Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
BP9_Comment to Catherine Yoho
Screenshot of Zooburst from http://alpha.zooburst.com/
Here are my comments to Catherine about Zooburst.
Click Here
BP8_Edistorm
Edistorm
Edistorm is a Web 2.0 tool for brainstorming. Compiled of the name Edison, from Thomas Edison, and the word brainstorming, Edistorm is an interesting tool for collaborating over distances or just organizing your thoughts. The tool is very intuitive and one can start a storm for private, public or solo use. If you choose solo, the application has several bots designed to help you with your brainstorm. Take your main idea, place it in the center of the screen and the bots will generate suggestions for the storm.
I used the tool as a graphic organizer/brainstormer to help put together thoughts for my digital art curriculum. I first put several sticky notes onto the screen displaying concepts such as software I will be using and lesson ideas I may want to do, and the bots did the rest. When placing the word “Bryce” at the center of the screen, suggestions were made from Bryce Canyon National Park to Daz 3D (Daz is the current publisher of the software Bryce 3D). Suggestions, which do not fit the topic, can be tagged with thumbs down to make room for more suggestions.
Where the tool becomes very interesting is when you pull in real-time collaborators to help with the storm. All one needs to do is input the email addresses of the people you want to help collaborate and then along with the bots you would have real people, whom you know and know your project join the fun.
When the storm is finished it can be published either through html or pdf format. Although pdf is an available choice for export I ended up having to take a screen shot of my final storm, because during the exportation to pdf some of the formatting and resulting portions of the image changed. I would hope they fix this issue with later updates to this fascinating software.
http://www.edistorm.com/
Saturday, July 17, 2010
BP6_ Emil Torabi
Emil Torabi's Review of WordPress
Emil found a very interesting Web 2.0 tool for creating Blog Sites.
It looks very promising!
Emil Torabi
BP5_Jaqueline Jones
Jaqueline Jones Review of Virtual Worlds
Please follow this link to Jaqueline Jones site!
It is an awesome look at different Virtual Worlds.
Click Jaqueline's Blog
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
BP4_ Odosketch
Odosketch by Odopod
Recently I’ve had to look for Web 2.0 or open source programs for my digital art curriculum, since it appears that a key component of said curriculum was ordered incorrectly and an incompatible program was ordered in its stead. This has placed my entire Kindergarten through second grade curriculum in jeopardy, since I was planning many of my projects in these grade levels upon this particular piece of software, and now I don’t have it. School starts in the middle of next month! So I happened to receive from my RSS feed an article by David Kapuler from Tech & Learning on Web 2.0 tools for digital art. Thus I found Odosketch.
Odosketch by Odopod is a Web 2.0 tool for digital art, which is “a wonderful site for creating beautiful sketches with colored pencils”, stated David Kapuler (July 11, 2010). Although Kapuler stated that the site emulates color pencil, as a professionally trained artist I can unequivocally state that this is not color pencil, but most akin to the transparency of watercolor painting with a calligraphic-style brush stroke. In fact I was in my element using this simple tool, having majored in Illustration as an undergraduate student. I loved this tool! To be able to render a drawing so loosely using only a mouse was truly astonishing, especially to get this quality of line. This is an exquisite tool!
Kapuler, D. (July 11, 2010). Top 10 Sites for Creating Digital Art. Tech & Learning.
Retrieved July 12, 2010 from, http://www.techlearning.com/article/31344
Odosketch Retrieved July 12, 2010 from, http://sketch.odopod.com/
Rinick, J. (July 12, 2010). “GoldFish.” ScreenShot Retrieved July 12, 2010 from,
http://sketch.odopod.com/sketches/190444
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
BP_ Action Research Blog
1) My official problem statement is: “How do I create a curriculum for my new Digital Arts program that is based upon national and state standards, and enhances student engagement?” I have been teaching traditional K-12 Visual Art for 23 years, 13 at the elementary school at which I am currently teaching.
Prior to thirteen years ago I knew nothing about the computer. When I went for my undergraduate degree microcomputers were just hitting the consumer market, and they could do practically nothing unless you knew BASIC code, which I did know, by the way.
However, I had seen what computers could do by watching the movies “Tron” and of course “Star Wars: Episode Four (the original)” and the television show NOVA on PBS. I saw what real computers like the Cray Supercomputers could do and that is what I wanted to be able to do with computers. Of course there was no way I was ever going to get near a Cray computer and there was no way for a “Commodore 64” or “Texas Instruments Home Computer” would produce such exquisite graphics. So I mothballed the whole notion of doing computer art for many years.
