OTEN

Hello my blog post reader...went to the OTEN conference today. The first workshop was basically the same thing as our technology class (made me feel smart, I know what everything was). The second one was good. Stellarium was the technology used, but the teacher showed us this is three different ways. Firsts had us write down what we thought the moons pattern was and then explain our thoughts. Then we saw the stellarium example (which was still a bit rough to grab the concept). Then he had us go out side and do a hands on example (which I finally understood)! It was informational as well as introducing a new technology...bah technology. I downloaded the free stellarium, its actually really fun to play with without any purpose. It would be a great activity with ones kids to look it up and actually go outside and try and find the constellations! If your interested you can get to the download from this site.

Task 1-1- educ 533- Best Practices Research

 After doing some research I felt like Engaging the student and relevant learning were the most crucial. I think that both of these can be met by integrating the curriculum. As I stated on my google shared sheet, Math is apart of everything; shopping for clothes (finding percentages off), grocery shopping (fruits per pound), and more importantly ART! Griding, proportions, scale, lighting, perspective, calculations, color mixing etc... Why learn math if it has no meaning to your life? This is why integrating the curriculum is vital.

The majority of sites I visited regarding best practices instruction all include technology, perhaps I didn't expand my research enough but this was upsetting. I feel like all these articles are saying oh man direct instruction is killing students attitudes regarding math, which I agree. But their answer is, spice it up with technology. Although this can be an effective learning tool I feel that this is only adding to the problem. To me, the problem is how we go about teaching. If you are implementing a boring lesson plan than your use of technology will also more often then not be boring.  Some articles really stressed asking other teachers their methods and trying to find what works and building/ taking upon their ideas. Its not stealing when our primary goal is to educate students. I like this. Currently I am doing this at my student teaching site. I am stealing ideas that I like from various teachers, to create what I hope to be the most effective learning style for my class.  Again I am going to stress that technology is NOT the answer. In class activities, projects, real life examples, all of these can be engaging and effective, and I hope to learn more of these hands on construction possibilities in this class.

http://www.mlms.loganschools.org/wested_docs/west_research.htm
http://ozpk.tripod.com/00best
http://www.ctserc.org/s/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=28
http://www.ttms.org/best_practice/best_practice.htm
http://www.tltguide.ccsd.k12.co.us/instructional_tools/Strategies/Strategies.html

About Me...For Math Methods

Hi, my name is Stacey and I want to teach middle and high school art. I always enjoyed math (although its a strange pairing) especially algebra. I recently was a math tutor for a middle school and loved it. I feel like my artzie'ness helped the struggling students. This is why I am endorsing in middle school multiple subjects. I went to Oregon State and received a degree in fine art (emphasizing in painting) and minored in art history.  I was originally a graphic design major, made it through junior year and decided on the off chance I live to be a hundred I didn't want to work in front of a computer for the rest of my life. So bare with me and the technology because I will fight it as much as possible. I love painting, reading sci-fi, eating mint chocolate chip ice cream, and fighting crime...yes I am sarcastic.

'New Tech Standards & Requirements'

Surprisingly enough I skipped over the create technology aspect and really found 2.A and 2.C interesting.It is my understanding that these two requirements want students to work collaboratively, not just with other students but people from other countries by using different technologies. This will bring continents which seem estranged from us, and bring their ideas to the classroom.I thought about this one for a while. I think that by having my students sign up for something like Blue Canvas would be extremely helpful as well as satisfying the technology requirements 2.A and 2.C. Blue canvas is exactly like facebook except its for artists or wannabe's. Essentially you sign up, create a profile and upload your artwork. Once thats said and done, you can explore other peoples artwork from across the world, you can blog/message back and forth. This is a great tool for artists to see work outside of their norm, to see other cultures and societies and their processes. I tried to create an account this summer to see what it was all about. So I just went in and finished it up, you can see my page of art and at the top you can search other art to explore from.

The third rule I liked was 6.A. Which to me was to get the student out in the computer/technology setting explore in order to use. I would add an element of creativity to this rule. So, for my high school students final project I would want them to create a slide show of all their work from the term. This would be open in terms of what application would be used, whether they want music or text etc... So once they had a general idea of what they wanted to do they would have to explore the technology tool on their own and figure out how to manipulate it to their specificity. Here is my example of what I did this summer using Youtube (they would use art work):



With this all being said I do see a lot of challenges mainly concerning computers and location. I have never seen one art classroom with a computer. So I would be assuming that all students have access as well as internet outside of the classroom. This is a big assumption that cannot be made. Perhaps I can work a deal with the technology person at my school, that my students one day a month can fit in and work with the technology. Also, the majority of art networks involve blogging/instant messaging, something that is not permitted on school grounds. I would have to talk to the principal regarding a way around this dilemma.

