Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Getting my students involved

Currently I teach in a rural setting in Ohio and work with about 650 students each week teaching art to grades kindergarten through fifth grade. I love their enthusiasm each day! Right now we are in full swing of creating pottery (one piece for each student) for a fund raiser coming up in December. The students are highly creative and their glazed pieces look amazing! Students could make use of my blog to showcase their art work. This would be a great tool to highlight outstanding students. I do something like this already with bulltein boards and display cases around the school. I was also thinking I could use my blog to enhance lessons by maybe posting a website of a persoanl artist every so often. We just finished a unit on Chuck Close in fifth grade, which if you have never seen his work you should check it out at http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/. This would a be a great tool to get children more engaged in technology for educational purposes and specifically for my class! What do you think?

7 comments:

  1. Robyn,
    I think posting pictures of student art online is a wonderful idea. Students may be even more enthusiastic about creating their art, knowing that it would be published to the internet for the world to view. Would you have students learn how to take pictures and upload it to the internet, or would you hold the reigns for this endeavor? I am curious, because with 650 students, the task of capturing all pieces to post online could become quite cumbersome. Possibly in the higher grades, students may be able to handle this on their own. Maybe with the younger groups, you could take a class picture of all of their art on display in the same picture. Just a thought.


    I must admit, I especially enjoy your idea of posting about a personal or favorite artist. My opinion may be biased due to the fact that I teach Communication Arts, but to post a story and example art from a famous (or not-so-famous) artist would help students immensely with not only art, but reading and comprehending as well. Integrating technology by enhancing it with reading into your art content area could be quite beneficial. Keep up the promising ideas.
    Thanks,
    Joshua Noel

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  2. Robyn,

    Your blogging ideas sound great! Could you possibly use your blog as a springboard for your students to contribute ideas as to the next type or art or artist you study? As a student I always enjoyed being able to have input in what was being taught.

    Would you possibly be able to feature a student artist of the week? In elementary we select a student of the week from each grade level. It would be neat for that selected to student to be able to choose their favorite pieces of artwork, comment on them and then post to the blog. Good luck with your blogging experience!

    Allison

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  3. Robyn,
    I think that that posting different artists to a blog is great idea for the students to get involved! Would you post questions for the students or just have them discuss their opinions?

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  4. Joshua,
    I was so excited about getting some of my students work online that I decided to upload some images. I have not identified the student artists for privacy reasons, but am defintely excited to see where this could go. As of now, I would take the pictures and upload the images myself. The highest level I teach is fifth grade and it would be very daunting to have students uploading their own images. I am really leaning towards an "artist of the week" type of idea. Going hand-in-hand with this I would like to get students interested in my blog by featuring a professionl artist of the week and have them explore that artist' homepage. What do you think?

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  5. Allison,
    Thanks for the positive comments! I posted some recent work and am excited to add more! What does your student of the week entail at your school? Special privileges? And how is that individual recognized? Thanks!

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  6. Angie,
    I like the idea of posting a link to an artist's homepage and posing a question that my students would then discuss with me in class say every Friday. The obstacles I am overcoming is that not all of my students have internet access and so maybe it would have to be organized on an extra credit basis. The problem in my eyes with this is that it then singles out students that are disadvantaged. How would you address this problem?
    The possibilities are endless. I would love to look at professional artists as well as local artists that show their work in neighborhood galleries.

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  7. Robyn,
    Do you have a computer lab at your school? Maybe you could allow a time each week to take the students to the lab to complete this assignment. Or, the students could sign up for a time to complete this in your classroom each week. I definitely think that you are on the right track. In Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Richardson (2009) explains that there are great results being shown from using blogs in the classroom. He states,"In general, students at all levels show more interest in their work, and their ability to locate and reflect upon their work is greatly enhanced, as are the opportunities for colloborative learning" )p.28). I think that this will motivate your students to want to learn about the artists that they are studying. It will also allow give them an opportunity to express themselves. Good luck!

    Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousands Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

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