Until 13 years ago, when I met with the people I’d be working with for the next, well 13 plus years, the Arts Team at Midway Elementary School of the Arts. We were given the task of creating a magnet program in the arts from scratch. I remember how each person sat down at their respective computers and started writing and searching the web. I was lost. Not only did I not know how to use the computer for anything, but also I could not even type! That was 13 years ago and many classes and workshops and tutorials about various hardware and software applications ago!
I now find myself, yet again poised at the computer. This time, however, I have the knowledge of both hardware and software and have at my disposal a 24-iMac-computer lab awaiting the middle of August, when the students come back to school, and I start teaching my district’s first elementary digital arts program; which I must write, of course.
2) How did I end up with: “How do I create a curriculum for my new Digital Arts program that is based upon national and state standards, and enhances student engagement?” as my problem statement? I started, first with the notion that my Title I student body was in fact on the wrong side of the great “digital divide”. I had given my third graders an assignment to word-process a document about a piece of art they made on the computer. They didn’t know how to type or even know the configuration of where things were on the keyboard, or even know how many spaces to put between words (the general consensus before I got there was four to five spaces, more if needed). Here was a bunch of so-called Digital Natives who couldn’t produce digitally!
So my original problem statement was to teach a digital art program that promoted digital literacy. When I started researching the digital divide and digital literacy especially, I found that the definition of digital literacy was just way to big and amorphous to grab a hold of. No one really had a single definition of what is meant by digital literacy. For one thing with the rate that technology is being developed, one cannot truly nail down a definition because it is always rapidly changing.
Then I decided to put aside the whole digital literacy topic and spend time doing research on one of my pieces of software, Bryce 6.1 a 3-D modeling software, and see how learning Bryce might affect math grades. It was an easily quantifiable topic, but something was lacking. I really am not that interested right now in how my curriculum will affect another course of study. I actually had a much larger problem, so large that I was dancing all around it. I, in fact, had no curriculum to test nevertheless do research on. I needed a digital art curriculum!
I found through my research that although there a digital art projects on the Web, there appears to be no digital art curriculum. Therefore, this is what I am going to do, create a digital arts curriculum, based upon my hardware and software,
That will be engaging to the students and founded upon what national and state standards there may be.
3) I don’t know what the outcomes will be! I do know that when I had my classes work on a project in the lab they were very engaged both with the software and the hardware, as well as their own creation of art. I remember one student in second grade saying, “I love digital art”. It wasn’t even an official course then just a project. So, I suspect that student engagement will be fairly high.
I cannot know what my students will ultimately create, nor to what level of expertise and craftsmanship they will achieve. However, I can guess, based upon last year’s student growth in Bryce, that they will astonish me with their abilities! This growth will be charted with a rubric and a survey or pretest/posttest scenario.
4) So far only one of my critical friends has been of any real source of help, bouncing ideas off her mind. I’m contemplating finding new critical friends and am pursuing a contact with a person at a local middle school, which does have a digital media program (joined with Full Sail) and have been in contact with Dr. Ludgate in doing so. I’ve also been picking the mind of Michelle Haynes quite a bit in trying to nail down a topic-she may end up one of my critical friends. I don’t know at this time.
5) This month’s course has tightened up the EMDTMS class of 4/1/11, since we’re all following each other’s blogs and diigo accounts. I feel closer to my fellow students, and I like that we’re sharing ideas. At first I must admit I was quite lost the first week trying to get all the RSS feeds and blogs and things up and running. Now I don’t feel that way. I feel and see the sense of having a true learning community.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
New Title "Ponderings"
I decided to change the title of my bog because the other one was, well, just too pretentious. Although I do seek to find and build a bridge between Fine Art and Digital Art, I have decided that i'm going to try to use my blog to also paint a picture of who I am; on the inside.
Several weeks ago we were assigned to watch a video by Sir Kenneth Robinson at the TED conference of 2006. Sir Ken spoke about how our current education system was designed for the 19th century upon industrial-age values. His talk greatly inspired me for several reasons:1) I'm a teacher; 2) I love learning; 3) I love teaching. Thus, I'm interested in the whole notion of just how we human beings think; and therefore learn.
This is not something recent. It is something that I've always been interested in for the past few decades since my initial Bachelor's Degree in 1983. Watching his talk rekindled something in me that was very deep. Maybe, even a sleep for a few years as the day to day reality of teaching week by week; month by month; year by year ticked by.
