Thursday, December 7, 2017

Summary of Learning: Instructional Technology Applications

For my summary of learning, I chose to make a Google Slides presentation. This was my fourth Cool Tool, and I wanted another chance to try it out. I love that it saves my presentation automatically as I'm working on it, and I can share it with other people so easily.

I'm really proud of this blog. This was way out of my comfort zone at the start of the class, but I've grown accustomed to posting here. I feel sad that it's come to an end!

What were my biggest takeaways from the class? Rapid fire:

  • Self-guided learning (with proper structure and support by the instructor) can be powerfully effective
  • The importance of understanding the ins and outs of copyright law and fair use
  • Blogging is a great way to share with other educators, your students, and parents!
  • Google Slides is an amazing tool.
  • Jing - I'm going to use this screen-capture tool from now on. So much better than my previous method.
  • There are so many blogs by art teachers I'm going to explore. 
  • T-PACK - Will be thinking about this more as I learn about building lessons

How I plan to incorporate educational technologies into my future classrooms?


Thank you, Professor Savery, for sharing your knowledge and wisdom about teaching with us this semester. It was truly a pleasure being in your class. And thank you, also, to my fellow future teachers. I wish you all well on your journey.

Click here to visit my Google Slides Presentation of my summary. If you are one of my classmates, I should have already sent you the invitation to see it.

Source Wood engraving by Rockwell Kent.
Ishmael on his way to New Bedford.
"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing." 
--Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Major Project: Using a Landmark to Position the Head

This week I worked more from Chris Petrocchi's video (two Screenshots below) to refresh my memory.












The next page of drawings and notes are from watching the video tutorial by Schoolism called Drawing the head from different angles. His method involves using the nose prism as a landmark for positioning the rest of the head's features. I think with more practice it would be useful to me. The only drawback of this video, for me, is that he was working from photo references rather than pulling the heads from his imagination. Still a good video, though. 


I didn't do as much drawing as I'd like to this week, but I'm going to get back on my game once I finish my final paper for Psych class. I did these last night after watching about half of Steve Huston's extra long lecture on drawing the head at work. I like the technique he demonstrates of using the ear to position the head in space. I need to practice it. 

Screenshots from Huston's video: 



My one page of sketches: 



Monday, November 20, 2017

Prompt #12: Classroom Productivity



There are countless technological tools out there to help solve problems in the classroom and to prevent them from arising in the first place. When thoughtfully used, tools like Google Apps for Education (GAFE) can be a very efficient way to pass your teaching materials on to students. These apps can also be a great way for teachers to organize their lesson plans, communicate directly with their students when class is not in session, and to evaluate students on their comprehension.

In a way, I’m extremely lucky as an art teacher. The skills I’m teaching are demonstrated in performative tasks. I won’t have much need to conduct multiple-choice and essay-style assessments to make sure my students are absorbing what’s being taught. The evidence for their learning (or for their struggle) will be evident in their art projects. I don’t think I could justify the effort it would take to implement and use formative assessment tools like Peardeck or Kahoot in an art room. It would take too much time away from classwork.

As far as edtech, I plan to use:

  • Google Docs: I won’t be dealing with a massive amount of written assignments like an English or history teacher would. However, there will be times when students will have to write a project proposal or an artist statement. I’ll have my students write and submit their reports using this app. This will make it easier to give feedback to my students and eliminate wasteful printing.
  • Google Forms: For giving quizzes

It goes without saying that the longer I teach, the more efficient I’ll get. I’m starting to think now about collecting materials and organizing them into class units. If I can develop a stockpile of classroom-ready lesson plans, this will make it so I don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” at the start of every year. Some other practices I plan to implement to ensure classroom organization and productivity are:

  • Have a classroom routine explicitly outlined. 
  • Create posters for cleanup routines
  • Write project directions on the chalkboard/whiteboard and give them to all students
  • Use an online grade book and attendance sheet 


Sunday, November 12, 2017

Prompt 10: Blended Learrning...Help Me

Hmmm....

