BP16_2009102_ActionResearchPost

Monday, October 12, 2009

October Action Research Blog Entry

What is your official problem statement?

In working through an answer to what my official problem statement (same as purpose statement?) would be, I began to list out my concerns as recommended in You and Your Action Research Project (McNiff, Lomax & Whitehead, 2003).

I have created several websites which are for use in teaching or learning art. They are rather outdated and do not use ANY Web 2.0 applications at this point. There are PowerPoint presentations (which some computer browsers cannot access), Web Scavenger Hunts, a few online quizzes and vocabulary crossword puzzles -- all created several years ago.

In my experience, there are a number of art teachers who resist using technology at all in their classes. Their lesson plans and activities, while being very good, traditional art instruction are not really moving into the digital age. My own teaching websites follow this same traditional model.

Some of my concerns regarding it were:

a) that my lessons are not addressing the needs of art educators regarding what they feel they need to teach about art.


b)that students may not be getting the kind of art education that will be of benefit to them throughout their lives.


c)that I offer the fundamentals of what students need in art education in order to have useful core knowledge to apply in many, many useful ways and to make their lives more enriched and fulfilling.


What I finally came up with as a problem statement was this.

Problem Statement

The concept of a visual education or an art education has morphed in recent years as a result, at least in part, to the incredible advances made in technology. Art education is not just for artists or art critics or consumers of art. An understanding of the visual is a vital component part of understanding the communications all around us in this age, and in being able to participate more fully in those communications.

Many middle and high school art programs have not moved toward incorporating technology into the curricula, much less embracing it as part of the curricula.

The intent of this project is to use the lens of relevance and address what students of art need to learn for tomorrow in a teaching site for ceramics.

Additionally, I will make modifications to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies to enhance learning, attempting to do this in such a way that it is simple to use and encourages more teachers to incorporate more technology into their teaching.

How did your research end up shaping this?

The books and articles that I have been reading on instructional design, on incorporating technology into the art classroom, on Web 2.0 tools have opened my eyes to the very different viewpoint that the generation of children today have. They take instant communication, instant knowledge for granted.

The research that I have done up to this point has pressed home the point that more than having more and more data poured into them, students need to be able to find information, understand it, apply it and create with it. They need to understand that there is no one right answer to every question. Much of this and more, I had felt to be true, but this program and my research has validated it.

What outcomes are you expecting?

If I can make the changes to the ceramics teaching site in such a way that it remains easy to use and my explanations and tools are easy for teachers to understand and use in the classroom to good result, then I expect that more teachers will begin to use it and that there will be parts that other ceramics teachers will begin to contribute to through the use of wikis and other tools. This is very exciting to me.

How are your critical friends helping in this process?

So far, the help has been in encouragement, in listening, in helping me to understand something better by giving a viewpoint. I need to begin to work more with my critical friends as the little bit of input from them has been very valuable to me.

How is this month’s course helping shape your ARP?

Before this course, I had very little idea of the Web 2.0 tools out there. Now, I am very excited about them and would like to have more time to explore the many uses to which they can be put. For example, it had never occurred to me before to put a wiki on my site, but that would be perfect. The contribution of other ceramic artists would be very valuable. My weaknesses would be strengthened and it would be of even more value to those who contributed.

Additionally, the use by students of the social networking tools and personal learning environments opens the door to many possibilities in art that I have only just begun to explore.

Photograph property of the author, Kerry Marquis

References

McNiff, J., Lomax, P. & Whitehead, J. (2003). You and your action research project. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

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