How Art Teacher Blogs Have Changed How I Learn and Teach Visual Art

At the beginning of the year a colleague and myself set a goal for ourselves to meet this school year. We wanted to use a variety of media in our visual arts program. It is easy to fall into the trap of pencil crayon-marker-paper-glue rut, like we had. Boring for us and for the kids.

While we are fortunate to have a Music teacher, we teach our own visual arts. Many teachers in BC have not received training other than a 9 week course during pre-service training and after that we are on our own with the occasional pro-d session. Teachers know how to use the common materials, but I for one didn't know the first thing about watercolour paint or salt dough. I have gotten good ideas from Pro-D sessions, I have used very little in the classroom. Same with the professional books I have bought. Why? I think it is because we either don't have the materials available (what public school stocks watercolor paint and paper? - not mine) or I need more support. The lessons I use most are those that I get from colleagues. I can ask questions (lots if I need to, over the course of many days if needed) and usually the materials are in the school.

Being introduced to blogs and RSS has changed the way I learn about and do visual arts in the classroom. Blogs are interactive which means that I can ask questions about process or materials that I might have - and I do ask questions. With books I can't do this, nor can I with the after Pro-D notes that you often get. An additional bonus of blogs is that they have an archives that I can look though for past lessons and those that use the materials we have on hand.

Now being 2/3 of the way through the school year I have broadened the materials I use in lessons and have had good results. First off, kids love to use materials that they don't often get to use (I don't think my grade level is the only one in the rut). It increases the interest in the lesson and I think the creativity as well. Kids are being encouraged to play with the materials and to problem solve some of the challenges they encounter while using a particular material. Both of which are skills they need in the future.

Secondly, kids who don't do well with the standard crayon-marker-paper-glue do great with some of the other materials. For instance, paint is much faster to use than marker or pencil crayon, so kids who get tired of colouring (and then their colouring gets messy) are less likely to get bored of a particular art project if they can use paint.

Lastly, some of the projects I have used in the past I have used this year but with increased knowledge from reading the blog posts of more experienced art teachers I have tweaked lessons. For instance, I know now that the paper I often had kids pain on was too small. By increasing the paper size, many more kids have experienced success this year.

Below are some of my favourite Art Teacher Blogs. I have also created a bundle of the blogs listed, plus more 10 more, that can be subscribed to if you use google reader.

Deep Space Sparkle

That Artist Woman

Lines, Dots and Doodles

TeachKidsArt

Building My PLN

I have been trying to build my PLN over the past few months. After reading Jeff Utecht's "Reach: Building Communities and Networks for Professional Development" I have been implementing some of his suggestions as to how to build a PLN. Mostly these four:

1) Put a picture of yourself or something that represents you

2) Add your blog address or twitter account to comments.

3) Add to your "About" pages whether Twitter, blogs or other tools

4) Engage in discussion, exchange information

Using these suggestions I have been posting and commenting on Classroom 2.0 and I have been putting more effort into Twitter. I have tweeted trying to drum up some more audience for my class's Storybird stories, retweet and added more people to my 'following' list. In return, I have had some follow me back. Also, I've used Facebook to get some more comments for my student's stories.

Facebook might be my 5th strategy. I think that FB is good for those reluctant to engage in online communities (like me). Using FaceBook as a baby step might be a good forum to 'get your feet wet' in. My FB account includes a mix of friends and colleagues all of whom are supportive of me. I asked for help and I asked for others to comment on my classroom blog and with that success I have been more confident in my attempts to put myself out there. For me it was a good step to becoming a more confident poster/commenter in other forums.

It certainly has been a reach for me. Putting myself out there has not been easy and I've had to force myself to do so. However, I am beginning to see the benefits of doing so. First off, I am seeing benefits for my students. Through my PLN I have encouraged a broader learning community for them. I now have groups of people I can draw upon to view and provide feedback on the work of students. Because of the feedback from others, students are being encouraged to write more and to revise and edit their work more.

Secondly, I am finding blog posts that interest me from people I did not know about on subjects that interest me and in some cases did not know much about, such as reverse instruction.

So, while I find it difficult to reach out I will continue to do so in the future. Now that I have begun actively participating in my PLN and have seen some of the benefits first hand, I feel the need to continue and add to my PLN for my own learning and for that of my students.

