Advanced Art Class Midterm: Student Art Blogs

In the past I have had my advanced art students create a website to showcase their artwork that they have created this year and previous years (as an online portfolio). This year I decided to do something different. I realized that when the students tried to log into their account second semester to update their website for the final exam, they forgot their passwords and in general didn't do much with the website- making it useless.

I am an avid Pinterest-er and have seen many posts from Apex High School. When I clicked on their actual blog I got inspired. The art teacher at that school has the students create an art blog- what a great idea! My students always ask if they can take pictures of their artwork to post on instagram and other social media outlets, so why not tie into my curriculum what they are actually interested in- social media.

For 3 days we went down to the media center and my students set up their blog. I still wanted to retain the aspect of the online portfolio so those requirements were still embedded in the rubric. By adding the aspect of the "blog" I wanted them to post 5 blog posts. I left it very open-ended; I told them that the idea behind this was to document the process of their art or they could use it as a personal reflection to the projects that they have created

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The requirements for their grade included:

• A page for an artist statement (it could have been about a specific artwork that they created this year or just about their art in general)
• The blog had to look professional, but still show their personality (you can see some students went a little too casual for my liking, we will be doing some updates when we get back from break).
• There had to be a short biography
• The Portfolio or Gallery had to have at least 5 images of their artwork with labels (name, title, size, medium and year)
• ...and their blog posts

HERE is the link to the page on my blog where you can see my student's blogs!

I am excited to see how this develops throughout the school year. I plan on having the students post a least once a week and also doing online critiques through the comment section of the posts. 

Art Teacher: if you have ever tried anything like this before, share below- links, successes, failures and comments are always appreciated!

On another note, at this time tomorrow I will be officially on Winter Break!!!!!!- oh wait scratch that I have a game tomorrow night too-

 #artteacherbyday #cheercoachbyafternoon #wifeandsoontobemommaattheendofthenight

Practical Teaching Tip: Differentiated Instruction Study Guide Visual Art

It's that time of the year....midterms. To help my students study for their exam they are working on a study guide. My PGP (professional growth plan) includes a focus on including more differentiated instructional strategies, so for their study guide I created a Tic-Tac-Toe board. Each prompt has a different prompt which they get to select. The beauty of this project is that I get free visuals out of it. This year I started to make big posters with illustrations on the steps to glazing, creating a slab box, etc. BUT, I was getting behind on other tasks by creating these for each project, so by having them to do this now I can select the best ones to laminate and hang around the room next year.

Assignment Sheet

The posters that I made for my room

Students working on their visuals for the study guide

Practical Teaching Tip: Record a Video of your Studio Demonstrations

I went to the FAEA conference in October (Florida Art Education Association) and there was an AWESOME ceramics teacher who video taped her demonstrations- genius!

Her reasoning was:

• #1 who has time to get out materials for demos when we art teachers usually have 3+ different preps
• #2 what happens when a student is absent...redo
• ...and #3 when you have 35+ kids in the class huddled around a small demo table how many of them actually see the demo?

So I tried it out....it went pretty well. The teacher at the conference used a tripod and an iphone, I just had one of my students record me on a digital camera. The other teacher was able to just record her hands so that when she replayed the video to the class the students would only focus on her hands and there was no audio (she would talk during the video and point out important aspects of the demo).

• Pros to video taping your demos: it can be replayed when students are absent, the video is only for what you expect the students to get done that day or within the next couple days so they do not forget the process, and all of the students are able to view the video without distractions. 
• Cons/Things I would do differently: I initially had one of my students record the video on my iphone and then I was going to upload it to Vimeo from there, problem...it took forever to upload (I am not that patient), so what I ended up doing on the second video is using a digital camera and uploading it to my computer. Videos also take up a lot of space and I don't have a ton of memory on my phone to begin with. The video camera worked fine, but what would be really great is a GoPro (the video camera that you strap to your head and you are able to record from your perspective), but I don't have one- future investment :) I think the GoPro would work better because in my video its a little hard to see what I am working on and you see some of my students in the background. 
• Uploading and showing the video: Here are a few things I learned: 1. I initially tried to transfer the iPhone video to Vimeo, but it took too long, so then I shot the video on a digital camera, plugged that into my computer and uploaded it to Vimeo that way. It worked, but then when I tried to upload a new video a few days later Vimeo said that I did not have enough space for that week, and that I could sign up for a small fee and have more space....no thanks. SO next time I am going to upload to YouTube.- let's see how this works. The big thing is that I want it online so that my students can view it from home if they are absent. Our district uses a program called Edline to post our grades. I tried to upload directly to that, but again there wasn't enough space, so in conclusion its better to upload it to another site such as YouTube so that it is storing out in the clouds.

Here is my video, I'm no pro by any means, just thought I would share.

I would love to hear your feedback! If you have recorded your demonstrations before share your experiences below and share what you learned :)

Until next time, keep it practical art teachers!