Thoughts from Art Teacher

A few minutes ago I finished up the Web 2.0 computer course by recording my comments about the class on the course voicethread.  Strangely enough, I didn’t feel I had wrapped things up because I had not made a final  comment here on my blog.  “My blog”, it still cracks me up to say that.  But I do indeed have a blog!  This has been a great course.  Very frustrating at times but I learned more than enough to make up for the frustration.

I’m not sure if there will be additional blogs or not.  Time will tell.

Steve

Note to self… here is Shelly’s video on how to embed videos from youtube.  You will need this the next time you find something you want to show the kids. At home you can take the video from youtube and embed it in your blog.  Next day at school, simply go to your blog and show the kids the video from there.

Hello again.  I just spent the better part of 2 hours checking out two websites – Classroom 2.0 and Twitter.  Classroom 2.0, I get.  It is a great way to help manage information, get the opinions of people with similar interests, and find links to more useful information.  While I was there I was able to find several links to lessons I can use on my Smartboard.  Sounds easy enough but in the past, hours doing Google searches for  “Art lessons Smartboard” etc haven’t turned up any useful information.  I found half a dozen lessons in less than 30 minutes.  Yee Ha!  I will definitely use Classroom2.0 in the future.

As for Twitter… you gotta be kidding me.  Even after watching all the intro videos that are supposed to sell me on the virtues of Twitter and convince me of what a great tool it is, the feeling I’m left with is… what a ridiculous waste of time.  One of the Lee Lefever videos about Twitter started out by asking “What are you doing?” I will answer by saying, “Not wasting one moment of my personal time or classroom time on Twitter”.  Do you really care if someone you know or admire is sipping a cup of coffee or taking a plane ride?! Sheesh.  I visited Lee Lefever’s tweets and a few others and couldn’t find anything that was thought provoking or even worth reading.

Here are two interesting things I’ve seen while browsing my Google Reader.

An Agriculture Department employee, Shirley Sherrod, was asked to resign after a blogger sliced and diced one of her speeches.  The edited version of the speech shows Sherrod making racially charged comments but the entire speech had a different message, one of racial reconciliation.  Sherrod is suing the blogger.  The story caught my eye because it is a reminder for me (and all of us) to use our newly found computer skills responsibly. It’s easy to manipulate the cyber world.

And that article led me to another interesting article about education,  Arne Duncan wants a 12 hour school day.  Arne Duncan is our National Education Secretary and the jist of the story is that he believes that schools should be open longer each day and that we should have a year round schedule.  – Amen to that!

This is a photo of our national Education Secretary, Arne Duncan.

Photo by Drew Angerer

Please don’t think less of me but since Shelly said this Thing is optional, I’m opting to skip it.

I’ll take a closer look at a later time.

I explored Google Docs and it is very easy to use.  I uploaded some previously written text and created an Artist Profile for myself.  Google docs has the same appeal as Wiki’s.  How nice for a group of people to be able to see and make additions to the same document.  My next challenge is to find time to check out the drawing program.  As an art teacher I can imagine several fun things to do with that.  Each year I do a Doodling Project with the kids.  With Google Docs each class could have their own doodle page.  Kids could draw and create collective projects about any topic or even do something as simple as make a class card for a teacher.  Then there are the obvious uses like having all the teachers look over a schedule or a calendar etc.

Update:  I found some time and checked out the drawing part of Google Docs.  Drawing with a mouse stinks.  I was disappointed. You can see my experimental scribble drawing by clicking here.

I am so glad to finally know how to embed videos!  Last school year it was a huge hassle showing the kids this video that I found on Youtube.  It is a music video by the group OK GO and the entire video is a Rube Goldberg Machine.  It was perfect to show during my unit on Rube.   Of course Youtube is blocked at the school so I spent tons of time trying to find it on another site that would come through.  You’d think that would be easy – think again.  But here it is, my new favorite video called This Too Shall Pass.  This video knocks me out.  Enjoy!

I found some good stuff on Youtube.  I have recently read a book called A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink.  The book as about how our society has been developing the logical, linear side of brains for decades.  Now things are changing in the world and we need to spend more time and energy developing the creative, intuitive side of our brains.  I looked up Daniel Pink and found tons of vids.  Here is an interesting one that gives an overview of his theory.

I made A sad fish story practice podcast yesterday and it was a lot of work.  Most of it was the learning curve.  It took several hours but I finally have a basic understanding of how to use the Garageband program on my Mac to make a podcast.  After I made the thing, I had a hell of a time figuring out how to get it upload onto PodBean.  Turns out I wasn’t converting the file into an Mp3 even though I thought I was.  Anyhow it is done!

As far as using podcasts in my artroom… I could have the kids research a famous artist then have another student interview that person.  The kids would get to do some role playing and it would be a fun way for the kids to act out what they have learned.

Next!

Let’s talk about podcasts.  I know I need to do a lot more research because from my experience this morning I can sum it up in 3 words – Waste of Time.  I’m sure there are good podcasts out there, but I didn’t find any.  I just spent the last hour waiting for podcasts to load up.  Once they did finally  load up, I was disappointed.  Perhaps I was hoping for too much.  I found one podcast,  American Art- Rockwell, that was somewhat informative and entertaining but the rest was tripe.  In defense of podcasting, I did spend most of my time trying to find a comedy cast that would make me sit back in my chair and belly laugh.  I envisioned finding this great cast and subscribing to it.  Then every morning, just before I  check my e-mails, I’d click on this site and start my day with a chuckle.  I’m still searching.  Any suggestions?  Is there a site similar to Delicious that would help me weed through all the podcast junk?

As far as podcasting in the classroom, I’m sure you could find podcasts that related to whatever you were teaching.  Kids could also make their own podcasts as a way show what they have learned.They could do that instead of writing one of those boring papers like kids used to do in the 20th century.

As you can tell I am definitely warming up to the web 2.0 concept but… I had to give another frustrated laugh this morning.  I read our assignment about Library Thing and was excited to hit the books.  When I went to the site a screen came up saying the site was down for the next few hours. It should be back up and going now.  Check and see –   click here.  So much for finishing up this week’s assignment this morning.  I’ll slip into my studio and get started on my next painting. Below a shot of the one I finished last week.

Before I even go into the site, let me say, I’m looking forward to this site.  I am a book nerd with a several large cases full of books – Vonnegut, Hemingway and tons of art books and fishing books.

I’ll update soon.

Acrylic on Canvas 36"x48"

Later that same day…

I got to the site and it is nice. The two things I liked the most about it were the reviews and the recommendations. This is the perfect way to find the next book you should read.  After doing my Vonnegut search and seeing how books were grouped, I think it may be time for me to read Catch 22.  I have it on one of these shelves. I’m not really sure how I would us it in the classroom though.  Unless it was to help a kid find another book to read.

The Delicious website was interesting.  I had some trouble getting signed up but I got through that.  Tagging was no big deal.  Most tagging was already done for you by using their suggestions. I could certainly use the site to help students or colleagues narrow down their searches when they need more information – especially about art.  It looks to me like this is one more good tool to narrow down all that information that is out there and prevent you from wasting so much time.

I searched mainly for sites that I could use in the art room.  I found several worthy sites.