Youngest Speaker to Speak at TED Talks; amazing information from a child

Adora Svitak

Happy New Year

Here is a great New Years video:

Connecting Art Educator’s to WEB 2.0

CONNECTING ART EDUCATORS TO WEB 2.0 TOOLS

By: Patty Zeitz

Onward right brained intelligences!  Get connected to WEB 2.0 and watch the collaboration, innovation, and creativity soar us onward through the 21^st century.  Social media and instantaneous connectivity have changed our students’ way of viewing the world, themselves, and their artwork.  They can share ideas and thoughts and get reactions from many aspects of social media, which leads to peer collaboration and innovation.  Their work is now not just judged or reacted to by one teacher or students viewing in the hallways. They can have millions of people react to their work by simply posting their images.  Art students are taught to have a voice in their work, and that voice can now be heard by millions in an instant.   How inspiring is that?

How do we keep up with where these students are today?   Join the WEB 2.0 world!

Why is this so imperative art that educators change with the times?  Nothing brought the reason closer to home then when I read a book by Daniel Pink, called. ‘A Whole New Mind.’  It talks about how right brain directed aptitudes are becoming the commodity of the future in the conceptual age.   Left-brained skills have been honored in the testing society and therefore deemed more respected in the past but the tide is changing.  Art teachers need to be lifetime learners, ever changing and growing with the tides.  Join the WEB 2.0 wave of the future.

Here are some of the FREE WEB 2.0 tools I presently use for planning and classroom use:

BLOGGING: http://edublogs.org/

RSS FEEDS AND GOOGLE READER: http://www.google.com/reader/view/

CREATIVE COMMONS: http://creativecommons.org/

PHOTOSHARING: http://www.flickr.com/

VIDEO CONFERENCING: http://www.oovoo.com/home.aspx

SKYPE: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING: http://www.diigo.com/ , DELICIOUS ACCOUNT: http://www.slideshare.net/sharpjacqui/how-to-create-a-delicious-account-presentation-633033

SLIDESHOWS: http://photopeach.com/

TEACHER TUBE: http://www.teachertube.com/

WIKIS: http://www.wikispaces.com/content/for/teachers

If you want to get further inspired to start using WEB 2.0 tools watch this video from TED Talks for an understanding of why it is imperative that we change the way we are educating our students. This is a very powerful video about education and is full of pertinent information to help inspire art educators of today. http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Learning 2.0 Course

• 
  ONGOING Week 0 – Registration
  • Thing 0 - Learn about the course, get yourself a Google/Gmail Account and get Firefox (this must be done before June 1, 2011!)

• 6/6/11 Week 1 – Introduction
  • Thing 1 - Review some strategies for Lifelong Learning
  • Thing 2 - Learn a bit about Web 2.0, and Why it Matters
  • Thing 2.5 - (Register for your spiffy new EDUBLOG and get a tiny jump on Week 2!)

• 6/13/11 Week 2 – Blogging
  • Thing 3 - Set up your blog and write your first posts.
  • Thing 4 - Explore some uses of blogs in education; Consider possibilities for blogging in your professional environment.

• 6/20/11 Week 3 – RSS and Aggregators
  • Thing 5 - Learn about RSS and set up Google Reader
  • Thing 6 - Feed your reader: find & subscribe to feeds
  • Thing 7 - Explore one or more tools of choice (AudioBoo, Glogster, Bubblus, TodaysMeet, etc)

• 6/27/11 Week 4 – Wikis
  • Thing 8 - What is a wiki? Explore educational uses for wikis.
  • Thing 9 - Set up your own page on the K12 Learning 2.0 participant sandbox wiki.

• 7/4/11 Week 5 – Images & Slideshows
  • Thing 10 - Learn about Creative Commons
  • Thing 11 - Intro to Photosharing and Tagging; Explore Flickr and download some CC photos
  • Thing 12 - Create an online Slideshow using Creative Commons photos

• 7/11/11 Week 6 – DIY-PD
  • Thing 13 - Attend a “21st Century” Conference (in your PJs)
  • Thing 14 – CATCH UP / TAKE A BREATHER. Check your Google Reader at least every other day!

