The relevant and innovative learning scenario was a really fun project that we put together in our master's class this month. We each got to focus on a web 2.0 tool and implement it into a lesson that we create. My classmates had some really cool projects!
Greg Havens did an really cool video project based off academic vocabulary in edmodo.com. This web 2.0 is like a facebook but for education! Check out my comments and his project at this link.
Another great project was Jessica Kellogg's. She is a math teacher and created a project focused around m&m's and math! How great is that! She used two web 2.0 tools in her project and one glogster.com you can make your own posters! I will be all over that! Check out her project here.
Jessica Kellogg had a fabulous project incorporating web 2.0 tools and m&m's into a math curriculum. Technology and Candy - does it get any better? One of her web tools was a site called glogster.com - you can create your own amazing posters! I love it! I plan to use that like crazy this year! Check out Jessica's blog here.
Brief Overview: In this project students will draw the human head as a pre-assessment in Sketchfu. They will then receive instruction on how to correctly draw the human head and then create a new drawing in sketchfu based off of those instructions that will serve as their post-assessment. Students will then self-critique and provide feedback.
Target Audience: High School Beginning level art students.
Materials: Computer access for SketchFU. (www.sketchfu.com)
Handout on How to draw the Human Face
Rubric and Self-Evaluation Rubric
Objectives: The Learner will be able to:
• Apply the creative process in the arts.
• Demonstrate connections between the arts and other disciplines: Math – Proportions. Biology – Anatomy. Technology – Sketchfu.
• Evaluate their process and end product.
• Compare and Discuss pre-assessment drawing and post-assessment drawing.
Procedure: * The Students will go to sketchfu.com and create an account.
• They will draw the human head.
• Students will then be given directions on how to correctly draw the human head using proportions.
• Student will create a second drawing practicing these directions.
• Students will then create a Thrid drawing using the correct proportions they just learned.
• Students will fill out a self-critique based off of the rubric.
• Students will present their before and after drawings by playing their recordings on sketchfu to the class as a group and they will critique each other using the Feldman Method of Criticism: Description, Analysis, Interpretation, Judgment.)
Web 2.0 tool: http://sketchfu.com/ Sketch Fu is a web 2.0 tools where you can draw and create artworks and share them!
3. Social Participation/Social Learning: The students will connect socially through SketchFU. They will create their pre-test and post-test assignment there and be able to view each other’s work and their step-by- step process.
4. Making Connections:
a) Students will make an attempt at a drawing and then they will learn the correct procedures for how to draw. After students will recreate their drawing with their new knowledge. They will have a before and after image to show that they made connections with the learning objectives.
b) Learning how to use web 2.0 tools and correct measurements/proportions in drawing is relevant to today’s art learner. They still need to learn elements and principles of design concepts, but need a more technological way to create.
c) They will be able to connect with their classmates drawings and with drawing from people all over the world because of SketchFU.
1. Create/Produce: The learner will create a pre-assessment drawing,practice drawing and a post assessment drawing in SketchFU. 2. Assessment: The post-assessment drawing will be graded off a simple rubric:
3.Reflection: a. The students will fill out a self-evaluation rubric on how well they think they accomplished the objectives in their post-assessment drawing and what they thought about the process.
b. The last question of the self-evaluation rubric will help the instructor evaluate and improve upon the project.
Dear Sketchfu, I love you! The more that I play around with this web 2.0 tools the more incredible options I see to explore. I have explained the basic tools of how to create in Sketchfu. Some really cool aspects that I discovered after the basics was that sketchfu records what you do, step by step. Once you have saved your image and publish it, people can watch exactly how your started and the process that took you to your final product! This can really help me in my classroom when trying to teach students how to accomplish a certain type of drawing step by step.
Another cool aspect of this type of publishing is that you can allow people to take what you started and add their own aspects to the work having a communal piece of art. You can even disable that aspect so that no one can do anything to your work or use it in any way other than to watch the step by step process.
Once you join sketchfu (it’s free) you can also find groups (or apps) of people who have the same artistic interests as you. If you can’t find an app you like – you can even create your own! It’s supposed to be an area that is an add-on to the sketchfu site where people with the same interests can post their artworks and learn from each other! The example that I show here is an Eye Apps for people who like to create works based of off eyes.