Assignment #5: Multimedia Project (applies to CA 6.35)

I found an old cd which had all the images I used to create a (fast motion)movie in Flash when I was a graphic design major. The origonal movie I created was about my personal experiences with working at Disney world and the 'infamous Piglet Incident.' So I went to picasa and created a web albulm. I uploaded the movie frames which just converted them as photographs. You can make a movie using picasa web, however it is very very basic. So, never using youtube (outside of searches) I decided I was going to explore this avenue. I created an account, clicked around and found where I make my own videos. It allows you to pick different movie genre's in which to create your movie. I chose Stupiflex and photography settings (which makes the video jump around from frame to frame. From here I imported the photo's from picasa and bagan clicking which frames I wanted in the movie segment. For a free movie (using stupiflex) it has to be under a minute. This program is very basic as well. My orginal movie should be numerous frames a second so it appears to be moving in real time, however the fastest you can get the frames to move is three seconds (where I would want 1/4). So, if you want to create something basic to get your point accross this would work great. But if you want a real video with decent functions I would suggest doing it in another application and uploading it into YouTube (know that I know how to do that!). I then saw that I could add my own voice or do text to speak function. I have never worked with that so I chose it. It was fun to write everything and here 'jane' speak it back to me. I demo'd the movie, and then published it.

I feel like this could definitely be a helpful tool to an art teacher. Doing the same demonstration seven class periods a day would be redundant and a waste of materials. If I recorded myself demonstrating the project at hand, at the beginning of the period each class could watch the 'how to/what to do' and we could discuss afterwards. This would be beneficial to me because I would have this demonstration saved for life, I could use it for years to come without worrying what I did with that project for this up coming year. And although this took me forever to figure out (all the different programs) I am confident that I could get in and create something in less than five minutes!

Analyzing Student Data in a Spreadsheet.

This project didn't take me nearly as long as I was imagining. This was really similar to Excel and although it has been years since I used it, it was pretty self explanatory. I could definitely see myself using google docs for grades, its pretty simple to use and much more reliable than my hand written organizational skills!

The link



I think I did it! Heck ya. I did add another chart which will probably be confusing to other people. I liked it because I could look at that student and see where there lines are on the spiral. Perhaps not the best choice for easiest data analysis but effective for this project. I am not sure why the second chart won't open. When I click on it in preview mode it lets me see it, but not on my blog post... hmm...I will work on this.

My Favorite Web2.0 tools

So, from my online surfing I believe Web 2.0 is not a different version of the world wide web, but a name given to aspects of the web that are constructivist in nature. So anything that is truly collaborative/sharing/group working applications fall under this tittle Web 2.0. So for me, the web is like the broad category art, and web 2.0 is like  specifically painting (in which painting has numerous mediums, oil, acrylic, water color, en-caustic etc...).

TeamViewer is a Web 2.0 program that is free online. You can either use it once or just download it so you won't have to do all the steps every time you want to use it. I have already used this program with the teacher, and it is a great tool for students who really struggle with technology if you have a teacher who is willing to help. Basically you download the application (or just use it once) and it asks for a code, it gives one person (the student) the code and you have to give your teacher the code so they can punch it in to their computer. Once all codes are given the teacher (or person you gave the code to) has access to your computer. In my case, the teacher moved the cursor and told me step by step what he was doing on my computer screen so I could see the steps I needed to take. This is a great tool for students who are struggling technologically, having computer issues, or need step by step guidance in completing tasks.

UStream. I signed up and it was free. It took me a while to figure out what the heck I need to click on, it reminded me of youtube where there is just so many video's to watch I was lost in a see of garbage...but the tittles help. So you can click on education and educational streams will pop up (like Al Gore and the 24 hour project). To create your own you have to click on your user name in the right hand corner, again I got lost but just explored numerous buttons.

Oh man, this was not fun. I couldn't get my web cam to work, then every time I accessed my main channel it would freeze firefox and I would have to close out and get back into it. So, I am not sure if my little angry video will work but here is my attempt:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/turn-this-is

After cooling off from this assignment I started thinking about ways I could possibly use this (although highly unlikely)! In art, often as the teacher you give demonstrations of what is expected or going to happen in a project. It would be a lot easier for a teacher to Ustream herself completing the project, and then playing it to all seven classes. This would make her day less redundant as well as being able to save the demonstration for classes and years to come! So, that being said there is one upside to Ustream, even though it is a vile  program :)