Tag Archives: arts

21st century learning, art, creativity, Education, networking, Web 2.0

Can we see the process in the end product?

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indoorlanewayproject

Last Saturday my sister (art teacher) and I finally saw the exhibition of work which was the culmination of The Indoor Laneway project. My last post explains the project.

The exhibition space is quite large and the ideas behind the exhibit well thought out. The adolescent bedroom and laneway leading to the main screen showcasing students’ work is effective. We sat on the chairs provided (I felt a little like Papa Bear on Baby Bear’s chair) and enjoyed the mix of styles and perspectives.

As we were going out, I said to my sister, ‘It’s more than it looks’.

That’s not to denegrate it in any way. I thought the exhibition looked professional, and considering the short six-week time period for the whole thing to come together, it was very impressive. It is true about art in general – and many other things too, of course – that there’s more to the whole process than meets the eye, and I think it’s worth thinking about. The Indoor Laneway Project blog solves that problem for students and educators involved, and in this way it holds the valuable stuff – the evolving thoughts, thrown-up ideas and resources, positive feedback, documentation of the process which leads to the final product, but which is almost more than the final product.

I thought I’d pull out some examples of what I mean from the blog:

Eugenia defines the most important part of the experience – collaboration:

Hi Indoor Laneway creators,

I can see you’ve been working hard and exploring the remix idea which is so excellent to see. A big part of this project is about connecting with others even if you live hundreds of kilometres apart and using this blog as a portal – and Terrie and Rebecca it’s so cool that this is the concept you’re using in your portal/portrait work.

Nikita (student from Mooroopna) says:

Hi everybody. I’m Nikita and i was thinking about making a virtual dance video if Daniel was interested…It would be great to have us both filmed in front of a green screen and then all footage is combined here… The most exciting thing about this is it could be the first time that this has been attempted. Hope you guys are really interested in this idea.

Yolander called for a combined effort from the cohort:

We need sounds such as laughter, voices of family and other important sounds that will relate to it, would you be able to assist me in writing this particular way?… Help in researching sounds. (it is easy to spend all day…) We have 8 min of swamp sounds as the birds all wake up for background… 

We would also like to use lots of home bits and pieces from both schools, sporting things and home items and animate them in and out. HELP!!!

Nikita thinks out ideas and process:

I was thinking of the way we could tackle this Virtual Dance video. Firstly we need to find a soundtrack from Jamendo that goes for 3 mins minimum that has an easy beat to dance a simple routine to. Then we should choreograph a simple routine for Daniel and I.

Pros- It will look great when finished.

Cons- It will look a little artifical and the greenscreen size will restrict movement but thats ok.

Kayla and Laura share an idea:

We are working with the other students on this project and we are glad that you like the idea of involving everyone.

We would like to get some Photos and/or short Clips of close ups of eyes or people pointing in and looking from WFS when possible to add to our project.

Emma, Yolander, Tom, Josh, Maddison ask for contributions:

A group of us have decided to concentrate on our original idea of the light beams coming from the computer screen. We would like to have the photos from home going into the computer with Indoor Laneway open on the screen, with the light beams as a way to remix them. We have recorded or sourced sounds that will be appropriate for this project, such as ‘catch it’ when a cricket ball goes into the screen and waves for a surfboard. This idea will incorporate everyones work. Could you please send us HEAPS of high res. photos and if possible with the objects eg. cricket ball, skateboard, guitar, etc. selected out and saved in a .PNG format? That would be really awesome

 These are just some of the extracts from the interactive process at the heart of The Indoor Laneway Project. I think you get an idea of where the strength and value of this project lies.

Will viewers of the exhibition understand the depth of this project? Probably not. If they took time to have a look through the blog on the computers provided in the exhibition, then they’ll have some idea. If they browse the tab ‘Make and create tasks and responses’ on the blog, then they’ll have an even better understanding of the project.

Does it matter? Do viewers need to know every aspect of the process? Well, from an assessment perspective, yes. Surely the entire process would be considered in the final evaluation. This brings me to the question of assessment in general. If we understand that the entire learning journey is valuable, and not just the final product, are we convinced that our method of assessment is appropriate, or should we rethink it?

Clearly, what the kids get out of it is more than the finished product. Their learning experience has been enriched by the challenge of a multi-tasked program, through online collaboration with another school, spurred by a project taking them out of the school to a public audience. I can imagine that the face-to-face meeting would have been fantastic, and building the sets together enjoyable.

Wouldn’t it be good if there were more opportunities for students of every discipline similar to this one?

21st century learning, art, creativity, Education, networking, teaching, Web 2.0

Art students collaborate – Indoor Laneway Project

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Sometimes things happen in schools. Days and lessons go by and pile up but occasionally an exciting kind of learning takes place. Marie Salinger, art teacher and Director of Learning Enhancement at Whitefriars College (my school), has been a catalyst for this kind of learning. Marie has taken the plunge with her Year 11 Studio Arts class – diving into unchartered waters and taking on the challenge of long-distance, shared learning with Mooroopna Secondary College many kilometres away. Did I mention they had less than a term to produce a show for the public? I’m talking about the Indoor Laneway Project.

