26 May 2008
Ceramics!
Here is the ceramic work that I've been working on this spring. The pictures aren't great, but they'll do for now. My favorite of the bunch is the head/torse inspired by Metaphysical artists de Chirico and Carra. It's currently untitled, but it needs a great name.
07 May 2008
Week 7: Educational Technology Grants
Happy Teacher Appreciation week! I have eaten free food almost all week!
Grants for the arts seem hard to come by. The National Edowment for the Arts has opportunities for funding. http://www.nea.gov/Grants/apply/Artsed.html. Target also offers a grant for special art programs. The AT&T High School Success Special Grants Program is specifically for at-risk students. http://www.att.com/gen/corporate-citizenship?pid=11520 Though everyone may not agree with my perspective on this, I believe the arts greatly help these students and can serve as an intervention program for at-risk students. Students who are involved in the arts have a higher attendance record and higher test scores than those students who are not involved in the arts.
When I read the weekly assignment on this class blog last week, I was in the middle of an almost-crisis at school. Last week, one of our kilns broke (after it had just been repaired because it also broke the week before). Then, the other kiln broke too. The district art fair was last weekend, so of course that put me in a little bit of a pickle. The wonderful lady from KC Metro Ceramics came out and fixed them the next day. She told me I really need new kilns. At least one new kiln. One if 30 years old and the other 19 years old. I wouldn't even want to use a 30 year kitchen oven and I fire these kilns to over 2400 degrees. Of course, the art department already has no money and we had to spend $600 in repairs. Anyways, this is a long way of getting to my point that a new kiln just happens to cost about $2500. Actuallly kilns are quite technological, or more precisely, what happens to clay when fired in a kiln is very scientific.
Kiln matters aside. What would be ideal is to have at least three laptop computers in the art department with Adobe CS3. I have been incorporating Photoshop and Illustrator into my lessons in the introductory drawing class. This course has had the same curriculum for over twenty years. Times have changed. Projects need to change. Students don't learn anything from tracing the same motif 36 times to make a pattern when they could complete it easily on Illustrator. Working artists and designers would do it that way. That's the real world. We need to be teaching the real world to prepare our students for life after graduation. In my school, Computer Lab time is very hard to come by and only a limited number of computers have CS3. Of course, when I do get lab time, I always have about five students absent and they miss out BIG TIME. I end up having to catch them up on my classroom laptop. I constantly log off and on my computer because students didn't save their file to the correct drive and then I have to walk students individually through all the steps and I feel like a broken record and I miss out on helping other students and it drives me crazy! (That is why I made a podcast of the Digital Photo steps for the scratchboard project.) If I just had a few computers in my room, I could get them caught up much easier and faster, not to mention the fact that my stress level would significantly decrease. I discussed the idea of having a handful of computers in the classroom with a few of my students today. They jumped on that idea and immediately started planning where we could put them.
Grants for the arts seem hard to come by. The National Edowment for the Arts has opportunities for funding. http://www.nea.gov/Grants/apply/Artsed.html. Target also offers a grant for special art programs. The AT&T High School Success Special Grants Program is specifically for at-risk students. http://www.att.com/gen/corporate-citizenship?pid=11520 Though everyone may not agree with my perspective on this, I believe the arts greatly help these students and can serve as an intervention program for at-risk students. Students who are involved in the arts have a higher attendance record and higher test scores than those students who are not involved in the arts.
When I read the weekly assignment on this class blog last week, I was in the middle of an almost-crisis at school. Last week, one of our kilns broke (after it had just been repaired because it also broke the week before). Then, the other kiln broke too. The district art fair was last weekend, so of course that put me in a little bit of a pickle. The wonderful lady from KC Metro Ceramics came out and fixed them the next day. She told me I really need new kilns. At least one new kiln. One if 30 years old and the other 19 years old. I wouldn't even want to use a 30 year kitchen oven and I fire these kilns to over 2400 degrees. Of course, the art department already has no money and we had to spend $600 in repairs. Anyways, this is a long way of getting to my point that a new kiln just happens to cost about $2500. Actuallly kilns are quite technological, or more precisely, what happens to clay when fired in a kiln is very scientific.
Kiln matters aside. What would be ideal is to have at least three laptop computers in the art department with Adobe CS3. I have been incorporating Photoshop and Illustrator into my lessons in the introductory drawing class. This course has had the same curriculum for over twenty years. Times have changed. Projects need to change. Students don't learn anything from tracing the same motif 36 times to make a pattern when they could complete it easily on Illustrator. Working artists and designers would do it that way. That's the real world. We need to be teaching the real world to prepare our students for life after graduation. In my school, Computer Lab time is very hard to come by and only a limited number of computers have CS3. Of course, when I do get lab time, I always have about five students absent and they miss out BIG TIME. I end up having to catch them up on my classroom laptop. I constantly log off and on my computer because students didn't save their file to the correct drive and then I have to walk students individually through all the steps and I feel like a broken record and I miss out on helping other students and it drives me crazy! (That is why I made a podcast of the Digital Photo steps for the scratchboard project.) If I just had a few computers in my room, I could get them caught up much easier and faster, not to mention the fact that my stress level would significantly decrease. I discussed the idea of having a handful of computers in the classroom with a few of my students today. They jumped on that idea and immediately started planning where we could put them.
01 May 2008
Week 6: Online Assessment, Copyright, etc.
I would really like to use Quia for my assessments. It is time effecient and gathers information effectively. In the art department, we only give a mid-term and a final exam, since our curriculum is project based. If I did use Quia, I would also make Chapter assessments in addition to the mid-term and final to make it more cost effective. I also like the links for the Jeopardy game and other quiz show review games. I always enjoyed playing Jeopardy for review and I thinkn students respond to it well.
The copyright information was very useful. I didn't know about a lot of the rules and regulations. I think copyright laws are often brushed under the rug in education. From now on, I will be more careful about citing sources, especially for images. My main frustration with copyright is that in the art department we have a lot of older VHS tapes. We cannot get these copied to DVDs, even though the administration would like to get rid of all VHS players. Really, this all comes from my frustration that I have not been able to find any updated, high quality art techniques demo DVDs. Anyone have any suggestions?
The copyright information was very useful. I didn't know about a lot of the rules and regulations. I think copyright laws are often brushed under the rug in education. From now on, I will be more careful about citing sources, especially for images. My main frustration with copyright is that in the art department we have a lot of older VHS tapes. We cannot get these copied to DVDs, even though the administration would like to get rid of all VHS players. Really, this all comes from my frustration that I have not been able to find any updated, high quality art techniques demo DVDs. Anyone have any suggestions?
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