Excel in Class

My five ideas for using Excel in the classroom are as follows: #1. A List of expenses and materials for each project to determine a price range for selling the work. -This would require keeping a budget of expenses such as the price of paint or canvas when making a painting. -Another thing I would have my students factor in is the amount of time spent and tell them to give themselves a base rate of about $8 to $9. -As mentioned before this will help them determine a price range as well as teach them how to manage their own time and money on projects. -NETS-S Standard: 4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making c. Collect and Analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions. Since art supplies are incredibly expensive and often times field trips are cut from budgets, I would use excel for encouraging fundraising. I would probably introduce this into art club and there are several different things I could use excel for in this case. #2. If we were to have a t-shirt sale at the school with an original design from one of the students, excel could be used to organize and tally up the data received from the voting process. -A chart could be used to sum up and present the data. -NETS-S Standard: 3. Research and Information Fluency d. Process data and report results. #3. A set goal in mind could be put in place so that the students can figure out how many shirts they will need to sell in order to get the correct amount of money. This could help them strategize and plan ahead as well as teach them to once again make a budget. They could also allocate certain amounts of money collected in different ways if they were doing several fundraisers here. -NETS-S Standard: 1. Creativity and Innovation d. Identify trends and forecast possibilities. #4. Another way that the students could use this is by organizing the information received by the people who bought tee shirts. They could use excel to create a list of the names, sizes, amount of shirts bought by each individual, and forms of payment used. This is a great way to teach students how to organize information so that there are no horrible mix ups and everything is clearly organized. This is an important skill to have because everyone takes money very seriously and if something goes wrong the consequences could be very bad. -NETS-S Standard: 3. Research and Information Fluency b. Locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources. #5. This one is specifically geared towards my curriculum and it is supposed to demonstrate the change of worth in artwork over time. The project would ask the question of how a painting sold in the 1600's for 12 American dollars might increase in price by present day. It would ask specific numbers and require a certain formula to increase the currency amount in excel. By using excel as a tool, they would not have to do too much math, but would still get the idea that time increases the worth of an item by a lot! They would also be asked to compare and they would have to give specific reasons why something might increase in price over time and do research to find famous works of art on www.sothebys.com so that they can compare it to the standard prices of artwork during the time the work of art was made. -NETS-S Standard: 4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making c. Collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions.

COPYRIGHT

I had already known a bit about copyright laws before the class especially in relation to movies being publicly viewed, but there were still a few surprising things to me. First, I had no idea that copyrights were protected in the constitution and that surprised me. I also found it intriguing to know that the laws are somewhat vague and it depends on the people judging the case at the time to see what side they will choose. During the jeopardy game in class, there were times I thought that the copyright was not violated because of one thing, when it really wasn't violated because of some other weird reason such as market values. I have seen copyrights being violated all of the time in schools and outside of them. I had a teacher that would copy books and give them out to the students rather than purchasing multiple textbooks for everyone within the class. I have also had teachers show a film for class that had nothing to do with what the class was learning. Outside of classes there are waaaay too many instances to count of people breaking copyright laws. One of the primary ways this is done is through downloading music illegally. Other ways people break copyright laws are through copy and pasting images and watching movies online for free. The internet has made stealing things much easier and copyright is struggling to keep up. It is important to teach copyright respect to students because they will be using the internet and using information they found and they do not want to be penalized for it ever. I would do it to inform them on what is right and wrong so that they are not getting in trouble doing illegal things. I will do this by making a good example of myself and teaching the students to use their "own" pictures and designs to make art. I think this is a good way of discouraging students from stealing other people's photographs and designs.

Smartboards in the Classroom

Interactive whiteboards are awesome learning tools. They allow for so many different possibilities in the classroom. It is nice to do demonstrations right in front of the children instead of making them get up and stand around a little table. The technology is very easy to use. The pros of the Smartboards in the class, are that they can grab the attention of the students very easily. They are much more entertaining than just looking at a normal whiteboard. The cons of installing them into the classroom are that I would have to worry about it getting damaged or it could malfunction and ruin the entire lesson plan I had for the day. If I were using this for past lesson plans, I would probably have to change my lessons to fit around it more. One lesson focused on drawing faces and I could see using the magic pen tool to zoom in on important parts of the face and demonstrate the process better. Overall, I love the smartboard and I look forward to using it while I am teaching.

Michel Hazanavicius knows what he is doing

When I first heard about The Artist, I thought the idea of a modern day, black and white, silent film was interesting but not something that would be incredibly entertaining. I was dead wrong. This movie won 5 Academy Awards, including best picture, but what really impressed me about it was how it took film, more specifically, a wide release film, and made it back into a respectable art form. Lately, with the sudden fad of 3D movies and the entertaining movies that are bled dry by the many sequels following them, film has been very much about making money and not taking risks. As I look at the film department here at Albright College, it is run by older men who despise big money movies because they destroy film as an art form, and I think Michel Hazanavicius (Director of The Artist) felt this way too. His film is not only respected by the academy but a piece of art that can be respected by artists everywhere.