Week 14

·     How can we help students develop their visual lexicons?

We can help students develop their visual lexicons by giving them ample opportunities (both inside and outside of the classroom) to explore a wide variety of images relevant to the 21st century. Their lexicons should not only include art history and more traditional art curriculum, but also elements of our visual culture, design, and 

creative endeavors happening around the world.

·     In what ways are social bookmarking sites (for both links & images) beneficial to the artistic thinking and research process?

I find social bookmarking sites extremely beneficial to the artistic thinking and research process. We are actually using pinterest in my sculpture class this semester to find images of contemporary sculptors' work and to share them with our classmates. This application allows for collaboration and sharing. Also, I am a big advocate of pinterest because I bookmark a wide variety of pieces of inspiration and organize them by category (or boards). I find it extremely important to streamline this process, it can be frustrating when you have to use multiple applications that do not correlate well. 

·     What strategies do artists use for keeping track of their inspiration?  How can technology help this process run more smoothly?

Artists use physical notebooks, artist journals, inspiration wires, magazine clippings, online accounts, phones, cameras and more to keep track of their inspiration. I also like to carry a pocket notebook to jot down or sketch anything that inspires me. Like I mentioned earlier, I find these strategies to be most useful when my inspiration is recorded in just a few places, as it seems that things get lost when they are scribbled onto loose scraps of paper.

·   How might mind mapping and other visual thinking strategies impact the breadth and context of a student’s learning of a given subject?

I think mind mapping and other visual thinking strategies help students to discover possibilities they may not have arrived at had they just visualized something in their head. Seeing words and connections on paper can be very helpful in organizing your thoughts and one of the most key pieces to learning: making connections.

What artistic thinking and research technologies are most beneficial to your studio environment and/or art classroom?

I used Inkflow for the Intertext exercise and discovered something incredibly useful about the application. I love the idea of being able to translate hand drawing to a digital medium. This is something I have wanted to learn how to do for a long time and I think that it could be of great use for a variety of projects. The application allows you to draw directly on the surface of the ipad to create an image or a mind map, or take a picture of notes and then convert them to a vector image. This task can be very time consuming when it must be done manually in photoshop. 

I also found the symbaloo application to be a great resource for an art classroom homepage, however I wish that it worked more seamlessly with social media. It appears that it is designed more for RSS feeds, but I think that the inclusion of pinterest and art blogs could be very beneficial as well. 

Read & React - Week 13

The TED talk videos were sources of inspiration to me in brainstorming ways to create a playful environment for future students. I find the idea of creating a place of security to evoke play very interesting. It does seem logical, after hearing the explanation, that to share our most wacky and playful ideas we must feel a sense of security, knowing that we will not be suddenly rejected or criticized. I believe that it is extremely important to create this sense of security as early as possible in your classroom. For this reason, I have thought often about what I want the first few weeks of school to look like in my classroom. Above all, I know that I want to often, almost always, incorporate this freedom to play.

I love the way Pink described the need for play in the 21st century, "a move away from sober seriousness as a measure of ability and the elevation of the next essential high concept, high touch aptitude: play." I am intrigued by the association of laughter and play with the right side of the brain. It seems natural to me that the logical left side of the brain does not master play nearly as well as its counterpart. It also reminds me of the brilliant ads featuring the left and right sides of the brain. I think it would be a great unit for students, to study the left and right sides of the brain and their functions. I think that it would also be a very meaningful exercise for them to figure out which side of their brain is dominant, and how to unleash the right side in the art classroom.

Play is a theme that I think needs to be applied outside of the art classroom, too. I believe students would be much more engaged and intrigued by other subject matter if there was an element of play intertwined. While I was teaching abroad in South Korea, we were told to always include games in the classroom, to give the students a sense of play while they were learning. I found this strategy to be very successful in that it created an exciting, student-centered environment in which to learn.

Results of the play assignment!

You can't really see the resin in the photos, but in person it looks like the thinnest sheet of glass sitting on top of your canvas. Super cool!

