:

"With artmaking often being a nonlinear process, the blog gave us the ability to post an idea or question that might occur after the classroom conversation ended. Blogging also allowed us to link relevant outside information that related to our artmaking. Students were able to connect influences from news articles, movies, and events in the art world to their work in the classroom. The real proof of the success of the blog came at the end of the semester, when the students turned in their portfolios. Compared to previous years, these students' finished artwork was well- researched and thought-out, with a strong demonstration of critical thinking through their chosen visual problem. The artist statements they included were equally mature. Students could explain and defend their artmaking in a fluid manner reflecting time and thought about their artmaking process" (p.23).

Buffington (2008), in conversation with an art teacher who used blogging with his students in an aesthetics lesson using museum artworks, discovered that not only did the students communicate and respond to each other, the teacher and museum personnel in different ways regarding the art, but they also learned writing skills.

The key would be teaching the relevant technology and techniques (style and format) and giving students good leading questions. I am sure there is more to it than that, but that is where I plan to start in a first trial run.

References

Buffington, M. L. (2008). Creating and consuming web 2.0 in art education. Computers in the schools, 25, 303-313.

Overby, A. (2009). The new conversation: Using weblogs for reflective practice in the studio art classroom. Art education, 62(4), 18-24.