Marie talks about how she feels about the project

I am feeling so energised and excited about the Indoor Laneway Project and am especially enjoying the chance to tap into some wonderful, rich resources so easily. Working with Dan West (the Arts Centre) and Eugenia Lim (ACMI) and having access to their wealth of experience, knowledge, technical expertise and creative talents has been a huge incentive and is adding a whole new level of excitement to my work in the classroom. I have also noticed a big shift in how the students are approaching the set tasks. They feel that there is a real purpose to their work and are very aware that they will be addressing a much larger audience than would usually be the case. Normally we might have the opportunity to display their artwork around the school as well as at our VCE exhibition in October. Displaying student work in this way for the school communitiy is great but now we have the chance to show our artwork to anyone, anywhere in the world, who is interested . A daunting but also very exciting possibility.

In the About section of the Indoor Laneway Project’s website, you’ll read this:

Education at the Arts Centre Presents Indoor Laneway – an online collaborative arts project. Its intention is to allow regional and metropolitan secondary school students to develop digital sound and art work.

 Under the mentorship of an established media artist and school based digital media educators, participants remix and re-contextualise each others work and collectively assemble sound and images to explore artistic practice that focuses on key concepts of: 

  • Self
  • Home
  • Global and Local Positioning
  • Connection
  • Exchange 

Over two weeks in September, the Indoor Laneway will establish a virtual space in the Arts Centre’s BlackBox where work generated will be displayed, results disseminated in a public forum and location based performances will take place.

Of all the outcomes listed in the About page, this is one which resonated with me:

  • encourage within participants a community of collaborative creation and a sense of unity working towards a common artistic outcome;

Talking to Marie during the very short span of several weeks before the opening, she spoke of a sense of excitment and engagement amongst the students, and a noticeable increase in productivity and bouncing off others’ ideas. On the day that the two classes met at the Black Box in the Arts Centre to build the sets, I would have loved to be there to witness the shared activity which prepared for a real exhibition in a well known Melbourne Arts space and open to a real audience. I have a feeling this will be something the students will always remember.

Reading Marie’s blog posts, you can sense her involvement in the students’ engagement with the project:

It is so wonderful to see these young students bouncing ideas around. They are so creative and innovative and I am loving the vitality that surrounds the project. There is a lot of dialogue going on about the actual exhibition space and how we might use it to display the very large, diverse and amazing art mountain that has developed from the Indoor Laneway Project.

I’m looking forward to seeing the exhibition this Saturday. Congratulations to Marie, to students and art teachers of Whitefriars College and Mooroopna Secondary College, for your amazing, inspiring work! A real example of authentic learning beyond the walls of the classroom and out of the textbook. Learning from each other, creating together and exhibiting to the world.

21st century learning, blogging, creativity, Education, learning, Literature, reading, teachers, teaching

What would happen if maths and language arts teachers swapped jobs?

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bobrobertasmith

Art21 blog has given me an interesting idea in their latest post:

Last year the Guardian asked its sports and art writers to swap pieces for a day. Tennis correspondent Steve Bierley reviewed a Louise Bourgeois (Season 1) exhibition, which Bob and Roberta Smith fell in love with and subsequently made into a text-based painting.

Hmmm…

But how can we translate that into the school environment? I mean, the idea is something I’ve been playing with for a while – wouldn’t it be good if school didn’t separate learning into subjects?

Life isn’t like that, so why….?

In my job as teacher librarian I write a blog to encourage reading – I’ve mentioned it before – well, it’s not only about reading but all that goes with it. Thinking, discussing, idea-broadening, understanding – you know what I mean. Ideally, I’d love for the blog to create a reading (thinking, etc.) community, one that links people within the school through interests and discussion, but also links the school community with the wider community. I’ve also spoken about this before. Yes, I have so far included a couple of book recommendations/reviews by teachers who aren’t librarians. This is good, this gives the students the idea that people outside of the library read and enjoy reading. But …. they’re English teachers.

What I would really love is if sports teachers wrote about their reading. Yes, sports teachers. Maths teachers. Legal studies teachers.

So what kind of swap could I do? Do you think it would be easier for the maths/science teachers to talk books than the other way around? At first I thought yes. What’s left of my own maths/science knowledge, the little I gained in secondary school? I wouldn’t really like to go there. But then I remembered Sean Nash. He blends Science with the Arts. I was overwhelmed by his approach when I first discovered Sean’s blog, and I continue to be overwhelmed because it’s so inspiring, and I don’t see many educators do it.

Sean’s wife, Erin, shares his way of looking at a blended curriculum. Have a read of Erin’s profile on Sean’s biology ning where she says:

The best thing about the study of biology is:
The opportunity it provides for invoking curiosity and questioning in students and instructors alike. There are so many interesting topics in Biology that, ultimately, bring about questions that just aren’t currently answerable, and this provides so many awesome possibilities for critical thought and analysis. I could have taught English or Biology, and I was drawn to science because of that one big question, “WHY?”