"Our use of the term 'competencies,' rather than 'standards' or 'skills,' is intentional....We define a competency as 'an underlying characteristic of an individual that is causally related to effective or superior performance'. These characteristics include enduring motives, traits, self-concepts, values, knowledge, and skills that can be assessed and differentiated....The expectation is that teachers and their developers will be able to use these competencies within a competency-based learning approach..., in which users will be able to demonstrate and advance against definitions of mastery and get rapid, meaningful assessment along with differentiated support." (p.7)


“More important than a technical definition is the purpose of blended learning—specifically, why its adoption as an instructional modality is important for the future of learning. We believe that blended learning is a powerful way to differentiate and personalize instruction, as well as to help move away from time-based models of achievement towards competency-based ones. Blending is a strategy for helping teachers achieve what they strive to do every day—deeply understand and enable each student they work with to reach the very highest levels of educational mastery.”

                    -- iNACOL Blended Learning Teacher Competency Framework (p. 6) 

“The purpose of blended learning is more important than the technical definition!” 

                   -- Stacy Hawthorne’s Powerpoint on blended learning (Slide 5)


Blended learning as an academic concept is new to me. To summarize my understanding of it based on the articles I’ve read over:

Blended learning is the combination (hence, blending) of brick-and-mortar classroom learning with web-based learning. This does not merely mean using online tools like Google Slides, but incorporating web-exclusive content along with having traditional teaching in a classroom. Instruction shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. We as instructors must be flexible in order to meet our students’ needs. We can revamp our curricula using different strategies which offer students more flexibility with their coursework. And the purpose of incorporating these different modes of instruction is to encourage student success. School districts, single schools, and individual teachers can apply a “blended” structure to their curricula.

I'm completely on board with giving our students multiple ways to access classroom content. I'm not opposed to giving our students flexibility with their learning experience. However, I need to learn more before I jump wholeheartedly on board with "blending learning" as a concept.

I came across Paul Curtis' article on the blog Getting Smart entitled Befuddled by Blended Learning. He says that the flaw with the discourse surrounding "blended learning" is that it doesn't push for concrete, measurable outcomes regarding the improvement of education. Whether or not this is true, again, I will have to verify with more research:

“...[W]hen I say it’s time to retire the term 'blended learning,' it doesn’t come from a fear of technology or a failure to understand the power technology can play in improving student learning. I oppose the term blended learning not because it’s a bad idea to leverage computers to improve student learning, but because it fails to clearly chart a path for educators in establishing a more meaningful model for student learning. In fact, conversations about blended learning can even become a distraction to the more significant conversations our schools need to be having and typically produces instructional approaches poorly aligned to what’s required for students to be well prepared for life outside of school."

When Stacy Hawthorne says in her presentation “The purpose of blended learning is more important than its technical definition,” I think…wait. Hold it right there. Technical definitions are important. It’s not that we are placing artificial constraints on abstract concept, but it’s important that we get our words clear so we’re all on the same page. She says later in her presentation:

“Increasing student opportunities to engage with technology – such as teachers using flipped classroom strategies, a school computer lab, and computers using digital curriculum in the classroom… don’t reach the full potential of blended learning.” (Powerpoint Slide 6)

Ok…then what does??

But, again, I'm largely ignorant of this topic, so my criticisms may not be entirely fair. Hawthorne admits that the field of study surrounding blended learning is very young, and therefore still developing. If the incorporation of tools like Brightspace into the classroom qualifies as blended learning, then I give a wholehearted YES! that blended learning is a useful strategy.

In what ways has our blended learning approach been effective in THIS class? 