Storybird

I have heard of Storybird from a number of sources, so when my class was about to begin writing a story I looked into Storybird further and, for the most part, I liked what I saw.

Advantages:

1) Quick and Easy. Story bird allows teachers to sign up students - no email for student is required. I literally registered myself and students in about 10 minutes. Teachers can set privacy to either keep the stories private so only the class can see them or they can be public and appear on the site. Storybird was easy for students to use and all had success almost immediately. Adding, reordering and deleting pages is done easily and pictures are just dragged and dropped onto the page.

2) Storybird has lots of great artwork from which students can choose to use in their stories. This got student creativity flowing. Not one of them said that they couldn't think of any ideas for their story.

3) Lots of Publishing Options. A copy of the story can be downloaded as a pdf (fee), bought as a book (fee) or embedded on a blog, web page or wiki (for free). I placed published stories on my classroom blog to increase the size of the audience who may view the stories.

4) Great for all abilities. Reluctant writers were asking to write additional stories as was my student who is above grade level. I had kids making Storbirds at home and those who finished the first one during class time asked to write another.

Limitations:

1) Lots of artwork can be a limitation too. If I used Storybird again, I would probably make a limit on the number of characters students could include in their stories. The pictures provide for a lot of choice and as a result the kids chose a lot - too many in some cases and the story became confusing.

2) Unpublished student stories cannot be viewed unless the teacher logs in as the student, as far as I know. I would also like Storybird to include a way for the teacher to monitor student progress on Storybird without having the student publish their work first or without the teacher having to log in as the student to view the unfinished Storybird.

3) Storybird allows for asynchronous writing of stories IF students have email addresses, which mine do not.

View my student's Storybirds on our blog.

What Does it Mean to be Literate in the 21st Century ?

This Century’s graduates are different than those in the past. They are different in the way in which they learn. Prensky, believes that the brains of people who grow up with technology are physically different from those of past generations who did not. As a result they learn differently than past generations. What I know is that how I learnt as a child is not how my daughter is learning, nor my students. Telephones and face to face conversations with other students was the only way to collaborate in my childhood. The major sources I used to find information were books, magazines, newspapers and television. Today, these technologies are being added on to and/or being replaced with google, wikis, instant messenger and email (to name a few students have mentioned to me recently). Students in my room have made Youtube videos, websites, play games and use instant messenger - a lot. Even my four year old has made Photo Booth movies of herself making goofy faces, reading and role playing.

No longer are students passive recipients of a few people’s ideas which are distributed through media. Now students are producers and consumers of media. With this shift it follows that there needs to be a change in the skills that students will need to be literate and a full participant and citizen of the 21st Century. As the Annberg School for communication and Journalism’s New Media article suggests the skills of play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgement, transmedia navigation and networking need to be taught. NCTE notes that these are also the skills employers are seeking.

Technology is not going to go away and as a teacher I think it is my responsibility to help students develop the skills which will allow them to participate fully as citizens of the 21st Century.

The Value of Research

I can honestly say that I underestimated the value of research to my practice at the beginning of this program. It took some time for me to realize that it is important. I started off by using research to support what I was seeing in the classroom and through field studies found that research prior to designing a field study was most valuable. Research allowed me to learn through the experiences of others.

A couple of the most valuable reasons to me for continue to using research in the future are :

1) Research keeps me current with new findings and theory in education. I think keeping current as teachers is important to our practice as it can keep us engaged with the practice of teaching. It prevents teaching from becoming ‘stale’. If we hope students to become lifelong learners than we must expect the same of ourselves.

2) Knowing the whys behind what I do is important to me. At times, research has given me a way to articulate what I have been seeing in my practice. Other times, it leads me to question my assumptions. Research can provide the stimulus for reflection and keeps pedagogy at the centre of my practice.

Reflection on “Knowledge, the disciplines, and learning in the Digital Age” by Jane Gilbert

After reading and discussing the article by Gilbert our group found that many of the learning outcomes in the content areas we explored (math, science, language arts) were connected in some way with Language Arts. Language Arts seems to tie them together. Other groups that explored different content areas found that just about all content areas overlapped some how. Things such as analyzing, summarizing, questioning, predicting, connecting - the higher order thinking skills were often found to overlap between disciplines.