When you create an artwork in Sketchfu it is automatically saved in your gallery and the public gallery. You can also choose to share the image in a variety of ways like email, Facebook, Blogger, etc, you can even Download it!
www.sketchfu.com... SKETCHFU!!!! I love it!!! I was introduced to this web 2.0 tool this week! We were meeting in my master’s class Wimba session when our instructor (a brilliant lady) (…and yes she will be reading this) brought up this tool. I had never heard of sketchfu and as I opened up the page for the first time, I was thrown off by the introduction screen. It makes the tool seem very childish, you remember the days of paint? We would play for hours on paint located in the accessories section on our computers that took up an entire desk. Well, paint would be the “caveman” addition of sketchfu, oh man has it evolved!!
Before I began to play with the tool myself I decided to take a look at the artworks others had done. Amazing! I was so excited to locate a FREE online tool that allows people to combine two passions – Art and Technology!
As I perused the site, I realized…”OMG, I could really use this in my high school art room!” My mind started going a mile a minute about the exciting ways I could use this tool. In my RILS project, I decided to try to practice exactly how I could use sketchfu. But before I could decide exactly how to use it I needed to play with the tool to see what all it could do. Basically you can pick any color from the color palette in the top left, you can pick any size brush, and the really neat thing that allows you to create such amazing artwork is that you can change the opacity of the color you are putting down. Being able to change the opacity – allows you to overlay colors and create values. As I continue to explore, I will post more!
Ok. So as I surfed the web checking out web 2.0 tools, I realized that I wanted something that was really going to help my students and I interact and get information out. I found WIKI! A wiki site is a FREEeasy to setup, use, update and maintain. It’s website that you can create for your classes…or well for anything you want really.
I plan to use mine as the central hub of information for my students and their families.They can respond and comment on curriculum that I post and make it easy to share classroom events and special projects. Students can upload and download assignments, syllabi, etc. You can even have it connect to your google calendar and keep things automatically updated. I can provide my students links, images, video clips from anywhere on the web! I am really excited about the possibilities of this wiki page!I can also provide the link to my wiki page on our school website so that GHS students and parents can get to easily. I also plan to post student work there too, so people can see what amazing things my students do! I am just getting started on my wiki- so this is just a snippet of images as I start. I will post more including images when I have more done to the site!http://ghsvisualarts.wikispaces.com/
You start by going to www.wikispaces.com. From there you can setup a free account and start setting up your individual site!
You might want to set aside a few hours or so to do this, it takes a little while to figure out the setup and to add things that you want to your wiki.
Here is a wiki that someone has done a lot of work to and includes lots of links to web 2.0 tools! Really cool! The site is: www.cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com
Eduslide seems like a really great web 2.0 tool and my classmate Chris Lenhart does a great job explaining the tool and how it can by used. Check this Link out!
Well I have completed my tutorials on iMovie. Here is a picture of my certificate:
I really learned a lot through these tutorials and I am excited and ready to hit the ground running with what I have learned. One of the really easy to use features of imovie is that it has pre-made movie trailers that you can just drag and drop your own clips into. All of the transitions, graphics, and sound are already in place. This saves time and gives you an incredible project at the same time!
I decided to create an imovie trailer introducing the new Griffin High School Fine Arts Academy that I will be teaching at in the fall of 2011. I forgot to apply the editing techniques for the Ken Burns effect on the still photos so I wouldn't have lost my words. I used copyright free photos from morguefile.com, but I plan to recreate with my own photographs when I can have access to the school building. I am going to redo this and fix those things. I love the movie credit look at the end of the video especially - it just gives it a nice little touch. This Academy is new and once I have my own photos to use and apply the techniques I learned in the tutorials, I plan to make a great intro trailer for our school to post on the county website and our school site.
I am now 1/3 of the way through my imovie tutorials. I just got done organizing my personal video clips in imovie in the events library. In these next sections that I am going to share with you I learned how to do the following shown in this screen shot:
Organizing Clips, Editing Video, and Working with Effects.
In the organizing clip section I learned how to mark footage as a favorite or as rejected – so I don’t waste time going back and forth constantly over the same clips only looking for certain things. Down in the lower half of the interface is a show tool that will determine what shows in your clip section. Using that has allowed me to get things I know that I don’t want out of the way! This tool is really going to help keep my workspace clutter free and easier to work in.
The next section was on Editing. I learned how to create new projects, add clips, trimming and slip editing, and splitting clips. I wish I had known this when I made my first two videos….I wouldn’t have had so much choppy transitioning between crops and things would have flowed better.
I was really excited to get to these videos and even more excited to see the effects that I would be able to create using this program, this next section was on working with effects like adjusting colors, title, and using a green screen. I am going out to buy some basic neon green paint this weekend and plan to paint a section of the wall in our playroom to make our own green screen! I can’t wait to try this effect out and make some fun videos with my kids!
