E-Portfolio

This is the link to my ePortfolio PDF

file:///Users/Kayla/Documents/Penn%20State%20University/Senior/Fall/Art%20Education%20322/ePortfolio_PDF.pdf

Technologies

The ten technologies, old and new, that I found useful throughout this semester are WIX/webquests, iMovie, Flash, Lino, VoiceThread, SoundCloud, 3D Printing, Blogger, YouTube, and Photoshop.I selected these ten different types of technology because they all have helped me to some extent during this course and I foresee them all helping me in the future in my own classroom.

I found WIX particularly useful when we designed web quests for the middle/high school students.  It was a great resource to keep us organized and was pleasing to look at.  It enabled Shannon and I to easily create our own website despite having very little knowledge of how to go about designing one.  I could also see myself using a WIX page to create a class website if the school that I eventually work for does not have a program like Google Classroom.  It would be a great way to post what we did in class each day along with a reminder if there is any homework, especially if students are absent.

I also found iMovie to be extremely helpful throughout this course and other art education courses I took this semester.  iMovie is user friendly and, similar to WIX, enables me to create a professional-looking movie without needing much experience in making videos.  I could certainly use iMovie as a teaching tool in my classroom when I want to begin a discussion or to start a lesson.  It would also be fairly easy for the students to create their own video projects in my class using iMovie.

Similar to iMovie, Flash was a useful program to learn this semester.  Although it was a bit more difficult to figure out and would probably take some more practice than just what I had during the class, I found it to be a useful tool to get a message across.  I was effectively able to illustrate the basis of my teaching philosophy by creating a short video.  It could be a good way to spice up a website or get students thinking about your lesson.

Something that I will definitely use for myself and in my future teaching experiences is Lino.  This was an excellent way to share quick ideas or notes using the familiar method of sticky notes.  The only thing challenging about this when incorporating it into our web quest was that the students had trouble with posting their own comments and sticky notes without creating their own Lino account.  Despite that minor hiccup, they were able to post some sticky notes with messages on them, which allowed them to communicate with Shannon and me effectively.

I also enjoyed using VoiceThread as an educational experience.  I really liked the way that you can create an online exhibition that anyone can access.  This is a much more flexible way for students to see art and for me to curate a shows for my classes.  I could picture myself using this website at the start of a lesson to show examples of work that go with the project they will be creating and then I would invite my students to comment on the videos.

SoundCloud was useful for commenting on other peoples work and videos.  It works very similar to VoiceThread, although I got more experience with VoiceThread over the time of the course, so I would probably be more likely to use that.

3D printing is a very exciting new technology that I feel will make others see that the arts are necessary in schools and hopefully provide more of a budget for art programs.  It is a way that students who might not always be so excited about traditional art mediums, like painting and sculpture, get excited by using digital processes to create artwork.

Blogger is something that I have used for other classes in the past and have used throughout this one as well.  I find it very helpful to keep track of my progress when trying new processes or just documenting my thoughts.  In my studio classes, I have used this website to document how I did a certain sculptural process or took pictures of my paintings within different stages just to see how far I have come along.

YouTube is also something I have used many times before, but started uploading more videos onto it because of this class and other art education classes.  It is always a useful tool to use when sharing videos with others or finding videos about almost anything.  The only down side to YouTube is that it has some inappropriate content on it, so it is not always allowed to be used by students.  Typically the student would not be able to explore videos on YouTube on his own and it can only be used for the teacher to show a video to the whole class.

Photoshop is also a useful tool that I have used in the past and with this course.  It is also a way for students to explore digitally rather than traditionally and can make artistic ideas possible that could not be done by hand.  I have also used it to aid me in traditional ways, too.  I have used it on my paintings to see if I should make some adjustments before altering the painting permanently.

Boys in Movies Exhibition

My VoiceThread can be found here! (or copy and paste: https://voicethread.com/share/7291786/)

Curatorial Statement:

The overall theme and title for this exhibition is "Boys in Movies." Often we think of how girls are affected by the things they see on TV and feel as though they are pressured into being skinny or popular, but this tends to leave boys out. I wanted to highlight the way that males are shaped by children's movies in spelling out who they should be based on their body type. Stereotypes of different body types in males should be broken through this collection and children viewing it should start to realize that some aspects of humor in the films shown is at the expense of others in the real world. Hopefully through this exhibition, boys and girls alike will find that a male who is the typical depiction of masculinity in films is not the only way to be a man.

Find Card:

Find something in this exhibition that made you laugh! Why did you find it funny? Who might not find it funny?

Body Difference

Here is the link to my Body Difference video, called "The Fat Kid." It explores the ways that children's movies and TV shows portray overweight male characters and how it encourages bullying.

https://youtu.be/-hetHaRgiuM 

Webquest Ideas

To begin thinking about our webquest focused on 3-D printing, we first thought about the idea of multiples.  It is possible to 3-D print many of the same object an infinite amount of times as long as you have the design for that object and what effect that might have on the artistic process.  I was particularly struck with the idea that, while engineers are typically the ones using 3-D printing, artists are the ones who push the boundaries when it comes to this process.  It is important for artists and art educators to make it known that art is an important aspect of school and life that should not be overlooked.  For this webquest, we thought it would be helpful to the artistic community to show some ways that these students can begin looking at whether they want to pursue a career in the arts.  We are going to give these students a taste of what it's like to be an industrial designer and combine art with entrepreneurship.  Our idea is that these students will form design teams and think of inconveniences in their life (such as headphones getting untangled, or being left-handed in a right-handed world) and come up with a simple solution to this inconvenience.  The groups will each design a prototype and print it in the 3-D printer.  They will then pitch their idea to the class as a way to learn how to express their thoughts to a group.  Hopefully, this will help break the barriers between art and other subjects in school along with opening new doors for students who might be interested in pursuing an artistic career.

