Where I’ve Been for 3 Months

Busy, busy. 2 big art displays, over 680 projects created per month and then to grade. Finished 12 post-grad. hours. The digital gallery on Artsonia. Lost my mom. Reprioritized. Creating new curriculum (slot shelters integration & a Scratch integration for next year). going to robotics battles to cheer my son’s team on (all the way to Nationals!), etc. & etc. Art club painted decor for TWO choir concerts. Sent off a bunch of “Doodle 4 Google” entries & yes, teaching art (happily) all day. Here’s some pictures from one concert and 4th grade abstract pastels (tracing shadows for inspiration first), and also a link to a fine article on educating our “next Steve Jobs’ ” (hint: “How can schools teach students to be more innovative? Offer hands-on classes and don’t penalize failure”).

The Digital Glow: Tech Used This Week

Just a short list, this Monday through Wednesday, of the tech I’ve used this week:
Vimeo, Twitter, Blogger, WordPress, Google Hangout, Skype, Stop-Motion animation, Photoshop, Word, Powerpoint, & Excel, Google Docs, Quicktime, texting my kids, digital camera, Artsonia, the ubiquitous email…The majority of the time, I was actually in my classroom teaching, though before/after school and during my planning, I am facilitating a lot of tech stuff. It has become such a tool to communicate, document, and research, I wonder how much brighter the digital glow will become. For fun,
here’s Bloom’s “digital taxonomy”. Thinking about http://www.diigo.com/ as possible eportfolio system, too. Here’s a “Flarf” (Google it) on
“Digital Glow“
Modern table plastic digital glow/
Using a 4 cell 4.8v pack fully charged and still nothing/
Welcome to the fascinating world where sublime art meets the glow/
With the date and time in blue and pink!
-L. Girbino

The Design Thinkers

Okay, had a conversation yesterday (with an engineer worried about our college graduates lack of creativity) and they were really interested in how more meaningful education is needed (like MORE art education, not less) to prepare our students for a world economy, and that got me fired up to discuss “design thinking” in more detail. I just rolled-out one lesson with it (The Wallet Project, covered at “Art 24/7“), and it was a huge success, especially the collaborative mindmaps we did (other teachers started using mindmaps in their own classrooms, too)…Art is not separate curriculum, never has been & never should be. It is not about being relevant or about integrating (although, those count, too!), it’s about engagement and meaningful learning. I’m really thinking about how to take flip instruction and UbD (backwards design) and make a mash-up with design thinking to reinvent how art education should be implemented (at all levels). Here’s a great list to get started with…
Resources: http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/
http://dschool.stanford.edu/
http://www.stanford.edu/group/redlab/cgi-bin/publications_resources.php

Stuff I’ve Found

Art Helps Make You Smart

Here’s one great way to curate information: ScoopIt (see screenshot above). I made one for arts advocacy and I love the simple interface. Another goodie found in the bit of peace before school break: Timeglider. I made one for a Mayan codex integration unit I am planning:http://timeglider.com/app/viewer.php?uid=line_927040eba49a4f5e12587c6fcfa204a0
(looks like nothing, but go to 1200 B.C.E. for the Mayan codex, then click on the picture, there are 3 codices in my timeline).
Also, The V & A has a show on beautifully crafted objects, “The Power of Making”. Potent quote from the exhibit to consider in the digital age: “Thinking by Making
Many people think that craft is a matter of executing a preconceived form or idea, something that already exists in the mind or on paper. Yet making is also an active way of thinking, something which can be carried out with no particular goal in mind. In fact, this is a situation where innovation is very likely to occur.
Even when making is experimental and open-ended, it observes rules. Craft always involves parameters, imposed by materials, tools, scale and the physical body of the maker. Sometimes in making, things go wrong. An unskilled maker, hitting the limits of their ability, might just stop. An expert, though, will find a way through the problem, constantly unfolding new possibilities within the process”

Self-Portraits

We completed Avatars in 5th grade, based on the idea of how we chose to represent ourselves differently, often based on the media, but also on the message. We used QR codes to create artists’ statements for instance.
http://static.animoto.com/swf/w.swf?w=swf/vp1&e=1322353645&f=MUIo4I3915SRgD7CAjYIIg&d=42&m=a&r=360p&volume=100&start_res=360p&i=m&options=
Here are more out-of-the-box ways to revisit self-portraiture.

Design Thinking

The big push in my classes right now is on “design thinking“, and we started with mindmaps. I was doing mindmaps in school as a young student back when teachers called it “doodling” (as in “Stop doodling and take real notes.”) How I wish I had copyrighted the concept, but then, I would not be having the time of my life as an art teacher . So, we are making the maps, and the students are loving it, and I’m thinking what a great scaffold piece for what goes on in the classrooms. Then, the assessment piece comes in, meaning, is a drawing/map/note-taking device measurable in a normative way? Right now, I cannot answer that question, yet I am quite sure the students did learn a valuable way to organize their knowledge. So, what are we designing following the brainstorm, rapid prototyping, revise, prototype again loop? Wallets, check the Stanford d-school project. Oh, and yes, I suspect many designs will involve duct tape. Instructions for: Paper Wallet, Duct Tape Wallet, Cardboard Wallet.

Limits & Creativity

All week, we’ve been painting castles in third grade using only red, blue, and white paint. By limiting the color palette, students are learning about proportions in color mixing, and they loved sharing their “recipes” with each other. The many shades of purple (a royal color by the way because the dye was very hard to make in ancient times,so only the wealthy could afford it), were quite striking on the drying rack. There is a lot of literature about limitations spurring creativity, like http://www.wired.com/culture/design/magazine/17-03/dp_intro. I often come up with my best ideas after hitting a roadblock and having to deal with that limitation. I even keep an idea generator on my computer, but my favorite idea generator is persistence. I also like “SCAMPER”:

S = Substitute
C = Combine
A = Adapt
M = Modify, magnify or miniaturize
P = Put to other uses
E = Eliminate
R = Reverse or rearrange