 Isn’t this also the point of literature? The WHY and WHAT IF?  What if a character lived in a particular time/situation? How would that character live out his/her life? And WHAT IF this complication arose? WHY would he/she act in that way/make those choices? Personal choices, ethical choices, any choices.

I frequently reflect on what I’m trying to achieve in writing the fiction blog. Why is it important to stretch students’ – and for that matter, teachers’ – concept of what a reader is like, why we read, why books grab our attention, how books and films get our reactions and lead us into discussion or debate. It’s not a library thing, it’s not an English thing – and yet, it is literacy. The kind of literacy that is important for all of us across disciplines and beyond school. Sean Nash sums it up excellently when he talks about the connection between science and literacy in his comment to my post:

Science and literacy had certainly better go together. We are in a heap of trouble as a species as it is. We can’t afford to continue to create a scientifically-illiterate populace. Where science and literacy are separate, science is but mystery and mythology to even our brightest.

21st century learning, Web 2.0

ABC Articulate now on Twitter

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ABC’s Articulate is now on Twitter. Follow it here.

articulateontwitter3

 

People have been asking questions about Twitter lately – wondering what the point of it was, and whether it was unnecessary when you could just use your Facebook status.

In this case the news update aspect of Twitter is something to consider. I’m following Articulate on Twitter so that I can quickly view  the ABC’s daily take on arts news and events in Australia and throughout the world. It’s quicker and cleaner than going through Google Reader. Interested? Just click on the link.

What did I discover today?

A New York Times article aroused my curiosity about the release of a previously unpublished Tolkien book

There will be much celebrating around the Party Tree in Hobbiton: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said in an e-mail message that it planned to release a previously unpublished book by J. R. R. Tolkien that predates his novel “The Hobbit” and his fantasy epic “The Lord of the Rings.” The book, “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun,” was written during the 1920s and ’30s, while Tolkien held the Rawlinson and Bosworth professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. It is his English-language narrative of the Norse hero Sigurd the Volsung, whose medieval adventures were — of course — populated by magic horses, dwarfs, dragons and gods with mischievous motives. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said that it would publish the book, with commentary from Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien, on May 5.

I clicked the link for this tweet

“Stephen Fry Twitters for NZ Internet Freedom” http://tinyurl.com/d7o9g7 #blackout

and read the opening paragraph to an article which explained the tweet:

British actor Stephen Fry has given a global highlight to a protest against a contentious New Zealand internet law due to come into effect next week.

This tweet interested me also

Cinema adaptation of Life of Pi may have found a director in Ang Lee. Good choice? http://twurl.nl/2lc8nu

Having skimmed The Life of Pi, I’m curious as to how it would translate into a film.

This one caught my eye, since I’ve posted about the YouTube Symphony Orchestra earlier

Youtube wants you to vote for its symphony orchestra; 3 Aussies are in contention. http://twurl.nl/oteltl

Reading these and other tweets didn’t take long at all. Quite satisfactory.

art, Education, photos, Web 2.0

Art Education 2.0

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Art Education 2.0 is a global community of art educators exploring uses of new technology.

Art Education 2.0 is for art educators at all levels who are interested in using digital technologies to enhance and transform art teaching and learning experiences. The aim of Art Education 2.0 is to explore ways of using technology to promote effective art education practices, encourage cultural exchanges and joint creative work, and support artistic projects, curricular activities, and professional development opportunities deemed important by our members.

When you sign up, you can avail yourself of all the usual socialnetworking options, for example, you can invite friends, upload photos or videos, or start a discussion. At a glance from the homepage you can see current projects, forum discussions and recent blog posts. The format is well organised and easy to read, eg. the post ‘Sir Ken Robinson & creative thinking’ , a post about Ken Robinson’s well-known TED talk, ‘Are schools killing creativity?’, is followed by several clearly displayed comments. I suppose, what I’m trying to say, is that it’s all there, and it’s easy and enjoyable to browse. A late night for me recently while I explored the blogroll – always dangerous to jump into hyperlinks, branching out evermore into oblivion.

New Web 2.0 resources in the right-hand navigation offer such delicacies as Andrew Douch’s video on the benefits of podcasting; Vizu, an interactive poll that can be added to a website or blog; 12 seconds, where you can record and share short videos about what you’re doing or where you are, etc.

On the left, there’s a chat option, featured websites, an option to share photos or videos, a section with a blog called ‘educational paradigms’, which includes posts such as ‘Keeping your teaching experiences fresh’, ArtsJournal , where you can check out daily art news, and more. You can also join groups, such as ‘first year art teachers’, or ‘Voicethread in the artroom’.

Digital art is popular with students, and teachers can get support for this by joining ‘Digital design’ . ‘Teaching animation’ supports teachers in a discussion of ideas, strategies, and tools for teaching animation.

I’ll definitely be telling my art faculty about this supportive art community. Makes me want to be an art educator!