• 7/18/11 Week 7 – Social Smarts: Social Bookmarking & Social Networking
  • Thing 15 - Social Bookmarking (& More) with Diigo
  • Thing 16 - Explore Classroom 2.0, ISEnet and other education-related networks.
• 7/25/11 Week 8 – Podcasting & Videosharing
  • Thing 17 - Intro to Podcasting; Explore podcasts in iTunes
  • Thing 18 - Create a “Bare Bones” podcast
  • Thing 19 - Intro to Video Sharing; Explore YouTube and TeacherTube

• 8/1/11 Week 9 – Get Productive & Map Your Way
  • Thing 20 - Google Docs is your Office in the Cloud
  • Thing 21 - Create a custom map using Google Maps

• 8/8/11 Week 10 – Connect & Reflect
  • Thing 22 - Step Into the Stream: Try Twitter
  • Thing 23 - Where do we go from here? Reflections and next steps.

K12 Learning 2.0 Course

K12 Learning 2.0 Course

Summer 2011 SCHEDULE is

• ONGOING Week 0 – Registration
  • Thing 0 – Learn about the course, get yourself a Google/Gmail Account and get Firefox (this must be done before June 1, 2011!)

• 6/6/11 Week 1 – Introduction
  • Thing 1 – Review some strategies for Lifelong Learning
  • Thing 2 – Learn a bit about Web 2.0, and Why it Matters
  • Thing 2.5 (Register for your spiffy new EDUBLOG and get a tiny jump on Week 2!)

• 6/13/11 Week 2 – Blogging
  • Thing 3 – Set up your blog and write your first posts.
  • Thing 4 – Explore some uses of blogs in education; Consider possibilities for blogging in your professional environment.

• 6/20/11 Week 3 – RSS and Aggregators
  • Thing 5 – Learn about RSS and set up Google Reader
  • Thing 6 – Feed your reader: find & subscribe to feeds
  • Thing 7 – Begin to build an RSS reading habit. (Listed on same page with Thing 6).

• 6/27/11 Week 4 – Wikis
  • Thing 8 – What is a wiki? Explore educational uses for wikis.
  • Thing 9 – Set up your own page on the K12 Learning 2.0 participant sandbox wiki.

• 7/4/11 Week 5 – Images & Slideshows
  • Thing 10 – Learn about Creative Commons
  • Thing 11 – Intro to Photosharing and Tagging; Explore Flickr and download some CC photos
  • Thing 12 – Create an online Slideshow using Creative Commons photos

• 7/11/11 Week 6 – Discover & Reflect
  • Thing 13 – Attend a “21st Century” Conference (in your PJs)
  • Thing 14 – Explore one or more tools of choice (Blabberize, Gliffy, Quizlet, Ta-Da List, etc)
  • Thing 7b – Blog about something interesting you’ve found in your Google Reader.

• 7/18/11 Week 7 – Social Bookmarking & Tagging
  • Thing 15 – Intro to Social Bookmarking; Set up a Del.icio.us account and begin adding and tagging resources
  • Thing 16 – Discover LibraryThing

• 7/25/11 Week 8 – Podcasting & Videosharing
  • Thing 17 – Intro to Podcasting; Explore podcasts in iTunes
  • Thing 18 – Create a “Bare Bones” podcast
  • Thing 19 – Intro to Video Sharing; Explore YouTube and TeacherTube

• 8/1/11 Week 9 – Get Productive & Map Your Way
  • Thing 20 – Use Google Docs to create and share collaborative documents, spreadsheets and presentations
  • Thing 21 – Create a custom map using Google Maps (Fall)
  • Thing 7c – Blog about something interesting you’ve found in your Google Reader.

• 8/8/11 Week 10 – Connect & Reflect
  • Thing 22 – Learn about Social Networking and explore the Classroom 2.0 and other education-related NING Networks
  • Thing 23 – Sustaining your professional learning online; Reflections and next steps.

Google Docs

Why it Matters

Why a Wiki?

Wordle

THE WONDERS OF A SIMPLE WIKI

Patty Zeitz, Art Educator MS and HS, King’s Ridge Christian School

Art education today has turned a new leaf of accessibility to visual information and knowledge due to Web2.0.  The resources for educators and students are growing astronomically daily, but the reality is the resources need to be harnessed and organized in a productive, safe, and inventive way so true educational purposes are dynamic and useful in the classroom setting, and with ease for over-stressed art teachers.  With resources dwindling financially for the arts in many school systems this a FREE tool for educators to foster education at all levels.