If school was just a truly academic thing, without the politics of "who to talk to and who not to talk to" for fear of losing your job; the "well at least you're working" attitude of the administration; the parents who think their child is___"fill in the blank, please"; the media and politicians who thinks its their job to diminish public education at every turn. It's no wonder that things aren't so peachy in academia. People, many people would rather pay hundreds of dollars to watch a live sporting event and to emulate it's heros than to pay an equal amount of money to send their child to school with the best possible set of skills they can possibly give to their child: like reading, writing, math, literature, art, music, etc. Instead they pay even more money to "franchise" their child so the she/he is wearing their heros latest gear, yet won't give them a few dollars for a field trip; but he/she has the best, coolest, most hip and up to date sport-shoes around.
Something is wrong! And it's not just that we're teaching from an outdated model as Sir Ken points out. I know that I'm speaking to the choir here; but what can we possibly do? Yes, our current model of public education is outdated, and broken, to boot. What are we to do? The public thinks that the educational mess we're in is because of us teachers. We're easy to blame, we're on the front lines of this battle. It's harder to look in the mirror and see where change begins. Why do we Americans in general despise teachers? Why? Because we've all had an education and since we think we're educated that gives us the right to judge the people in the field, namely us; the teachers. Everyone has had an educational experience, they think that makes them an expert on education.
Well, I drive a car, does that make me a mechanic? I can watch the shuttle launch from my front porch, does that make me a rocket-scientist? Yet every American has had some kind of educational experience and they think this makes them experts in the field, especially if they can speak and have people follow them; such as politicians.
We need to get the politicians out of the classroom and school-board rooms and put people like Sir Ken in positions to make real change. I have a novel idea: why don't we put the education experts into the classrooms, let them do what they've been prepared to do, and let them alone! Maybe then we would have a model of education that not only worked, but allowed the children to thrive! Maybe!
I've looked into the mirror! I know what and where I need to change; and I'm willing to do so! And I am!
Have you looked into the mirror? Hmm?
But, then I'm just "pondering".
http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/
Several weeks ago we were assigned to watch a video by Sir Kenneth Robinson at the TED conference of 2006. Sir Ken spoke about how our current education system was designed for the 19th century upon industrial-age values. His talk greatly inspired me for several reasons:1) I'm a teacher; 2) I love learning; 3) I love teaching. Thus, I'm interested in the whole notion of just how we human beings think; and therefore learn.
This is not something recent. It is something that I've always been interested in for the past few decades since my initial Bachelor's Degree in 1983. Watching his talk rekindled something in me that was very deep. Maybe, even a sleep for a few years as the day to day reality of teaching week by week; month by month; year by year ticked by.
If school was just a truly academic thing, without the politics of "who to talk to and who not to talk to" for fear of losing your job; the "well at least you're working" attitude of the administration; the parents who think their child is___"fill in the blank, please"; the media and politicians who thinks its their job to diminish public education at every turn. It's no wonder that things aren't so peachy in academia. People, many people would rather pay hundreds of dollars to watch a live sporting event and to emulate it's heros than to pay an equal amount of money to send their child to school with the best possible set of skills they can possibly give to their child: like reading, writing, math, literature, art, music, etc. Instead they pay even more money to "franchise" their child so the she/he is wearing their heros latest gear, yet won't give them a few dollars for a field trip; but he/she has the best, coolest, most hip and up to date sport-shoes around.
Something is wrong! And it's not just that we're teaching from an outdated model as Sir Ken points out. I know that I'm speaking to the choir here; but what can we possibly do? Yes, our current model of public education is outdated, and broken, to boot. What are we to do? The public thinks that the educational mess we're in is because of us teachers. We're easy to blame, we're on the front lines of this battle. It's harder to look in the mirror and see where change begins. Why do we Americans in general despise teachers? Why? Because we've all had an education and since we think we're educated that gives us the right to judge the people in the field, namely us; the teachers. Everyone has had an educational experience, they think that makes them an expert on education.
Well, I drive a car, does that make me a mechanic? I can watch the shuttle launch from my front porch, does that make me a rocket-scientist? Yet every American has had some kind of educational experience and they think this makes them experts in the field, especially if they can speak and have people follow them; such as politicians.
We need to get the politicians out of the classroom and school-board rooms and put people like Sir Ken in positions to make real change. I have a novel idea: why don't we put the education experts into the classrooms, let them do what they've been prepared to do, and let them alone! Maybe then we would have a model of education that not only worked, but allowed the children to thrive! Maybe!
I've looked into the mirror! I know what and where I need to change; and I'm willing to do so! And I am!
Have you looked into the mirror? Hmm?
