Explore the world without leaving your seat

I have loved all of the new software skills that I have recently acquired. I have never been too attached to technology but have always liked how simple it makes normally difficult tasks. I loved how Publisher had a bunch of different templates for flyers and Newsletters. These are things that could take hours to set up and figure out, but with the templates, it is as easy as clicking a button and adding words. Which is an AMAZING time saver. I am excited to learn more about what I can do with the Smartboard because I can see using that tool a lot. The best bit of software that we have discussed in this class, however, is the wonderful Diigo.com. I love stumbling, but I hate the fact that there is no way of storing websites that I like on it. Diigo is that missing link that I have wanted to know about for SOOOOOOO long. I found some awesome websites the other day while stumbling, and thanks to Diigo, I can find them easily. I think this will be great for research projects, I will definitely introduce my students to it, I can also see it being useful as a way to create resources for my students, which is why I bookmarked so many art museum websites. I may not be able to take them to le Louvre, but with the internet they can still experience the art within. In addition to showing my students in the future, this is the type of thing that I need to introduce to my mom. She tends to bookmark EVERYTHING she comes across online, but she uses the bookmarks tab at the top of the web browser. She also will save links in a word document that she leaves open all of the time. She loves to do research so I think she will love to use this.

Are these fish real?

Watch as contemporary artist Riusuke Fukahori creates amazing artwork using simple materials like glass, paint, resin, and wood. I came across this while looking for contemporary artists.

I give Social Bookmarking a big thumbs up

Social Bookmarking definitely has a place in the art classroom. Art education deals with a lot of art history, but something that teachers seem to fall behind on is contemporary art. I think technology is the way of the future of schooling anyways, so it is important to not fall behind. There are also such amazing sites online that can excite students. I know that sometimes I feel more inclined to do work for  this class, just because it feels as if I am exploring unknown territory. The internet is like the deep ocean and space, in that there is so much to see and so much that is new and unexplored and humans are naturally very curious so children are amazed by the wonders of technology. I think social bookmarking will definitely help me as a student, in fact, I wish I had it last semester when I had to do a LOT of research papers for my ridiculously thorough Sociology of Education Class. It seems like it could be very useful for reasearch papers because I could have organized the sites better and had them all available to me just by signing into my account, rather than printing them all out. Plus! You can highlight things, and that seems extremely useful to me because highlighting things and rewriting them right onto my essay is the very first thing I do before starting my research papers. Anyways, I digress, social bookmarking is quite nice and waaaaaaay better than normal bookmarking.

Personal Learning Network

        My resources come from a couple of different areas. One place that I find to be very good for introducing me to contemporary artists is stumbleupon.com. I use it a lot to find resources and discover new art techniques. For instance, there is a lot of street art that is being done and hundreds of youtube videos that explore new concept. Here is one I found just now when I stumbled and interest in art, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH6xCT2aTSo. Another resource I find to be rather reliable are my classmates. Whenever I have a question or even need advice, they are very helpful. I especially find this useful in my art classes since it is such a subjective subject (I love that wording), anyone who can see can give their opinion on the aesthetic value of a picture but other art students know exactly how to improve it. Professors are great resources as well, especially for when classmates are unsure of how they might help. I also like to use books as resources and find them extremely useful for describing processes for using certain mediums. My favorite is a book called Art Effects by Jean Drysdale Green. This book shows so many different techniques for applying art mediums and it explains the processes. This is my current learning network; however, I will have many more after this class.

Inspiration for Art in the Class

          When I was first explained the program, Inspiration, I thought of it as something that would be most useful in content areas such as English or the sciences, but the more I think of it, the more ideas it gives me.  Here are a couple of effective uses for Inspiration:

1. Inspiration can obviously be used as a timeline for different movements in art history. This would be very useful for me to organize information for my students.
2. In terms of art history, it can be very useful for creating connections to different movements. Not all points in history are linear in time and some artistic movements relate to periods in time that are in a completely different era. For instance, Neoclassicism period paintings that were done in the early 19th mirror the Greco-Roman style during the Classical period. Students would be able to make these connections very easily with a nicely made chart using Inspiration.
3. A web could easily represent an art movement in the center with artists and their famous paintings surrounding the outside.
4. Webs can also be helpful for displaying the elements and principles of design.
5. I could use diagrams to represent colors on the color wheel, as well as give them labels not only for their color but also for their order in the wheel. 
6. Students could use this program very effectively when they are doing presentations. They could use Inspiration to create charts such as a Venn diagram, a timeline, or a tree to show the progression and influence of movements through time. 
7. Webs can be used as a planning device for projects. When a student is struggling with inspiration for a project, he or she can use a web to plan out important ideas and materials that could be used.
8. I could use Inspiration webs for critiques. They could write down the name of the artist and write where he or she could improve in the artwork.
9. Outlining is an important thing to teach my students because they will be expected to be able to take good notes and write essays their entire high school/college careers. I would tell them to use inspiration to make outlines for presentations, essays, etc.
10. The last effective way of using Inspiration could be for helping me plan out an entire unit. If I create a web then the individual arms are lessons that I should include within my unit.

EDU 350 Google Docs is Magical

         I had used Google Docs during my early field experience class, but I did not realize the extent to which everything can be done. I find the fact that it allows a person to create documents, charts, PowerPoints, etc quite impressive. The thing I like most about it, however, is its sharing capabilities. I have had many instances working with people on an assignment at college, where absolutely none of our schedules matched up and I remember saying that we should email each other our different parts of the assignment. No one seemed to understand the concept but had I known about Google Docs, I definitely would have pushed the idea more. It is such a revolutionary idea but it is still very unknown to everyone. As far as education goes, I really hope that it is integrated into lesson and curriculum planning. I think some of the flaws of education are due to the fact that each class is so separate from each other when it is not necessary to do so. If educators were to use Google Docs, then there could be greater collaboration and perhaps a better understanding of each subject for the students. The disadvantage of this is that with everything being in the clouds, there might be higher stress levels associated with technology. It is already somewhat stressful to have ALL of this connection to everyone ALL of the time. Sometimes it is nice to just have a break from technology.

EDU 350 Blogs in the Classroom

           Even though blogs might be most beneficial to English classes specifically, there are ways to integrate blogs into the art curriculum. It is quite common to see artists share their works in a blog and sometimes that is how they get their name out there. I know that when I use Stumble with art being one of the items on my list of interests, I frequently am redirected to artist blogs. One way I could integrate blogs into my art classroom is through research. I could ask my students to create a blog and follow other artists' blogs. They would comment on the artwork and perhaps explore some of the different techniques that they may have learned from following these blogs. Another use for blogs within my classroom, would be for my students to share their works by posting them on their own blogs. I could see this as being a homework assignment, where I might tell them to do a sketch of something and post it up so that I could comment and grade them on their design and techniques and I would not have to buy sketchbooks using the budget. Another use for the blog in the classroom might be a blog posted by me. If I had a blog and they subscribed to it, I could post pictures and ask them to comment on certain principles of design within it. These are just a few of the things that can be done using blogs but the disadvantages are that not every student has access to a computer at home or a camera or scanner with which to post the pictures online. If I were to do these assignments, I would have to make sure they had access to a computer and internet either at home or at school.

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