Technology can be used to link together content areas and promote higher order thinking skills if we plan very carefully and delibrately for this to occur. Students would benefit from this, as they may begin to see ‘the bigger picture’. Blogging, for instance, can link together content areas with Language Arts. Students use writing skills to post and would need to use skills such as evaluating and analyzing to respond to the posts of others. Students could connect with other classes and compare results of an inquiry

My thought on how can technology be used across the content areas

Examples:

1) wikis and blogs

-could be used to store necessary facts (rather than using a textbook or memorizing)

-allow students to share results and thinking with others
- to receive feedback to further build understanding

-would be possible to interact with others both locally and globally

-can be used to promote critical thinking (evaluating, synthesizing, questioning, analyzing) as they read and respond to the work of others They will need to think critically about what they are reading to respond in comment form. These tools will allow students to connect with others who may extend their thinking because of differing viewpoints.

2) digital cameras

- to document, record data a real world problem and solutions, could be used as a sort of photo story rather than the traditional write it down approach, adding to the multi-modal literacies mentioned in the article

Goals for Fall 2010

Goal for Fall 2010

So far I have used technology tools to research and collect information online and to create a product. I did a project at the end of last year which would fall into this category (see posts below). In a nutshell, I had students create a page for a nonfiction book about something of interest found on school grounds. This year I’d like to take it a step further. I want them to investigate the creek behind the school and the quality of the water within as part of our Natural Resources study. As far as I know, this creek has not been studied previously and is so small it often does not make it onto maps. Students will formulate an open-ended question and take photos to help them answer their question. I am hoping that students will present their pages to their peers and then to their parents and ?.

This relates to NETS 2b) : design or adapt relevant learning experiences that

incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student

learning and creativity.

I am hoping to head towards being proficient where NETS state that teachers design and customize technology-enriched learning experiences that engage students in developing research questions about real-world issues or problems, proposing and evaluating multiple creative solutions and presenting a report to an audience either fact-to-face or virtually, for feedback.

The one capacity in this program that I think that I need to work on is “participate in and help develop learning communities to support your teaching practice”. I might be able to make gains in this area by learning about the Smart board my school has had installed and hold lunch time sessions to help those who wish to learn more about the Smart board do so. While I have a blog that I do make occasional posts on, I could post more and definitely comment more on the blogs of others. I would like to learn more about Twitter, which I have heard good things about but have not been able to get into as of yet. I would like to learn more about it and give it another try.

Mixbook - Pros and Cons

Pros of Mixbook:

-Free!

-Teachers receive an educational discount on printed books

-Collaborative - invite by other authors by email to modify book (I made one gmail account that everyone used and I typed in the password for them)

-web based so students could work from home

-I could easily check student progress from home and make notes to discuss with students, or design mini lessons to cover a concept they did not understand

-Students can view the work of their classmates

-uploading photos was easy, with multiple choices of where you can get photos from (computer, flickr, picasa..)

-easy to use - literally everyone was able to use the sites basic features with minimal instruction. They enjoyed showing their new discoveries about the features with their classmates.

-allows for creativity. Layouts are easily modifiable. Adding and subtracting photo or text boxes is easy

-can choose from a variety of book sizes and shapes

-can put the book on your blog or wiki to share with families at home

-lots of backgrounds, layouts and ‘stickers’ to choose from

-students publish their own book that looks professional

-families can order a copy online if they wish once book is published

-students loved making the book!


Cons

-no history feature, so it is impossible to know who contributed what or if someone decides to modify another student’s page it would be possible.

-need email to become a collaborator (author). I suppose you could use the gmail+ method to create accounts for students who do not have email.

-occasionally does not save work (because I had everyone working off the same account, perhaps?)

-students had some difficulties with changing text size. As soon as they clicked out of the text box the size would revert to the original. Frustrating if you are trying to fit things on a page and need to make the font smaller.

-book seems very small online even using the full screen function to view the book. This causes students to type their work in very large font (usually over 14 font), which may not be appropriate for a printed book, but necessary to be readable online

-if students decided to change the layout after they had begun typing and putting pictures in, could cause parts of the page to disappear. Layout needs to be carefully planned and not changed once students have begun making their page.

