Course 4

Drawing on the Flipped Side of your Brain.

~ cpupovac ~ Leave a comment

Da Vinci HeadAs I have been going over the content of course 4 and reflecting on it though my blogs and others the topic that sticks out the most to me is the idea of the flipped classroom.  I pointed out in one of my previous posts reasons as to why I think this would be relatively helpful and at times easy for me to implements as an art teacher.

The top 4 reasons I’d like to flip:

  1. Flipping would save class instruction time and give students more time for their art which is always a top priority for my class time.
  2. Students would be able to review my instructions as often as they like.  This would also help give me more time to help students who are needing further clarity or wish to extend themselves.  At the moment a lot of my one on one time is spent simply repeating things from my demonstrations, videos for review would eliminate this repetition.
  3. Flipping lesson would give me a platform to introduce deeper concepts that sometimes get cut out of my lessons because we are short on time. I could easily introduce other concepts and bits of art history to give students more background on our current subject matters.
  4. Demonstration videos would be very easy to make since I am already doing many of them under a demo camera at the moment. With technology I can easily enhance them when appropriate.

As I have been reading through articles and other blogs I have come to realize that there are many other possible benefits to flipping the 4 I have mentioned.  I’m excited to see if these four possible benefits are noticeable once I have flipped a lesson or two.  I’m also curious to see what other types of benefits or possible setbacks may occur in the process.

I have decided to focus on simply flipping a lesson or two to start.  As I was reading Jon Bergman’s article on Flipping the Elementary Classroom, several ideas for flipped lessons came to mind. Bergman says to start will a lesson instead of a whole unit or class, and that you should pick one the historically students have struggled with.  When I read this a lesson on negative space that I have done many times immediately came to mind.

Looking Back: My lesson on negative space is a drawing exercise.  This particular lesson focuses on one of many exercises that I have taken from Betty Edwards and Drawing on the Right side of the Brain. Students draw the negative spaces around a stool so that when they are finished they end up with a well proportions outline of a stool.  It sounds simple when I type it out but it is actually very difficult because our eyes are not trained to look for negative spaces. I find this exercise to be incredibly helpful and it immensely helps student to find better proportion in there art work.  The problem is that I often find the demonstration of drawing negative space to be rather confusing for many of the students. I end up spending a lot of class time working with kids one on one to find the negative spaces and I rarely have enough time to get to everyone.

Looking Forward: Flipping the instruction for this class could be very beneficial for my students.  Technology could greatly enhance my demonstration.  When I do this lesson in class I often put a stool up on a table for everyone to see and then under my demonstration camera I draw the negative spaces and talk through it. A video demonstration for students to view on their own could look very different. I could use a split screen effect with a photo of the stool on one side of the screen and then a video of me drawing on the other side.  This way students can easily see the two side by side This is a big improvement over the live version in class where they have to look back and forth.  Another bonus to making a video for this demonstration is that I could easily draw on top of the photo using Explain Everything and show the students the negative space in a way that I haven’t been able to in the past.

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Prior to the demonstration portion of the video I can show different examples of positive and negative spaces in other artwork to help explain the keep concept.  I’m hoping that this new use of technology will further enhance students understand of the concept as well as more clearly explain the exercise so that they can easily jump into practicing.

To be sure that my students have taken the time to watch the flipped videos I will have a small drawing assignment for them to complete in their sketchbooks. The drawing assignment will be a sort of entry ticket into class, if they haven’t watched the video they will have to do so in class, taking away from their work time. This short sketching assignment will also give them a little practice with the exercise being taught and at times will become the beginning stages of another assignment down the road.

I plan on flipping a couple of other lessons as well in the same manner.  Each focuses on drawing exercise for the same class.  If all goes well I hope to continue to develop flipped lessons for some of my other classes.  Since the class I am focusing on is mostly a drawing class my videos will be mostly tutorial.  Other videos for other classes could easily give more insight into art history and deeper artistic concepts as well.  This is my ultimate goal,  flipping lessons, units and eventually classes.  Hoping to free up more time in class for critiques, discussions and more than anything, creating.

 

Make Meaning, Connect, Reflect, Repeat.

~ cpupovac ~ 1 Comment

As I was reading over some of the course materials on connectivism I noticed different concepts and themes repeated throughout the material.  Words like motivation, self direction, autonomy, purpose, challenge and personal interest often reoccured.  Dan Pink, author of Drive: A suprising truth about what motivates us, talked about many of these themes. Most of the time these themes were in reference to new business models but it is actually much bigger than that.  Is it possible that there are some new business models out there that, dare I say it, the educational system can learn from?

Earlier this week I was having a conversation with some colleagues about good leadership. In our conversation we discussed leaders who often ask for input before making decisions.  Good leaders have that type of confidence in the collaboration of their team members.  Within that mind set a good leader trusts there team and gives them a certain amount of autonomy. This can be a very empowering thing for an individual that can in turn create passion, drive and purpose in their work.

The recent course material also got me thinking about my husbands “down time” activities this weekend.  He chose to spend the majority of his time rebuilding a website for a local NGO that he occasionally volunteers for.  He has a skill that he enjoys building on and applying but always with meaning.  The meaning is a key piece of the puzzle, it’s a big part of what drives him.

