Art in 3-d for elementary classes

Classroom 2.0 was disappointing in comparison to other segments of this course. Many of the Nings were not active and had not been active for some time. A number of the entries I read were full of spelling and grammatical errors. I found lots of requests for help from new teachers, and only marginal replies from people with ideas to help. Some, however, were well designed and helpful like this one that deals with drawing, and this one that is more general for the Flat Classroom Project is very interesting. I can imagine linking students in art classes, maybe having them post photos of their work and allowing others to comment on it, or passing along an artwork for the next student to add a part.

We just finished hanging the 19th Lower School Every Student Art Show. When we say Every Student, we mean it, and there are nearly 500 of them working under three art teachers. So accounting for the work and making sure each student is represented is part of the task. This year I made a Google spreadsheet the three of us could share to keep up with the work as it was installed. If I had been a more competent Docs user, it would have been better, but this was very much easier than the old way of walking down the hall with a clipboard after it was all up, and finding the missing students. We projected it from the computer and checked off names before the boards left the workroom.

I can see a communal spreadsheet as useful in the classroom as well, for charting progress individually or in groups. I can’t help but imagine a class bird count, or insect count, that made use of a communal spreadsheet.

For years I have given out “Artistic Licenses”, and they can be even more spiffy done on Google Docs. All kinds of awards and certificates would be fun to make, and could even be assigned as an art project.

Well. Why would I ever buy an art ed dvd again? It’s all on here: art history lessons by the best of them with pictures and maps, how to do it films, philosophy, films that are artworks themselves, art appreciation. I looked at podcasts from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and from the Brooklyn Museum, and noticed that the MOMA in N.Y.C. does podcasts, as well. I looked at or listened to parts of podcasts from a couple of other art teachers who teach older students than I do. One was telling about using cellphones to make art and put it up online. (Our students must keep their cellphones put away, but there may come a day…) So much to do, so little time. But the little time may be all that’s needed to amass a library (Delicious list) of podcasts for every purpose. A great resource.

An interview with Kevin Kelly showed up on my Reader via Make Magazine. I watched the whole thing, fascinated. He covered the earth, and many of his thoughts were very provocative. He talked about the difference between biology, which can become extinct, and technology, which never becomes extinct. Any technology developed is still in use, he says. For example, there are more people flaking flint to make arrowheads in the U.S. now than there were when arrowheads made of flint were high technology.

Late in the interview he spoke as technology personified and told what he wanted, and it was not to take over the world! Thank goodness! It wants clean air and water (for manufacturing), it wants us to be happy, and it wants our co-operation, it wants more diversity of itself, and more specialization. And it wants “energy density” i.e. efficiency. I suggest everyone listen to this.

When the tagging system gets better (and I need to be better at it, myself!) Flickr will be an even more wonderful site than it currently is for use in the art classroom. For a few years I have used Google Images to assemble groups of pictures for use in my art classroom. We look at works by individual artists this way, and we look at buildings to talk about how we know what kind of building it is by how it looks, and we look at landscapes, animals, plants, and so on…as part of what we do in the art classroom. I can see Flickr becoming part of that use.

I can also see us posting our own groups of pictures, and looking at pictures by other students with great interest. Maybe students could get into a version of lomography, which as I understand it, is taking pictures casually, without framing them, focusing them, or even trying to hold the camera steady (!). Novel uses of cameras like this give a flavor to the work that is impossible in another way. I am sure there are other novel ways of using cameras and Flickr to show the work that we will find.

As a visual artist I have been interested in copyright issues for forty years now. There have been many changes in copyright laws and in my own attitude towards copyright. The point of view of a struggling artist thirty or forty years ago is hard to imagine in today’s climate, and I won’t even attempt to describe it here. My son, a grad student in digital media at Georgia Tech, is currently taking a class on intellectual property and we have had some enlightening discussions that help me grok the disadvantages of big business controlling everything they can stamp a copyright mark on. In fact, my own professional artistic copyright concerns early on had to do with the possible uncompensated use of my work by someone with the means to do it on a grand scale.  My readings in this course have also been helpful. I know that as I have developed as an educator, the exceptions made for use of copyrighted material in education have been a relief. The generosity of the idea of Creative Commons ( I know there are different levels of permission…) is a little overwhelming to me. It makes me happy to see my children comfortable in a world of open sharing; I feel a little like the aborigine in “The Gods Must Be Crazy” who tried to return the glass bottle to the gods at the edge of the world. But I have come to the city and I’m riding on an escalator, holding on in amazement.

It will be possible for us all to share broadly to solve problems and to celebrate triumphs worldwide. That seems to be what is happening. To turn a phrase, it’s a good thing.

The wikis I explored were organized about the same way our sandbox wikis are organized. The 1001 Tales, the Code Blue and the Oregon Trail wikis were all fun to explore. Each had good content provided by the student participants. I can see that lots of learning was surely taking place, from creative writing to biological science to social studies and history. I have to say that it made me think of my childhood educational experiences when I reached out nationally and internationally to pen pals through addresses in My Weekly Reader, to airplane manufacturers using addresses my father brought home from resources at work, and the many U.S. Post Office assisted correspondences I maintained over decades with relatives and friends. A few of these have turned into email correspondences, others into a Christmas card list. Anyway, reaching out and getting information and having conversations is very much easier now, and the use of a wiki organizes it and makes it work for so many people at at time! I know the content is much more appealing than the usual textbook, and the possibility for individualized information gathering is there, which is also more appealing. The idea that each person has to learn and be proficient in the exact same thing has been taken to the extreme, and this way of learning offers the possibility of getting past that notion.

I made a wiki before this assignment came up, and my sandbox wiki is attached to it. We have studied Paolo Soleri, the inventor of the arcology (architecture + ecology) for years in my sixth grade classes. This year I took photos of each group project as it progressed and promised the students they could have a page on a wiki when I got it set up. Lab time was at a premium, at least at the times my classes met, but finally we got a space and began our work. The students loved doing the group project and many groups did a creditable job of presenting their work on the wiki. Deciding what to say about the project as it progressed helped some groups change plans to make it better.

Here is a great example of collaboration online. This robotically played circle of drums is lots of fun to watch and to hear, and when the names of the countries appear over the drums you can see that the musicians span the globe! Most of us have participated at some point with a spontaneous drum circle, a happy but brief occurrence. Drum circles are also more formalized in many cultures, and I have enjoyed being present for quite a few collaborations of that kind. This amazing joining of technology (both mechanical and electronic) and music and people somehow makes me hopeful in a new way.