Lesson

The Beginning of the End! Course 5 Final

~ cpupovac ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a good journey but I am also excited to see it coming to an end.  Experimenting with flipping a couple of lessons in my Art 7 classes has been a great way for me to wrap things up. I love the idea of using technology in my room but I’m also very conscious of the fact that I don’t want to take away from the students time to get their hands dirty with the creative process. I’ve found that when I flip a lesson in my class I am actually creating more time for students to get their hands dirty.  Even better is that the time I have created for them to work on their art is also time that I can be standing by to help them when they need a little extra guidance.

When all was said and done I would have to say that I felt the most success with my flipped lesson on negative space.  Take a look.

Yes it takes some time to make the video but I am hoping that as I work with the tools more frequently the process will speed up. Even though making a video is time consuming my goals were met and then some, making it all worth it.

  1. Students had more time in class to complete there work.
  2. Students had their iPads out on there desks and were able to refer to the tutorial for review while working rather than asking me to repeat something.
  3. Because student had access to the tutorial while working they didn’t need as much assistance from me.  This gave me more time to work with students who were needing extra help.
  4. 39 of 42 students had their entry tickets and knew exactly what to do when they entered the class.  It was wonderful to see everyone come in and get straight to work.
  5. I learned a lot about the different tools I used to make the video.
  6. Student understanding of the concepts being taught was much higher than in previous semesters. I can see this because concepts taught in this lesson have been continually used by students when discussing works of art.
  7. Less classroom management was needed because students were not required to listen to me lecture and demonstrate.

As you can see there are many positive outcomes to my flipped experience.  A lot of this is also attributed to the thoughtful planning that went into the lesson.  I did flip another lesson a few weeks after my initial negative space lesson.  I have to admit that this lesson was not as successful.  I believe the reason for this was because the lesson was not one that needed flipping. I did not see a significant different in the outcome of the student work.  I also don’t feel that the technology actually helped to explain the concepts being taught any more clearly than when previously taught. That being said I don’t believe that all lessons should be flipped but flipping the right lesson will get the desired results.

Here is my Ubd framework for planning this project, as well my video explaining a bit more about my process.  I hope my work will give you a little insight into flipping some lessons of your own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stop Motion 101

~ cpupovac ~ 2 Comments

Earlier this year I was given the opportunity to teach a stop motion animation class. I had taught stop motion to 5th graders before but this was to be an entire middle school semester focussing on stop motion animation.  With it being my first time teaching animation on this level there were certainly some ups and downs thought the semester. With that being said I am excited to be teaching it again next year.   I thought I would take this opportunity to share a little about the process we used and what I learned as a rookie.

  1. Start out by making sure that students understand the stop motion process.  It’s good to have an understanding of FPS (frames per second) and how many photos are actually required for each shot.  It’s also important to understand how many small movements happen within just a couple of seconds.  We did this by looking at other simple stop motions and flip books.
  2. Students should work in groups of 2 or 3.  Often times 4 is too many unless you are animating people doing supernatural things.
  3. Have students brainstorm their overall story along with props and materials they will need before they story board. This will help them to get a better grasp on what they might be able accomplish within the time frame they have.
  4. Never underestimate the importance of a detailed story board. If students don’t think through their whole process while storyboarding they are going to struggle when making props and shooting pictures. The groups that were the most successful with there final product had beautiful story boards and those that were not so successful had story boards that were not only extremely minimal in detail but also did not resemble the final product. Students with poorly detailed story boards quickly learned from their shortcomings and were sure to put more thought into the storyboarding process in there next animations.

    Ruth Emma Design
  5. When working on set design often have students look at what they are making though the camera lens to make sure it will fit properly.  Often times students will make props too small and they are not noticeable through the camera.  This makes size and scale extremely important.  Another common issue is that student often make props that will be animated but have not put thought into how to keep the prop stationary for the shooting process.  This is a big issue that needs to be properly thought out before they get to far into the construction of the props.
  6. When shooting your pictures students should all have different roles. One person should be behind the camera and direct and the others as puppetiers.  They can take turns in these roles but often times you will find that some people are better as the camera man and tend to get the job done faster. Another thing to always keep in mind when shooting is you light source.  Shadows and changing light sources can often be overlooked by students and need to be kept in the forefront of their mind because shadows are not usually noticeable until many pictures have all ready been taken.

In the end what helped students to understand some of these details of the process before making mistakes of there own was constant pre-critiquing.  We got in the habit of starting class with older student examples I had collected.  It was often very easy to pick out little ways these could be improved but most importantly students were able to see how important attention to detail is.

I hope that some of you will find this overview of my process, along with some tips peppered in, to be helpful.  I’m a firm believer in the many many skills that can be learned through the stop motion process but I won’t get into all of that right now.  Should you choose to get your hands dirty I wish you the best of luck.

Enjoy this super cute animation by some of my students.  This was the groups first dabble with the process.

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.

Screen Shot 2015-01-05 at 8.22.17 PMIMG_0318

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.