The Virtual Classroom

How To: Stencil Graffiti Art 101 – Awesome video clips here

A great step-by-step picture tutorial on making God’s Eyes and some complex ones with beading. A great tutorial for the fiber/ weaving center.

The HECB is looking for middle and high school students who like to make videos. We’re holding a contest to stimulate your best creative work.

The challenge? Make a video encouraging your fellow students to start on the path to a college education.

The HECB Student Film Contest is open to students in grades 7-12 attending public or private schools in Washington. Winners will receive prizes and official recognition.

Winning videos also will be posted on Washington State’s official YouTube website, and screenings will be held at the Washington State School Directors’ Association annual convention in November 2009.

Deadline for submitting entries is October 19, 2009.

More information:

Contest Announcement and Rules

Entry Form

Personal Release Form

Contest Poster

This is a great picture tutorial on how to make these fun little collage puppets.

Each Trimester my students create a digital portfolio of their work. Here are a couple examples.

A 6th Grade Portfolio by Emma

8th Grade Portfolio by Jake 

Another 8th Grade Portfolio by RR

I run a modified choice program in grades 6-8. I have kids everyday for about 50 mins for 12 weeks before they rotate to another elective class.

I have tried periods of full choice, but the middle school kids I have for the most part need a little more direction. So we have challenge assignments that are required, based on a theme and then they can choose the media and approach to solving the task. In 6th grade we do the same thing with the elements of art.

At the end of the trimester the kids ALL create a digital portfolio. I am still working on the best ways to do this but here  is what I have done for the past 5 years.

1) kids make the art and turn it in to be graded with a short reflection slip. The questions on the reflection are similar to an artist statement.
Title: what did you name your art and why?
Medium: what materials did you use and why did you choose them?
Content: this question is usually specifically related to the challenge task.

2) I take photos of the artwork as I grade the work and load them into server folders assigned to each class period.

3) The kids have a tracking worksheet where they list the work they have made during the trimester, including work they have done for graded assignments and additional ’studio experiments’ as I call them. Basically anything else they make when not working on the challenge assignments. Many times I have had kids do the assigned challenge task at home and then use centers during class and have LOTS of art for theirportfolios. They are required to take a picture of ANY and ALL art they take home. I even suggest that although I take pictures of graded work, that they should also take some picture of the work. This both gives them the practice with the camera and makes sure they have several pictures to chose from when putting together their portfolios. Every few weeks we will have a ‘tracking’ day. This is usually a period that is shortened due to assemblies, so not enough time to get centers set up. So all the cameras come out (I have 12 digital cameras due to grants), work gets passed back, and kids document their work.

4) The kids spend a day or two towards the end of the trimester working on an artist statement with some guiding questions. There is always one last tracking day before the computer lab days. It is always a frenzy to get those last pictures taken and this is when I clean out all the storage cupboards and make them take all the art home.

5) END of trimester I book the school computer lab for 3-5 days depending on the schedules. I create a power point template with the required slides that list each of the challenge assignments and then a few extras for the studio experiments. Plus an artist statement slide.

Their power points are then presented to the class on the last 2 days of the trimester. I think the kids find it very powerful to see all their art together in this format and to share it. Plus as I have them over the years, they will find their older power points saved in their account and always look through it. Usually with cries of “oh I remember that.” and “wow, I am so much better now”

I love to finish the trimester this way. BUT a couple of problems is that inevitable there are missing pictures, either because they didn’t take one or it has just been lost in the process some how. AND writing is still such a chore. “why do we have to do all this writing, this is supposed to be art.” I hear often.

findandusemages Flickr Online Class Slide Show

Students (MS and HS) around the world collaborated to do this cool rotoscoping animation project… I keep trying to figure out how to add this assignment to my video class, but we barely get through the basics…

Rotoball 2009 from The Carrot Revolution on Vimeo.

The Art Lesson, originally uploaded by canonsnapper.

The excerpt below was taken from the National Art Education Association.

10 lessons the Arts Teach.

By Elliot Eisner

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity.
Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know.
The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.
SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press

Well I just got back from the Northwest Council for Computers in Education conference in Portland, OR. I took the new teacher I am mentoring and the trip was sponsored by the OSPI EETT grant funds that I received this year. To start a quick list of the Sessions that I attended. MORE on these sessions to come! my reviews, my ideas for application and more links than you can shake a stick at!

Read the rest…