I simply went to: http://www.wikispaces.com/content/for/teachers and started a Wiki page for my high school ceramics class. The beauty of a Wiki page is that you can decide who gets to see it and edit it by choosing options when setting up the page.  I sent all my high school students in the class an invite by e-mail and they all then accepted and can alter the pages, add content, and respond to content, but others cannot because it is protected.  But the most important aspect of this tool is that I receive a personal e-mail from the Wiki site as to every change made and by whom.  There is also a history tab to the site where you can check the same information   Basically every edit is documented so time/day of assignment are recorded.   Creativity of use of this one simple tool offered by Web2.0 is at the mercy of the art educator who needs to address and engage these kids where they are at today in this dynamically resourceful world.  Posting images, inserting links, embedding widgets is a breeze on a Wiki page.  The Wiki website has tutorials if you don’t know how to use those tools. Here is a tutorial video on how to start using a Wiki page, but remember as educators to click on the free Wiki for K-12 teachers:

http://www.wikispaces.com/content/wiki-tour

I learned how to use a Wiki page from a course I took last summer called K12Learning2.0. I have been in education for 24 years, which means I have taken my fair share of courses and workshops, and one of the most exciting courses I have ever taken is the K-12Learning 2.0 course: http://k12learning20.wikispaces.com/ .   It is a very teacher friendly on-line course with great tutorials, videos, help videos, stretch exercises for those that want to delve deeper in certain areas of interest.  It teaches educators how to become networked and use emerging Web technologies to engage students in their own learning.  Some of the topics covered were life-long learning, WEB2.0, blogs, RSS feeds, Google Reader, Wikis, Creative Commons, Photsharing, video conferencing, socials book-marking and tagging, podcasts, video-sharing, Pageflakes, Social networking, and Teacher Tube.

I have listed my first few assignments I posted on my Wiki page to give you some ideas of how the page can be used in a classroom setting:

ASSIGNMENT #1: SHARE YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE HERE……….

This was intended as a warm-up activity and for the students to get to know each other a bit, and to be sure students all had access.  My post was: “ I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Albert Einstein

ASSIGNMENT #2: COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE FOLLOWING TWO POTTERY PIECES MADE WITH THE COIL METHOD. NATIVE AMERICAN POTTER JODY FALWELL’S ASYMMETRICAL WORKS ARE INTERESTING AND ADDRESS CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES OF THE TIMES, AND PROMOTES THE VALUE OF HARMONY.  MARGARET TOFOYA, THE MATRIARCH OF THE SANTA CLARA PUEBLO POTTERS, COMPLETES HER DESIGN USING TRADITIONAL NATIVE AMERICAN MOTIFS.

I copied and pasted images of the pottery pieces for reference.  Since the students had just finished a basic coil pot they had great respect for the work they were responding to in their posts and in classroom discussion while reviewing the posts.

ASSIGNMENT #3: YOU ARE GOING TO DESIGN A 4” SQUARE DESIGN ON A BISQUE-FIRED TILE COMBINING AFRICAN DESIGNS AND MOTIFS.  YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS TO FIND THREE AFRICAN DESIGNS THAT YOU LIKE.  COPY AND PASTE THE DESIGNS ON THIS PAGE.  ONCE A DESIGN IS POSTED YOU CANNOT REPEAT IT.

The idea behind collecting images is that if you have 20 students before you in class collecting 3 images each you will then have then 60 images for class discussion and motivation before beginning a project by just bringing up the Wiki page in class for discussion, and I find the students are more engaged if they have actually collected the images themselves, as opposed to viewing images a teacher has collected, and maybe because their choices will be presented in a subsequent class discussion.

ASSIGNMENT #4:

There are two parts to this assignment.

PART 1 – DEFINE THE FOLLOWING TERMS: bisque, bisque firing, centering, clay, fire, form, glaze, glaze firing, green-ware, incising, leather-hard, matte, plasticity, pottery, scoring, slip, throwing, under-glaze.
PART 2 – LOOK UP MODERN POTTERY AND FIND AT LEAST THREE EXAMPLES OF PRESENT DAY CERAMIC PIECES AND COPY AND PASTE THEM ON THIS PAGE FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS TOMORROW.