-expensive to buy a printed book (exchange rate, shipping and handling from US to Canada)

Following My Students Enthusiasm

Mixbook

Mixbook is a collaborative book making site. I used this site at the end of the school year with students. Students investigated the school yard, as part of the CIESE Squares of Life project. Each group of 4 students choose a square meter of the school yard, marked it off with string and explored it. For 40 minutes students sketched and took notes about what they observed in their square. Students moved rocks to see what was under them and some scratched the surface dirt to see what else was there. The reaction students had to the project was incredible. They were very loud, hooped and hollered at each find and were stunned to see the things that until now they over looked. To say they had a good time would be an understatement. However, what amazed me was how little students knew about the things around them in the school yard. Many thought flies were mosquitoes, an immature reddish pinecone was a strawberry and while they could identify a dandelion in bloom they could not identify it from the leaves. I wanted students to remain intrigued and to capitalize on their enthusiasm. So, I combined research of students choice with nonfiction text features. The result was a student made book using Mixbook and photos from Creative Commons (I found photos for students through Flickr - I didn’t want students to come across any inappropriate photos) and some that I or students took of the items they found. Below is the book we created.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

Project Sketch

Next to the school in which I teach is an athletic park with a natural areas through which a creek (Enver Creek) runs. One lunch hour a teacher friend of mine and I walked through the park on the small trail that has been worn into the land by neighborhood kids and adults. What we saw was shocking. Garbage was strewn all over, a folding chair laid in the creek and a board acting as a makeshift bridge. Earlier in the year, motor oil had been dumped into storm drains on school property and students told me that some had also been dumped into the creek.

In this project I want to combine the school goal of improving student achievement in nonfiction reading with nonfiction writing, science, daily physical education and Fine Arts. While the aim of the project is to be integrated so that subjects are not separated, it helps me in my planning to think of each subject separately. My goals for this project is first, to encourage students to appreciate what they have in their athletic park and natural area. Secondly, I hope to make the study of renewable resources more substantial and hopefully more meaningful to students in an urban school by narrowing the breadth of the topics covered with an emphasis on watersheds (renewable resources).

Science

Grade 5 students are required to learn about conservation and natural resources in science. Instead of just studying renewable resources (water, fishing, forestry) in a few lessons from our textbook, I am going to have students study the watershed (natural area). The creek supports a salmon hatchery which will be investigated to tie in fishing to our study. Water and forestry are naturally linked into the concept of watersheds. Students will become scientists and investigate what is contained within our watershed (living and non living things) and how they are interconnected (food webs, water cycle ..). As far as I can tell, what is contained with in the watershed has not been investigated previously, in fact there is little written about the creek and even finding out the name of the creek was challenging. What I have found out is that the creek is listed as threatened by the DFO, due to water quality issues caused by humans misuse of the watershed. Fifth grade scientists will take field trips into the park to make guided observations. We will record our observations through digital photos, sketches and in written form.

Fine Arts

My class has access to 15 digital cameras for three weeks which will be used to capture images of the things we find in the watershed. Students will be taught about digital cameras, taking photos and working together to create a collaborative ‘display’.

Language Arts

Students will be organized into pairs and will research a topic of interest (water, a bug, a tree...) that they observed. There are possibilities for obtaining primary, original data (such as water and soil quality testing) and observations (canopy cover) that could be done if it is an area of student interest. Research topics might include what happens when this water enters the ocean, specific plants and animals could be researched as well. At this point it will become necessary for students to communicate with experts, which I will facilitate. In pairs, students will create a two page spread, using Mixbook, in which they will organize information using nonfiction text features. This forms part of the reading prescribed learning outcomes I plan to include in this project. Students will present their research to the community by presenting the page that they created (oral language prescribed learning outcomes) at a celebration of their work in December.

Potential Problems

-The project does not cover nonrenewable resources in a direct, substantial way. I'd have to plan for some additional science to be taught to satisfy the required learning outcomes.

-I do not know my class. The readiness of my class at this time is unknown. I will have 3 weeks prior to the project to assess my students’ knowledge.

-Weather is a possible problem. Rain will limit the use of digital cameras. This project is planned for October. (Really, even having this project planned for May this year would have been problematic - will summer ever start in Vancouver?)