In my classroom I’m always trying to stay focused on meaningful art making for my students.  I have found myself getting closer and closer to that the last few years and the variety of work that my students turn out is amazing.  When I say meaningful art making I mean art making that is personal, students have some autonomy in the what and/or how.  I can provide a framework in order to help them create and reflect in the same way that artist create and reflect on culture and society.  This isn’t just in the art room though, students should be creating and reflecting everywhere, project based learning, with real ownership to create real investment. I first started looking at the art room this way when I was introduced to Olivia Gude, Artist and Educator at University of Illinois in Chicago.  In her article: Rubric for a quality art curriculum she states that  “A curriculum is not only a structure for the dissemination of knowledge; the structure and content of the curriculum also involves the production of knowledge.“  Isn’t this what we are talking about when we are talking about connectivity? Curriculum involving the production of knowledge,? https://pixabay.com/p-96100/?no_redirectPrior to being introduced to some of her educational philosophies, I didn’t realize it, but there was very little connection to the way my students were creating art and the way artists in the outside world were creating art.  In an art room that possesses some of these themes mentioned before, self direction, autonomy, mastery, purpose, challenge and personal interest, students are expressing their ideas, building their skills and exposing one another to different opinions. In a classroom where real meaning making is happening connectivism is happening.  The addition of the internet blows those connections sky high.  We are no longer confined to learning from only our classmates and our teachers.  We are now able to learn from others around the world because of current technology. This is amazing but we must hold onto the the meaning making and always focus on helping students to reach for that.  Allowing a place for students to creating meaning in their work will require our good leadership.

 

 

Flipping = More making

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Image attributed to Jeff DalyI have to say the idea of a flipped classroom really appeals to me as an art teacher.  There’s always so much that I would like to cover in order to give my students background knowledge and teach technique but the more time I take demonstrating and discussing art the less time students have to create and the creative process is my top priority.  I remember  very clearly when I was in school, it always seemed as though our art teacher couldn’t finish talking fast enough. We just wanted to get back to work.  I often try to remember this when teaching my own classes.  Listening to me do demonstrations is helpful and necessary but it also eats up work time for projects that simply can’t be done at home.  Taking the time to flip my classroom could have many benefits to it.

First and foremost recording my demonstrations for kids to watch at home will buy them more time in class to create. This should be relatively easy for me. I’m already demonstrating under a document camera.  I even record my demonstrations from time to time so that I can loop them on the screen while kids are working. I only need to take it one tiny step further. This will also have an added benefit for kids who are absent.  With the way things are now kids I often have to work very closely with kids who were absent in order to help them get caught up.  If my demonstrations were posted then students wouldn’t be waiting on me to help them get caught up.  Other students would also have the ability to re watch demonstrations if they need to look back. Helping eliminate the need for me to repeat myself.

Secondly, most of my demonstrations are fairly short  This means that I could easily add onto some of my demonstrations by introducing other artists, artistic concepts or additional  background.  I’m always wanting to give students a wider variety of content that can help encourage their own creative ideas and processes. Unfortunately this is the part of my class that often gets cut short so that students have more time to create.  With a flipped classroom I can easily tack on little bits of content along the way with my demonstration videos.

Lastly, with a flipped classroom I can eliminate some of the discipline problems that come along with trying to gather everyone and quiet them down for demonstrations.  Although discipline isn’t a big issue in my class it can eat up little bits of time here and there.  If I don’t have to give so many demonstrations and kids watch them on their own we would not only be saving work time but kids won’t be distracted by other kids when they should be watching what I’m doing.

In conclusion I would really like for this to be a new focus for me as I move into next year and even a bit next semester. The first steps should be easy.  Right now some of my biggest questions moving forward is how to begin organizing all of my information and videos.  The Herreid and Schiller case study on flipped classrooms offers lot of great suggestions for shooting videos and posting them.  I hope to do a little research into that for some direction.  If any others out there have any tips on how they shoot videos for demonstrations or organize their content I would love to hear about it.

 

Reflection Time

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As I read through the course material for week 1 of course 4 I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions about the type of technology I use and where do I fall on the TPACK framework or SAMR model.  One reading that particularly caught my interests was Jeff Utecht’s blog post on evaluating our technology use in the classroom. I thought it would be worth my while to give myself a little evaluation.  Over the course of one 8 block cycle I kept a log of all the different ways that technology was being used in my classes.  Many of my classes are using technology in similar ways. Using Jeff’s evaluations questions I would say that most of the technology used in my classroom fall’s between “using technology to do old things in new ways” and “technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students”.

I would have to admit that most of what we are doing is probably closer to the “using technology to do old things in new ways” category.  Here are some examples from my classes.

    1. A Daily Prezi: I keep a rather detailed prezi as a scope and sequence for all of my classes.  This is a nice little daily overview of what we will be doing for the period as well as outcomes.  I like to project this up for the period so that students can refer back to it as needed.  It is also a nice way for me to keep any videos, pictures or other information linked to the lesson right there with my scope and sequence. Giving the kids a daily overview of the class schedule and outcomes is nothing new but prezi has provided me with a better way of organizing large amounts of information as I move from class to class. I have yet to do this but prezi can also be shared online.  I have often wondered if it would be helpful to students to have access to my prezis so they can look back at what we covered or get a glimpse of what they missed when absent.
    2. Google Slides Portfolio: New to my classroom this year are online portfolios.  Instead of using a portfolio website I have decided to use google slides.  The reason for this is that the student and I can share the slide presentation which makes is easy for me to comment and help edit. It’s also nicely organized through hapara. The third reason I like to use this format is so that I can embed all of my students portfolios onto my blog.  This has been a great way for students to view others work and furthermore for parents to view student work. Presentation is a very important part of any art class and this format has allowed me to take it to another level without always hanging work in the halls.  Here is an example of a student portfolio from my art Studio Class.

I could go on through my list of ways we are using technology in the classroom but I think I will stop there for now.  These two example stick out to me because they are being used on a daily basis. I would love to hear some of your thought on these practices.  Where do you think these practices lie on some of the models discussed in Course 4?  Do you have any ideas as to how they could be brought to the next level?  These are practices that I see myself continuing to implement and smooth out over the next year. I would love to hear your feedback.