This week’s assignment to play got me curious enough to do something that I have been wanting to do for a while but somehow couldn’t find enough a good reason to do it. After studying the abstract expressionists in one of my art history courses, I became intrigued by the idea of creating freely, without a specific concept, plan or arriving at a particular meaning. I usually like to work this way anyways, but I do not usually work in a visibly abstract way. So I decided to whip out my inner Jackson Pollock and just paint what ever rose to my imagination. I also decided that I have been wanting to “play” or experiment with a resin coating on my painting, so I tried that, too! And I must say, I absolutely love the effect, which does not measure up in photographs. I am so glad that I had the opportunity to play this week, for one because it was fun, but more importantly, because it again made me realize the importance of giving my students time to do the exact same thing – play! Also, abstract expressionism can be very therapeutic, don’t you think??

What is the role of art education (or art educators) in teaching students to be media literate digital citizens?

What is the role of art education (or art educators) in teaching students to be media literate digital citizens?

Art education should play a major role in teaching students to be media literate digital citizens as it is an opportunity to teach visual literacy and engage students in critical thinking. It also, from an art advocacy standpoint, makes art education more valid in the eyes of the community. Visual literacy is a skill that all students need to be equipped with living in a world bombarded with thousands of images and messages every day.

After watching the documentary Killing Us Softly, the power and manipulative tendency of advertising was reinforced in my mind. Advertising and media are deciding what the “ideal” looks like and then packaging it up and selling it to the world. The problem here is not only that millions of people are being (possibly unknowingly) manipulated, but also that one of the main targets is children. I was unaware before watching Consuming Kids of the laws that were once in place to protect children from advertising. I am shocked that advertisers are not restricted in the messages they send children. For this reason, it is important that visual literacy starts at a young age. If children are being sold ideals through the media they consume, it is our job as educators to teach students to see past the product being sold to them.

Kuan Chung and Kirby’s article was very interesting to me as I have created a unit plan in the past teaching students about advertising. It is not only relevant as a career in the arts, but also as a major component of visual literacy. It would be very valuable for students to have the opportunity to deconstruct the media and advertisements they encounter throughout daily life. I think it would be very interesting to have students take a picture of every advertisement that they see throughout the day, for one day. I would imagine that we could learn something about the student by looking at their collection of images and the advertisers attempting to influence them. We live in a day and age where advertisers know more about the consumer than ever before, and it is important for young people to understand this concept.

Another form of media students could deconstruct is entertainment media. Students seek a variety of media types for entertainment in their free time, ranging from gaming and television to the Internet. It would be interesting to ask them to play a spin-off of hide and seek, looking for any references to products or services in the entertainment they consume. Often we are not consciously aware of the messages we are receiving as they have become so ingrained in our daily lives.

Media literacy could expand to a conversation about news media and the ways in which they intend to manipulate the public. News sources are known for slanted views and the intention to influence the public. Students should recognize that it is often difficult to see the whole picture through only one lens. This relates to VTS as it teaches students to recognize the differing perspectives of others.

I think that media literacy is an opportunity for integration with curriculum from other classes as well. For example, it would be a great opportunity to study history through imagery, architecture, advertisements and any other historical artifact. Students could study civil war through the prints that were created of battle scenes or the monuments erected in the name of fallen soldiers. Art history is an opportunity to combine visual literacy, the arts, and the context of world history. It is not only useful to a visual learner, but to all students as we live in an image driven world.

A 21^st century art education should without a doubt teach students to be visually and media literate citizens. Our students need to know how to deconstruct and interpret text that has crept into every moment of their lives. It is also a platform for arts advocacy as it is an essential skills for 21^st century learners.

Read & React

For this week’s read and reflect, I would like to start out by discussing a few of the ways I could use the technology we used this week in my future classroom. I want to be able to remember my ideas for these resources! J

Voicethread: I think this application is a great tool for reflection and critique. I love the idea of giving students the ability to talk about their artistic process, as another form of reflection. The incorporation of voice and photos would give them the power to show evolution of an idea and the reasoning behind their choices.

Mural.ly: While I loved the concept of this application, I personally found it to be very slow and not the most user-friendly. I know that it is a new application, but if it becomes more advanced in the future, I think it could be a great tool for creating idea boards, documenting artistic research, reflection, and particularly a personal aesthetic unit I have been working on.

