Technology in Art.

The world of teaching has changed since I was in elementary school. The lessons I remember learning in art class between grades 3 and 5 seem almost outdated. While their content is still important (things such as the elements of design) the way in which these methods are taught are so different now. There is a fine line between teaching children the new technology in the ways of art and cutting out more traditional methods of art making.
When I see the new technology I am concerned that eventually all curriculum will be taught online and have not seen many online curriculum's in the way of art. Art requires a hands on approach and it is necessary for all children to experience and learn the techniques in order to grow as individuals.
This is just a rant; a concern of mine. I feel the need to engage the children using technology relevant to the student's outside experiences, but at the same time do not want to loose the personal connection the material, classmates, and teachers.

Excel Ideas

Everyone knows how much I love one day workshops! So here's one you might have actually found interesting: Excel in the classroom.
Some ideas for classroom activities in the art room:
1. Have the students use Excel to chart a graph of their favorite colors. Students will design a survey of 6 different colors. Each student is to pick their favorite color. We will analyze the data and enter it into Excel. Then create a graph or pie chart.
2. Students will keep track an inventory of art supplies using Excel. Each semester we will count the number of paints, boxes of markers and crayons, brushes, paper, etc. and the students will mark it into an Excel spreadsheet. They will then see how much supplies were used throughout the year.
3. Students will use it to keep track of the art they have created. This list will include the date, title, and any opinions on the piece they made. They can use the list to reflect on the work they created at any time.
4. Students will create an Excel spreadsheet of important artists in history. This list will include the name of the artist, date of birth, location, important works created, important events, the genre of art created, and the date of death if applicable.
5. Students will chart the probability of getting certain colored legos in a box of legos.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is an easy way to store and find interesting websites. It is most commonly used among teachers in order to share websites that other professionals have found useful. There are so many websites out there and with social bookmarking it is easy to search websites through colleagues with the same interests and profession. This saves a lot of time. Teachers may also post course readings and important websites through a social bookmarking site. This saves paper and ensures that all readings are located in one place.
Students can use social bookmarking sites as a way to keep all of their references listed for school research projects and in turn share these websites, which may be helpful to other students.
I think social bookmarking will help me because I no longer need to keep bookmarks and can access all the important websites from any computer.
I choose to use Diigo as my social bookmarking website because spelling out delicious with all the periods in between was a pain. Also, some schools block that site because of the word.
http://www.diigo.com/dashboard/neonangel

Lesson Plans from Google Apps

There are only two lesson plans in my content area of Fine Arts.
The first lesson plan is A Place in Time with Google Tools- The Impact of Photography designed for grades 10-12. In this lesson plan, the teacher must first create a Google Earth tour of a few selected photographs that have influenced the US or World opinion. The students will then view the teacher's earth tour and select photographs from American photographers. They will then watch a PBS film "American Photography a Century of Images" and view the online film guide in Google Docs. Students then create their own website and Google Earth tour based on the findings of the photos they selected from the original tour the teacher created. The students must properly site the information and teachers can provide feedback and critiques by using the comment feature in Google Docs. This lesson plan covers the NETS for Students standards 1. Creativity and Innovation and 3. Research and Information Fluency.

The second lesson plan is Great Moments in Art and is designed for students grades 6-8. Students are to use Google Calender to compose a calender of important art events or artist birthdays in history. They use museum links to find this information. Upon entering the information along with location into the calender, the student will also create a Google Map where students can click on the location and see a photo of the location. Students may do this lesson in groups or alone. The NETS-S Standards are 2. Communication and Collaboration and 3. Research and Information Fluency.

Google Apps

It would have been really helpful to me in college if I had the Google Apps calender. I would have loved to share the schedules with others and been able to see when my teammates were available for practice. And who doesn't want their very own website? That would be awesome. It might have also been helpful to be able to share my documents with others, such as the writing help desk, in order to write a more informative paper or presentation.

And I thought I was part of the Net Generation! Ha!