The students found some really cool looking pottery pieces and are excited about our next project.  Again, we’ve collected 60 images for discussion, motivation, and reference on a single Wiki page.

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was one of the most famous and controversial artists of his time.  He visually explored science, psychology, and religion in his works.

Here is a photo of Salvador Dali: (Talk about how he is known for his mustache and how he has even been known to paint with his mustache.)

http://www.salvadordaliinatlanta.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Salvador-Dali.jpg

The following is the vocabulary terms that explain much of his work:

Surrealism: An art movement based on making art that is inspired by dreams and subconscious thoughts.

Transformation: Surrealist technique in which familiar places or objects are changed in form, appearance, nature, or character to become alarming or disturbing.

Dislocation: A surrealist technique in which a familiar object is placed in odd, bizarre, or unusual setting.

Double Image: One or more images are hidden within another.

Dreamlike Imagery: Images that resemble those found in a dream, especially ones that are particularly strange or unreal.

Juxtapose: To place side by side; an unexpected combination of colors, shapes, and ideas.

Now visit the website below to see a much more interesting photo of  Salvador Dali.  Be sure to scroll around the face for a bit to see the different expressions, etc.

Then go to “Who is Dali” and read the parapgraph, then “Dissect a Dali” and find the images stated by scrolling over the tiles, then go to Teacher Resources and find “Key Images Power Point Presentation” and have the students use the vocabulary terms to dissect the pictures.  (This may take a few minutes (maybe 3) to upload so it may be a good time to talk about Spanish history, etc.).

If time allows after the above, the first video found on the teacher resource page/video really reveals his personality and makes the artist more real to the students.  It is slow to start but good in the end making the audience realize his humor and brilliant wit.

http://www.high.org/dali/

Task 23 – Reflections on Learning 2.0 Course

Reflecting back on how much I knew about tools and resources on the internet before I took this course I am flabbergasted at how much I now know.  “Shift” does happen and it’s happening in my life and in the lives of my students now.  As Albert Einstin said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”  Educators need to shift with the times.  I feel very enabled as a teacher to make my lessons far more interesting,  interactive, and collaborative than they were in the past.  I plan on spending the summer digesting all that I learned and setting up my lessons in a much different format and gathering additional information from Creative Commons, Flicker,  Piknic, my Google Reader sources, and various other sites I’ve bookmarked and joined, and also going back and doing all the stretch exercises. I fathom I will be making some great connections through the social networking sites very soon.

This course, or one like it, should be a teacher re-certification requirement.  A vast majority of teachers are teaching the same materials the same ways over and over again.  It’s no wonder our student body is bored and relatively disengaged with school, except getting their assignments done for a grade.  The classroom would be a different place for these students and teachers if a student had a hand in what they are learning and how they go about learning what they need to learn.  Our high school has a great chance to take advantage of many of the tools learned about in this course because all of our high school students have a laptop issued from the school as part of their tuition.  The first step is educating the teachers, though,  and there have only been a handful of teachers who have taken this course from my school.   I believe that if I make use of the wiki type resources with my classes I can show the other teachers at my school how that enhances learning.  I also think that if I send various educational nuggets in their field to them they may get the bug to research further into how I keep finding so many interesting nuggets of information.

This course has taught me many choices of ways I can organize that vast amount of information I am now accessing.   The world actually seems smaller to me, not bigger.  I can reach out and connect with so many people with like interests and knowledge to better myself as a person and an educator.

Task 22 – Social Networking and Classroom 2.0

Being a teacher I admit I have used Facebook very infrequently.  Basically I used it to see what my own kids are doing on there.  I haven’t posted much or friended many because I worry a bit about the connectedness of it all.  I would be very much want to use that type of tool if it were protected a bit and Classroom 2.0 seems to fit that bill.

My artistic side loves the fact that kids are creating, manipulating, and sharing words, music, photos, videos, and expressing themselves on a daily basis.  Finding ways to harness that creative interest into educational tools would make learning so much more fun, collaborative, and interactive for the students.    I thought the comments about the non-conformists leading their generation in internet usage was very interesting.  I saw many facets of my own son, who is extremely computer savvy and even builds computers, in that article, “The Final Report.”  I know kids who are the traditional influentials, promotors, recruiters, organizers, and networkers.  The idea of paying attention to the non-conformist and trying to engage them in the classroom through the tools they are most comfortable using was interesting.