Thinkling: This application is practically made for VTS! I think it would be a cool way to see how students critique a work of art before introducing VTS. It would be a great way to assess their ability to look and think critically before and after learning and utilizing Visual Thinking Strategies. Also, because it is collaborative, I think students would enjoy commenting on the thoughts of others and reflecting on multiple perspectives.

After reading Manning & Johnson, I realized that I had not thought of discussion forums as a useful tool until the authors talked about the way consumers use discussion forums. Many times have I relied on technology problems or further information about a product or service through discussion forums. In this sense, I think that forums could be made applicable and useful in education, but I think that a major factor in it’s success is the “friendlyness” of the software. I often find myself frustrated with Blackboard and other education sites because they function much differently than many other sites commonly used. For example, these sites usually do not have the option to search for a specific topic you would like to know more about. I find it more difficult to make connections on these sites because it is inconvenient to comment or reply. Perhaps one of the most important things for us to consider when selecting technology for the classroom is: how intuitive is this site? Will my students become disengaged because the technology is unreliable or inconvenient? I think for technology in the classroom to work successfully, it should work almost seamlessly and be engaging to its audience.

Topics in Digital Citizenship

Validity of information

I chose validity of Internet sources because the nature of the Internet is such that anyone can post information that is available to the public. This capability allows for a variety of information: truthful, untruthful, slander, etc. It is important that we teach our students to recognize that not all information on the Internet is true, in addition to how to seek truthful and valid information. One activity to use in the classroom could be a myth buster’s activity – busting artist myths. For example, did Van Gogh cut off his own ear? If so, why? Another activity could be a unit on appropriation. When appropriating, it is important to ask students to research the object/idea they are appropriating before doing so, in order to understand its full meaning. One valid resource I found that I would use in my classroom is: art21.com.

Posting etiquette

I chose this topic because I have seen many people post things online that I doubt they would say or do in real life. It is important to teach students the importance of speaking respectfully and thoughtfully, even in an online presence. I could teach my students about posting etiquette by giving them the opportunity to do VTS in a private online discussion board. They could share and consider opinions on artwork in a respectful, collaborative manner. Another strategy would be to ask students to create a work of art that compares and contrasts people as they are in real life  compared to digital life. A resource that I found for posting etiquette was Emily Post’s technology etiquette. http://www.emilypost.com/technology

Read and Respond

My first thoughts when reading about the digital citizen are that a digital citizen is probably a bizarre concept to many young people as they do not seem to separate the digital world from the physical world. In The Digital Citizen, the authors assert that digital citizens “are aware of the risks and benefits of the unparalleled degree of access we have to information.” I would imagine that for youth that have grown up with technology and the information age, they do not know anything other than an abundance of information. Knowing how many adults and researchers feel about this access to information, I wonder what youth who have never known anything different would say.

I found the six tenets of digital citizenship to be interesting: “respect yourself, protect yourself, respect others, protect others, respect intellectual property, and protect intellectual property. I found respecting and protecting intellectual property to be particularly interesting because of the arguments we have heard in favor of a society that values freedom of information via the internet and questions “intellectual property.” I personally believe that society should protect and respect intellectual property, but there are many people that fighting for a different cause. Could there be multiple forms of digital citizenship? Groups of digital citizens who hold different values?

Reading about respecting and protecting yourself online made me question whose responsibility it was to teach a student about the dangers that come with using the internet. However, with many schools bringing technology and social media into the classroom, I think that it is now the schools responsibility to educate students on appropriate internet citizenship and keeping themselves safe. It also makes me wonder, is the school now liable for anything the student does on the internet while at school? I have read that a teacher is responsible for the safety of his or her students while they are present in the classroom, but are they responsible, as well, for what they do on the internet while they are in the classroom?

As technology enters the classroom and gives students more freedom, I think that school must develop programs to educate their students on digital citizenship and the benefits and risks of the internet. It would be unfair to give young people this powerful tool without any information on how it should be used. As adults, we know that what you create and post on the internet will be there forever, but we must also teach this to our students.