So basically in these three sections I learned how to turn on the advanced tools and what they do!
Imovie. Before I started this masters program, I had never heard of imovie. I most definitely had never made anything or even opened up an imovie program. The very first month we had to make a bio movie about ourselves using the imovie. That was, I was going to say rough but… well, I’ll just remind you that it was the first thing I ever made in there. You can view it on my CBR website: http://web.me.com/ccsjohnson/cbr/Welcome.html
Well finally in this month I have the opportunity to use Lynda.com. This is a site that basically offers tutorials to teach you just about anything on just about any program! It’s a pretty amazing website. And so I began to watch 3 hours and 28 minutes of imovie 11 essential tutorials. It only took me a week or so. I was heard a saying that how long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on…that’s similar to how long a tutorial about anything feels, there are points where you feel on either side of that proverbial door.
The first section was just an introduction making sure we were all on the same page with the correct software.
The second section was all about importing video/photographs into imovie – which I had basically figured out during that very first month just playing around to create the bio movie. It was still nice though to be reminded how do upload everything from tape-base, memory-based, digital stills, to live action videos.
The third section just covered the interface (how everything is setup when you open imovie), and the toolbar that has all of the editing tools on it.
Here is a screen shot from the Tutorial video discussing uploading and it shows you the interface for imovie:
I am a High School Art Teacher, so a lot of my job is not just teaching kids the elements and principles of design and how to be creative but also how to display and show off work. Students need to be able to display and show work online, just a sign of them times, and a lot of students don’t have the money or the resources to create their own webpages or a place to store images, etc.
As I looked into Web 2.0 tools, I was specifically looking for a user friendly site that would allow students to upload photos of their work into one place where they could then send people to view their portfolios. I found MyliveGallery.com.
It is a free site where student can upload photos and then put them in a professional slideshow presentation and then share them with each other, college representatives, and even potential art show judges. I require my students to have a professional portfolio at the end of each year showing casing their works, so this is perfect for them.
Once you have created your free account, upload your photos and specify the size that you want them to be. Next select the theme that you want. You can do serious professional backgrounds for business or school presentations and or more colorful lively ones for your own family photos that you want to share.
Then you just view your gallery! Its that simple! I created a sample of what one of my photography students could do if they used this Web 2.0 tool to help them create their portfolio for the end of the year.
To the left is the sidebar that contains all the photos in the portfolio, you can click on each image individually or watch the whole thing on a timed transition slide show. The images above are actually photographs by Tara Bishop, who was a senior of mine last year. What she turned in then was a flash drive with each individual image saved to it. Clicking on each image and having to view it individually just does not do the work the justice that putting it into a program like this would do.
I am really excited to show and teach this Web 2.0 (along with others) to my students so that they can put together dynamic presentations of their work that they can have anyone with a computer access!
So who knew Google could make it so easy to be connected with Technology! I just got done making my own iGoogle home page. I was able to create this homepage to my specifications and can now connect to any site on the internet that is important to me or that I use on a daily basis, all from one spot! Basically all you have to do to create your own is to go to igoogle and it will walk you through it. The best parts are the gadgets that you can add like a calendar, to do list, and other great tools like that!
Here is my Home Page: I have links to my favorite newscasts, facebook, twitter, a to do list, blogs I follow, etc.
The next tab on my page is for my Masters Program at FullSail University: It contains links to all the important sites I use daily for my classes.
The Third tab on my Page is related to the current class I am taking, ETC. It has all the important links for this particular class.
As you can see - IT'S AWESOME. I have everything I need at my fingertips now, as soon as I open my web browser. Step one into becoming a Technology Diva. Done.
I cannot lie. I am technologically challenged. Oh don't get me wrong, I use my iphone and have apps that connect me to my email and facebook, but I use those in the most basic concept. I am smart enough to open a new software or device and figure out the basics, but if you want more than that - see ya later - I am OUT! So I guess you could say I am a really good "poser". I look like I have it under control but it's all a facade.
These next few weeks I will literally be backing up as far as I can and running with all my might to get enough height to make the BIGGEST cannonball splash into technology as I can! So if you don't want to get wet or have a squeamish stomach for flailing body parts as they hit the water, then this might not be the blog to follow. I can't promise that I won't drown, or that you won't have to offer rescue assistance from your vantage point in the comments area. But I do promise that it will be entertaining and informative as I discover technology, it's various tools, and how I can implement them in my life and occupation.
So grab your floaties, put that hot pink sunscreen on your nose, and hang on tight - there's a tidal wave of discovery coming your way!