Classroom 2.0

Groups: So, you have to become member to be able to make a comment.  I like that feature a lot.  I found this site interesting:

Mac Classroom 2.0

Since I recently became a MAC user at home but have a different systems at work I ALWAYS have questions.  If I join this group I can pose my questions and I am very certain they will be answered.  After all this is a teacher oriented website and teachers always want to teach for some reason.  Have you ever been to a teacher convention?  It is so loud with everybody talking about something.

Researching tool: I went to photo sharing because that’s the closest to art in the choices.  I landed on a teacher asking for photos to help teach strong composition where thirds are used (if you think about a basic tic-tac-toe grid strong compositional places are on the thirds and where the lines cross).  So, one response was to check out Rule of Thirds on Google.  I taught this lesson LAST WEEK and I SO wish I had landed upon this this week.  I will use it as a review though.  Here is the result of that suggestion for searching:

Rule of Thirds

TAG: I chose “Art” and was disappointed with the results.

Latest Activity: I didn’t find that but probably will once I sign up for this great resource.  I think that a latest activity area is a important.  Hmmm.  Can I make this one of my feeds on my Pageflakes page?  I am sure that I most probably can and will do that this summer when I tweek all of this knowledge that I learned so far in this course.

Videos: I went to media and found this video (although I was disappointed in what I could find for art and teaching that, which I am sure will change quickly here).  But I did find this one which is actually a book that I used to read to younger art students:

Dot

NING: Checking out Ning was very interesting.  There are so many sites related to education that I had no idea were out there.  I joined Art Education 2.0>

and then I joined MuseumPods the Social Media Network.

One could easily get carried away searching through all of this information!

Task – 7C

I really like this little reminder exercise to check my google reader.  Every time I do that I find such great stuff.   But I am going to get this google reader connected to my Pageflakes if I can this summer so it will come to me in one place like other feeds.  Now that I have many more feeds in my google reader I can see only the top few unless you press on one and then see the others,  hence the reason to check your reader daily!  Got it.

Anyways,  I am an artist and am always looking for visuals.  I’ve signed up the the Metropolitan Museum of Art to send me an artwork a day.  I haven’t checked for a few weeks but here are some great works I can readily use in daily lesson plans with permission from the Met.  That’s big.  I work with an art book publisher and I understand the significance of being able to use a piece of artwork in your classroom.  Here’s the Met sending it to us to use for our lessons and really public use as long as we site the source.

Dante Rosseti:

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, London 1828-1882 Birchington, Kent) and Henry Treffry Dunn (British, 1838-1899)
Lady Lilith, 1867
Watercolor and gouache, on paper; 20 3/16 x 17 5/16 in. (51.3 x 44 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1908 (08.162.1)

Grant Wood:

Grant Wood (American, 1892–1942)
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931
Oil on Masonite; H. 30 x W. 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1950 (50.117)
© Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed VAGA, New York, NY

Albert Einstein:

http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/photographs/albert_einstein_johan_hagemeyer/objectview.aspx?collID=19&OID=190022542

Task 21 – Pageflakes

Yeah, well, Pageflakes is an amazing tool that can help organize some usage of sites we check daily getting feeds from various sources on one personally orchestrated page.  I like that.

I thought it was interesting that you can make it your homepage.  I’m not sure I would want to do that right now but I might consider that next year as a quick reference to teaching tools and pages I use often with students but I would have to do some organizing.  BUT, I almost copied and pasted it here with a link to have others check it out but then my e-mail would have been active then for anyone to explore so I didn’t.

I now realize the importance of tagging with this exercise.  Much more would have been brought up in searches if I had done that more often, so I will begin to do that more often and help make this “machine” work for me.

I do like Pageflakes and plan to make more use of it all this summer when I have more time to really focus on how I can organize this page for use at work and at home.  Maybe I’ll make one page for each.  Being an art teacher I would love to have feeds of information and videos I can quickly bring up when those teachable moments come up.  In class, many times a topic comes up and it would be great to have access to various forms of information organized on one page for quick reference and usage.