Locating Self as Teacher

The five main focuses of my classroom teaching philosophy, mentioned in my previous post, are collaboration, voice, perspective, risk, and visual culture.  I mostly came up with these ideas from how I was taught and how I was raised.  When I was a child, my parents always supported my artistic personality.  They allowed me to draw, paint and create freely.  They never dictated what I was drawing or how I was drawing it.  They let me create on my own.  This helped me grow as a person and as an artist throughout my years of growing up.  This helped me to take risks because my home was always a judgment-free zone in which I felt safe.  Growing up and being very interested in the arts, I took many art classes from elementary school and continued in high school.  Especially in high school, while I was developing a portfolio to get into school for art, my teachers also encouraged exploration.  They knew how to create a community between art students that made us gain trust in each other and learn how to collaborate with others very well.  I hope to continue to make that happen as well as helping students to gain the understanding of the perspective of others in my future classroom.

My Flash Animation is in the link below, which illustrates my beliefs in collaboration, voice, perspective, risk, and visual culture.
https://youtu.be/5CTS-jM54uk

My animation depicts a red pentagon spinning continuously spinning.  I chose a pentagon in order to represent the five core beliefs of my teaching philosophy.  The pentagon spins in order to show motion and the continuous examples of those five beliefs constantly overlapping and being taught in the lessons that I give.  The first big idea that comes up is collaboration.  Underneath, I have four stick figures that represent the students working together.  The color of the figures change with each slide as a way to show that all children are equal and will learn to work with people of all backgrounds.  The next idea that comes up on the animation is voice.  On these slides, I put a mouth with expression lines changing colors depicting speech.  I want all of my students to feel as though they have a voice and that they can express themselves without judgment in my classroom and I felt that a mouth best represented that idea.  The next idea that appears on the animation is perspective.  I have a set of two eyes -- one blue and one brown.  I wanted to have two different colored eyes on the animation to represent different people seeing eye to eye.  My idea of perspective is that other people will understand the point of view of others in order to respect their beliefs and situations.  The idea that appears next on the animation is risk.  I have a paint brush splattering different colors of paint on the pentagon because I want my students to feel as though they are being constrained as little as possible in my art room.  I want them to feel free to use materials that they have never used before, as well as materials that they have used in ways they have never used them before.  Lastly, I want my students to understand how to read visual culture.  During my class they will be aware of what they are seeing around them as well as how it impacts them, people around them and the entire world, which is why I represented this idea as the Earth.

My Future Art Room

When imagining myself teaching in 10 years, I picture myself in a large classroom in an elementary school with a lot of big windows in order to allow as much natural light as possible.  Out of the windows, there are beautiful rural views of trees and nature surrounding the school.  Students look out of these windows and feel a sense of calmness, relieving them from their busy day.  The students can even look out of these windows for inspiration for projects if we are doing a lesson about landscapes.  My classroom is an outlet for students and everyone feels comfortable to express themselves, just like the art room always was for me in school.  I have a large wall that is covered with large sheets of cheap paper that the students can feel free to go to any time that they are having artist’s block.  Here, they are allowed to doodle, scribble, or draw anything they want on the wall and in the end it’ll be a huge collaborative art project that students from each of my classes will have worked on.  A corner of my art room has a big carpet and a chair for me to sit on where I will introduce the students to artists, read books and talk to the students in a more intimate setting than if I am at the front of the room, while they are all sitting in their desks.  In this area, I also have a bookshelf with a lot of children’s books about art that they can look at closer if there is ever down time or they get finished with a project.  

There is also a space for students to display their work inside the classroom as well as space in the hallway outside of my art room so that the rest of the school can see what we are up to.  The space inside my classroom is a very white, clean space so that the students’ artwork is the main focus.  There is a cluster of desks in one area of the room where students can use the computer.  This way, if there are students that are interested in doing a project on the computer, rather than drawing, painting, or ceramics, they are free to do so.  I also have a smart board at the front of my classroom where I can display images, students’ digital work, and other presentations when teaching my students.  It’s also important to me that I have a small printing press or another way of creating printmaking projects with my students because it’s something that I didn’t get much experience with in elementary school art classes.  I also have one potter’s wheel that students can take turns experiencing throughout the school year and I’ll fire the piece they create in a kiln in order for them to keep their first wheel-thrown pot they ever make.  

One big lesson that I want my students to take away from my class is how to work collaboratively with others.  This is a skill that I find extremely valuable throughout school, the workplace and life in general.  I also want my students to find their voice.  Learning what their values are and staying true to those values early in life is a way to boost confidence and allow the students to figure out who they are.  It is also important that my students learn to respect the values of others.  One reason that I want my students to be very open about expressing themselves is so that they can see the point of view of others.  I want my students to figure out early in life that other people have different beliefs than them and that it’s alright to disagree with someone else as long as they show respect to the other person.  My students will learn how to step out of their comfort zone.  I will try to have students work with others that they might not know very well in order to get to know each other better.  I will also teach them to use materials that they might have never worked with before in order to show them that they have options other than just drawing in order to create art.  Lastly, my students will learn that art is something that affects the lives of everyone whether they are aware of it or not.  We will talk about the fact that art is all around us.  It is very important to be able to analyze visual culture in order to reject or welcome subliminal messages within images.  Overall, my students will learn more about themselves and what is important to them and their peers.