The language the students use is often times the language that I use. I familiar with the most computer terminology. I consider myself part of the Net Generation. I am no stranger to the various forms of media used by Net Geners today,but I'm sure there are plenty of things that I do not know about. I find it hard to believe that at this point in time, there are still professors who refuse to use email. I must admit that it has been a long time since I've set foot in a library for a research project and that most of my information can be found on Google or Wikipedia.

However, I might have to agree with the attitudes of the Generation X when it comes to getting to the point. I don't appreciate classes where the majority of the time is spent getting off topic while students repeat the same points they've already made just in different words. I am here to learn, and granted there is a certain value in a class discussion, but when it takes away from the main topics we are supposed to be discussing I start to loose focus.

We can't always teach students the way they want to be taught. Just because they learn by giving them all fun and games doesn't mean it should be the only way to teach them. Students need to know that when they are done with school, the business world will not accommodate to their learning process and will more than likely require you to read the texts and that the power point presentations will be boring in a business setting. Students still need structure and discipline in order to make it in the business world. I'm not saying that using technology in fun and interesting ways is a bad, we just have to consider its implications in settings outside of school and how a generation can progress without valuable reading and comprehension skills.

As I read the Diigo articles, I am thinking about all the tools and terminology of web 2.0. I was reminded that I had no idea what web 2.0 even meant. I have to constantly tell myself that this information is important to my success as a teacher. I feel very close minded and have to change my way of thinking. But it is not easy. All of these things the students have learned slowly over a long period of time, and now I am forced (through my own drive for success) to learn these things within the next year and a half, or possibly less. Perhaps it is that I am not really a total part of the Net-Gen but only partially.

I am skeptical of strictly online schools at the K-12 level. Is this a product of my only partial involvement with the Net Gen? I am so stubborn that I just can't believe that learning everything online could have a positive effect on children? I see that online schooling can cut back on the budget for education, but does the budget outweigh the students final educational outcome? Will the students wake up one day and realize that they have been missing out on so much by learning at home/ These are questions I can not answer and leave it up to researchers and parents who are willing to take that risk.

I must admit that I have not heard of a lot of the R/W technology. Although I have heard of Flickr, I had never used it and was unaware of its photo annotation. I do not know what an aggregator is. I have never used nor heard of Google Docs so I went to the site. It seems pretty useful to me. It is all the word processing documents found in one place where you can share it all without the hassle of downloading the file to the internet and copy and pasting text.

I leave you today with a quote from Chapter 5 of Educause and a video I found on School 2.0.

"Lessons last longer if we understand the relative steps to reach them."

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=7191679&page=1

The Net Generation

Today's children, known as the Net Generation, learn by doing. Not just doing, but doing fast. What some may call impatience, the Net Geners have termed "immediacy". The texts we have read this week will lead us to believe that this immediacy stems from the generations involvement with technology from birth, or at least a very early age. I tend to agree that all the technology that our children are exposed to are building a different "brain" than those of previous era's and this greatly effects how we should be teaching our students.

Chapter 2 makes a few valid points that I can relate to such as the need for structure and engagement, which I think is true of almost all generations. I can also look back on numerous occasions when I found myself simply skimming over readings. However, I don't believe that all students prefer to work in teams, although I believe that it is still an essential skill to have. I found it also interesting to know that children like to make a difference in their community, which is also a characteristic specific to the Net Generation.

I agree with the use of technology for practical purposes, not just for the sake of using technology. When using the technology in a fun and innovative way, rather than simply copying and pasting the regular lesson plan in a technological format, the students are engaged while at the same time giving some structure to the lesson.

I think it is important to remained focused on things like reading, writing, and math and not lose sight of those things while making lesson plans whose main goal is to keep the student focused.

As for the article on Connectivism, it seems a little dangerous to me that the ability to learn is more important than what we know. So yeah, I know how to research things, but if I can't retain any of that information, then what good will it do? I suppose it's part of a never-ending cycle of incoming knowledge and with technology and information changing as fast as it does, the ability to learn new information might be more important than knowing the outdated information.

In the risk of this being too long, I leave you with a quote from the "21st-Century Digital Learner" as described by a student when speaking of teachers and technology:

"You think of technology as a tool. We think of it as a foundation-- it's the basis of everything we do."

In Depth

This class is going to be a bit more than expected, but I can handle it.