PBL - My First Attempt At A Project

I have been interested in project based learning since I first heard of it. As a student I loved working on projects and I know that when I have students work on a project most of them are highly engaged. The book “Reinventing Project Based Learning” is acting as my field guide as I attempt to design my first project. One challenge I am facing is that I am doing this on my own. I will have new collegues at my grade level in September and there are no other classroom teachers interested in attempting PBL with me at this time. However, the Learning Support Teacher is supportive of the idea and has provided some feedback on aspects of my project. I will be using this blog as a place to reflect, complete activities listed in “Reinventing Project Based Learning”, and hopefully receive some feedback regarding my project.

"Crap" Detection

After reading this article I realized just how important it is to "triangulate" sources to determine the credibility of the information that I am consuming. I already knew that the web could provide good and bad information and that I needed to consider the sources of information carefully. While I did what I could to find out if the information I was reading was credible, I don't think that I ever thought about having multiple pieces of evidence. It is now at the forefront of my mind. I also was unaware that there are many tools available to help one distinguish between fact and "crap". As a teacher-learner conducting field studies and looking more than ever at the web for information to improve my practice, I need to be very careful to use credible sources. I want to learn but I want to learn reliable information rather than consuming the misinformation that might be out there. As an educator, I need to begin to incorporate this type of detection into my practice. I need to teach students how to determine the credibility of the information they are seeing online. Many of my students would just accept what they are reading as fact and would not consider the credibility of the source at all. It is an important skill students need to develop, as no doubt, they will be using the web more and more through out their school years. I think that "crap detection" skills empower students (people everywhere, really). It goes beyond determining if a source of information is credible for a report you are writing. These skills are important for the social, emotional and physical well being of people too as they engage in web based activities. Looking at information and people with whom we engage on the web, with a critical lens may help readers/viewers identify impostors, hoaxes and scams and avoid them.

On Being Networked

Being networked for me has meant having ideas and information available to me to help me meet goals I have set for myself as a teacher. I have learnt about things that I have wanted to know more about and have learnt about things that I never knew existed, like voicethread. Through the prompts given to LTT members, I realized that I am more connected than I first thought. I forgot about things like pod casts, wikis, and TEDtalks when I first began thinking about my network. I also realized that my being part of the network has been one sided. The pieces of the network I first thought about were those in which I was a more active participant, ones where I contribute to as well as draw from. The ones I forgot about tended to be the ones in which I draw from solely. Part of the reason I am drawing rather than contributing, is due to the fact that what I am reading about (theory, technology tools) tends to be things which I do not have a lot of knowledge about and feel like I have little to contribute. Twitter was mentioned often as being an important resource for educators in the voicethread so I have been convinced to give it a try. Perhaps being limited to 130 characters (...think little room for deep thought, maybe :) ) will encourage me to be a more active participant. So, a goal for me will to be a more active contributor to my network and look at ways to further expand my network.

Teaching Commenting Skills

Recently, I read through my class blog that I began for my Grade 5 Science students. The purpose of this blog was to serve as a way to collaborate during our unit on Forces, particularly in the design of a model car, an application of the concepts learned in our unit. This is my first attempt at having students contribute to a blog. We spoke about what makes good comments (helpful, makes sense, related to post) and about using proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. We discussed the purpose of a post, making sure that what is written makes sense and is worth reading. As a class, we wrote a sample post and comment. What stood out, as I reread student posts and comments, was the difference in quality between some students' posts and their comments. Posts were written on pare with what the students are capable of, but the comments were not. Comments were full of errors, so many that it affected the meaning of the comments and therefore contributed nothing to the collaboration I was hoping for. While I do plan on having asking students about this (we are on Spring Break still), part of my plan may be to have students read their posts and comments and reflect on them with some sort of worksheet to guide them. I would also like to have students look at good comments written by students on another blog (anyone have a good blog to share for this purpose?). I am hoping that this will reinforce my expectations as outlined to students as well as point out the importance of commenting.

University ID may be needed to login to the following links to related articles:

HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking

by Lisa Zawilinski

Designing collaborative knowledge building environments accessible to all learners: Impacts and design challenges by Hyo-Jeong Soa, Lay Hoon Seahb and Hwee Leng Toh-Hengc