This class on Instructional Technology has used a combination of in-class discussions/lectures and online self-guided learning. We’ve been given resources on Brightspace to supplement the material we cover in class. Brightspace has a discussion page that we can use to connect with each other online, and we also have a Twitter hashtag to share our blog posts. Reading others’ blog posts supports our learning of the concepts we cover in class. Once or twice, we’ve refrained from meeting in class at our usual Thursday time. During that time, we are expected to stay home (or a coffee shop, the library, anywhere) to go over the materials posted online at our own pace.

I’ve loved keeping up with this blog. It’s been a lot of work every week, but I feel good looking back over all the posts I’ve written. The most effective part of the class which could supposedly fall under the category of “blended learning” is the self-guided Major Project. I was given a set of guidelines by my professor, and I had to set learning goals for myself in a domain I close. Then, I would be required to keep track of my progress and post updates on my classroom blog. I think the blended learning experience with this class could be improved if everyone would be encouraged to comment on each others' tweets. I think people are afraid to be the only one commenting for some reason. It's difficult to have a full and meaningful discussion on Twitter, though.

In the future...

I will have to read more about blended learning and the surrounding discourse to develop a more informed opinion on the topic.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Major Project: Workspace Pic, More Reilly Heads

Looking back at my older posts, I realized that the scanner isn't picking up on some of my lighter pencil sketches. This time I went into Photoshop and made the images a little darker. Hopefully that should make a big difference!

Here's a pic of my humble sketching place. My scanner is on the bookshelf behind the drawing table. You can see my sketchbook on the scanner bed.



I'm still working on getting the Reilly Head Abstraction committed to memory. It's coming along well! When I first started, I thought "there's no way I'll remember all of the lines!" I've watched Chris Petrocchi's demonstration of the Reilly Head in front view, side view, and 3/4 view about five times. He goes really fast in this particular video, so I had to pause multiple times in order to keep up. After I would do a drawing along with Petrocchi, I'd try to remember all the steps from memory and draw it again. I feel like this week, I've made good progress. I'm really happy that I can also remember the proportions of the head. Super important to get that down cold. 

I took four or five pages to practice drawing circles. Only included one here. 




Brows on fleek. Ears need work. 

Profile practice





Now that I'm gaining confidence with the Reilly Head, I'm going to start drawing the head at more extreme tilts. Later, I'll try to apply the rhythm lines to these sketches.

I referenced Stan Prokopenko's video How to Draw the Head from Any Angle for this page of sketches. 

I used this video of famed cartoonist Burne Hogarth to do this last sketch.   


The poor man looks mildly concerned...


Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Prompt #9: Formative Assessments


What is your philosophy on assessment? 

In order to make sure we're doing our jobs properly (helping our students grow and learn), we can’t get away without conducting assessments. If we aren’t continually assessing our students’ understanding, we have no way of knowing if and how we may need to modify our instruction to meet our students’ needs. All the resources I’ve come across (I took a class called Intro to Assessment this summer) emphasize the importance of formative assessment over summative assessment. I can see why. Formative assessments include a range of formal and informal methods such as giving homework, in-class work, taking class surveys by show of hands, and simple asking questions of students to test their understanding of a topic in the moment. These little tests are essential to helping us gain insight and feedback from our students that inFORM our instruction. Diagnostic assessments are also important in the beginning. They help us establish a baseline of where our students are so we can strategize how to best carry out our instruction.

I don’t have a philosophy of assessment I can call my own yet, but that would be a start.

Some quick points:

  • Frequently ask questions such as “Is there anything I’ve said which doesn’t make sense?”
  • Frequently ask content questions to your students. Repetition, repetition, repetition! 
  • Formative assessments shouldn’t be weighted as much into a final grade as summative assessments.
  • Formative assessments are where the actual learning happens. They are interwoven into the art of teaching.
  • As an art teacher, I'll have students create summative portfolios for each course. Other projects and exercises like idea sketching, sketchbook work, and materials tests will be formative assessments.

What are your impressions about the two formative assessment technologies (PearDeck&EduCanon) Scott shared?