But, then I'm just "pondering".
http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/
Thursday, July 1, 2010
BP3_Scribd
Scribd is a Web 2.0 tool which is as they state “the largest website for social publishing and reading” (Scribd. p. 2) By utilizing Scribd one can share their own documents across the globe in virtually any format including: Google docs; Word docs; .pdf files; etc. without changing their original fonts or formatting as does some other open-source applications. Scribd made note that they categorize all of their documents through search engines such as: Google; Bing; and Yahoo to mention a few (p. 11).
Scribd is not only a way to get published on the web, it is a very large online library for everything text from newspapers to books and magazines to research; presentations and more (Scribd. May 25, 2010).
Then there’s the social element of Scribd. With the “Readcast” tool one can notify all one’s FaceBook and Twitter followers of the latest book one’s reading or writing for that matter. Scribd includes widgets to attach this feed to the social networking site, with a mere click and play.
In the 21st century it seems one no longer has to ask: ’what have you read lately?’ Scribd makes that sentence obsolete; one can know exactly what page your friend is on and download the document/book/magazine/etc. to oneself and read it right along with your friend who is halfway around the world.
Scribd can be found at http://www.scribd.com/
References
Scribd. “Scribd 101:What is Scribd?”. Retrieved July 1, 2010 from
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31559839/Scribd-101-What-is-Scribd
Scribd. “Scribd Engagement More than Doubles with HTML5,
Company Transitions
Tens of Millions of Documents Into
Billions of Web Pages”. Retrieved July 1, 2010
from http://www.scribd.com/doc/31960411/Scribd-Engagement-More-than-
Doubles-with-HTML5-Company-Signs-Content-Partners-to-New-Revenue-
Opportunities. May 25, 2010.
“The Readcasting Widget”. Sharing Your Reading Activity. Scribd. Retrieved July 1,
2010 from http://support.scribd.com/entries/143884-sharing-your-documents-
activities-and-more#widget
BP1_Google Reader
I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve been blogging and using RSS feeds for years. The fact is I never heard of RSS feeds until these classes much less used them. Although, GoogleReader is a very convenient tool for keeping up with the news with which you are particularly interested in staying current. The following are five news feeds to which I am now subscribing: Edutopia; International Society for Technology Education (ISTE); Open Education; TechLearning; and The APA Style Blog.
Edutopia retrieved from feed://www.edutopia.org/edutopia_rss.xml
Edutopia is a site put together by the “George Lucas Educational Foundation” retrieved July 1, 2010 from http://www.edutopia.org/ it is an excellent source for teachers of all academic disciplines. The site and resulting RSS feed provides information on the latest concepts and reforms of both education and supportive technologies. For information on Multiple Intelligences Theory in practice to Project Based Learning this site is an extraordinary font of knowledge.
ISTE retrieved from feed://www.iste.org/AM/rssfeed.cfm
ISTE is a site and news feed from the International Society for Technology Education retrieved July1, 2010 from http://www.iste.org/ it is a great source for all things related to utilizing technology in and through education. ISTE is a professional and global organization of educators. They provide up to the minute news and ideas from around the world on trends in technology education and included up to the minute reporting on it’s 2010 conference in Denver, CO which just only yesterday concluded.
Open Education is retrieved July1, 2010 from http://www.openeducation.net/
The feed is found at feed://www.openeducation.net/feed/ the site and feed is about the changes taking place in education due to technology and the resulting issues. Some of the topics include articles about how to Google-proof a test question and refer to an article about a digital version of Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is a very thought provoking site/feed and included a tongue in cheek article about the competence of two researchers who happened to be studying the concepts of competence and incompetence of people in their study about competence. It was quite humorous in an academic way.
TechLearning retrieved from feed://www.techlearning.com/rss from the website of the same name retrieved July 1, 2010 from http://www.techlearning.com/Default is a mildly interesting, commercial magazine-site full of many advertisers. In fact you must click on a button to skip the resulting ads. However the RSS feed seems to be free of such trivial stuff. The TechLearning feed includes articles about the latest gadgets and hardware available to educators. As an RSS feed it is acceptable.
The APA Style Blog retrieved July 1, 2010 from http://blog.apastyle.org/ and the resulting feed from feed://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/atom.xml is exactly what it purports to be, all the latest and greatest information of our favorite way of writing, the APA Style. It includes truly up to the minute information on changes in APA Style and could be a true blessing for someone in a tight bind, caught in that netherworld where technology-information is changing at breakneck speed and APA hasn’t caught up yet. A handy tool.
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