I think PearDeck, aside from having a cute name, is a really cool interactive technology. It has obvious advantages as a presentation tool:
  • Students submit their answers anonymously, getting rid of the stigma which comes from answering a question in front of the class.
  • All students submit their answers to the teacher's questions, meaning the teacher instantly gets a snapshot of their entire class's understanding. 
  • The interactivity of the device will help to keep students' attention. 
I wouldn't use this technology in my art classroom, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be useful to teachers of other subjects. 

EduCanon is another tool that teachers can use to gather and sort formative information about how their students are doing. Even though I can see it being incredibly useful in other subjects, it wouldn't make any sense to use this in the art classroom. When students are making a work of art or doing a drawing, their understanding of a concept is demonstrated by their performance (i.e., the creation a piece which incorporates the concepts we're learning about). Assessing art is a notoriously subjective task, and multiple-choice questions are far from ideal for assessing students' grasp of a particular artistic concept. 

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Major Project: HEADS!

This week I wanted to practice drawing the head based on some YouTube tutorials. Each one presents information on the planes of the head in a slightly different way.

These drawings were done while watching several videos demonstrating the Reilly Head Abstraction, a framework for the rhythm lines of the face. It's going to take a long time for me to make the model second nature to draw (and to reference from any angle), but this is a start.

The YouTube channels I referred to are:

OCCHI VISUAL ART/ Chris Petrocchi
Kyle Hefty
Pixl Visn GmbH | Media Arts Academy
Adjag2 Studios

This is also a great video on drawing the head, a demonstration by artist Steve Huston.














































































































































































































































































































































Sunday, October 29, 2017

Major Project Update: A Detour Into Perspective

Wikimedia Commons

Last week, I said I'd be drawing more individual features of the face. I promise you I'm on my way to that! However, I realized that in order to do this knowledgeably, I needed to take a detour into the principles of perspective.

Perspective is the study of the way three-dimensional forms appear in space. For most of my life, I've avoided studying the topic because I found it boring and unnecessary. Not to mention difficult and confusing. I felt that if I just looked at what I was drawing closely enough, I won't need to understand perspective.

WRONG! You are very, very wrong!

Understanding the principles of perspective makes drawing SO MUCH easier. When you understand perspective, you remove the guesswork from drawing. It's essential if you want to know how to depict three-dimensional forms on the two-dimensional picture plane.

This is where I hit my roadblock. I was trying to invent simple three-dimensional armatures for facial features, but I had no idea whether they were accurate when I "rotated" them on the page. Upon this realization, I dove into the lectures of Marshall Vandruff.

About a year ago, I started listening to Stan Prokopenko's art YouTube channel while at work (I'm an artist's assistant, and I spend a lot of time sitting at a table). For a few of his videos, he has the artist Marshall Vandruff on as a guest for critiquing students' drawings. Though I can't remember which video it was, they gave a plug for Vandruff's series of lectures on perspective from 1994. The first lecture in this class is available for free on Youtube (link here). The whole series of lectures can be purchased for $12 on his website. I bought them earlier this year, and I was so glad that I did! He is an amazing teacher, and the informative he provides is invaluable. He explains these tricky concepts better than I've ever heard them before. For the first time, perspective was making sense to me!

Claire "Too Many Tabs Open" Marks

I listened to all the lectures this January, but I didn't really absorb the information. This week I went back to work my way through the lectures again, and this time I was committed to retaining his teachings. His basic premise is this: If you master how to draw cubes and cylinders in every way imaginable, then you can draw literally anything. And he's correct. But it's a lot more difficult than it looks!

I have a long way to go, but just doing a few sessions of practice has already helped me feel more confident:


















I have four or five lectures to go, and I'll spend the rest of this week continuing to draw these basic forms in perspective. By the end of the week, I'll be looking into various schemes for drawing the planes of the head. I have a few YouTube videos already in mind. Stay tuned!