Below are examples of the movies students created as a part of the “Art as social action” unit. Some students focused more on the artistic process, while other more on the issue. More movies from this unit.
Photos of the project.
Other posts about this project.
Today we started discussing my favorite of the student paintings (below). The topic she researched was third culture kids (TCK). She attempted to make the face as gender neutral as possible and to represent some of the many influences on what makes up identity. She painted blue hair because she feels it represents her (she use blue hair in another project) and it demonstrates individuality. The banners represent aspects of identity that can’t be spoken about. It is not just about being a TCK, but about how people view each other in society. They are supposed to be like tape, and being wrapped in the tape “holds you back” from your true identity.
The second painting we discussed today (below) was on the topic of school violence. The “flowers” are hands, representing students. The blue hands represent dead students. The color purple was chosen to give a feeling of gloom to the painting. In Korea, the tree is symbolic of a child, growing from a sprout.
The third work of art we discussed today (below) deals with the topic of embracing femininity. The students saw various masculine & feminine qualities in the painting. The idea is to “weaponize femininity.” The artist wanted to paint a feminine woman that looks strong. She is holding a sword and a parasol. She specifically chose to make the eyes look Asian to go against the stereotype of femininity being a white woman. The look on her face is that she has a secret.
Sexism is the topic of the painting below. The artist was going for abstract over realism, as he felt his skills couldn’t compete with the others in class. The other students felt that this work was very superficial and trite.
More photos of the project.
Other posts about this project.
Today the students discussed each others work. Actually, the discussion was so in depth that they only discussed one work of art. They analyzed various elements of art such as color, value, form, and space. They also discussed what they thought the message of the artist was, without the artist commenting. I was really impressed by the depth of discussion of the message of the work below about teen pregnancy. The artist, Chloe, shared that the inspiration for the spikes in the baby were inspired by the Korean saying, “Even hedgehogs love their children,” with the deeper message that even though teen pregnancy is taboo, this mother loves her baby. This was the most in depth feedback of student work I have been involved in. Every element of the painting was discussed, from the blood, to the position of the feet, to the amount of black and it’s function. This is an impressive work of art, with a lot of though behind the creation.
Other posts about this project.
5th grade class’ book trailers from their book club books. Created on the iPad. They used these storyboards below to plan the shots.
Suggested Naming Conventions For Digital Assignments
Naming digital assignments (including Google Docs) :
Block Assignment Name Last Name First Name (as it appears in the student information system/grade program)
==> HS/MS Example: C Rome Essay Kim Johnny
==> ES Example: 4B Weather Map Kim Johnny
Naming Google collections/folders:
Block Last Name First Name (as it appears in the student information system/grade program)
==> HS/MS Example: C Kim Johnny
==> ES Example: 4B Kim Johnny
Email Subject Heading (to make for easy filtering when turning in digital assignments):
HW block
==> Example: HWC
Recently Jay Hopp, a middle school science teacher told me he was going to teach a unit on sound and asked me if GarageBand might be a good tool to use to help the students understand sound better. I had no idea what he was teaching about, so I borrowed a text book and read the chapter. An important part of the unit is sound waves, so an obvious use of GarageBand is to record sounds and analyze the waves. I thought that it would be an interesting idea to record various types of instruments and analyze the pattern they make. The other 8th grade science teacher, John Patrick (J.P.), and I borrowed ten different instruments to test record and see what happens. What I found when I recorded the instruments was that most created a very distinct pattern when recorded in GarageBand.
The idea I came up with was to print out each of the sound waves and give them to the students and have them record the instruments (the same way we did) and try to match the instrument with the sound wave that we printed out for them.
At the start of class we demonstrated how to play and record each of the instruments, and then in groups the students had to look at the cards and predict which cards went with which instruments before recording any. Once they were done with their predictions they began recording instruments and discussing which sound waves they thought matched. They had great discussions both during their predictions and the recording stages, and it was interesting to listen to them “negotiate” about which instrument matched which wave. The groups averaged 80% correct matches.
Mr. Hopp demonstrating the instruments.
Making predictions.
During the activity I suggested to Jay that we should look for more distinct sounding (pattern producing) instruments, but after the students did so well, I don’t think that is necessary. Something that JP did seemed to helped the students with their predictions. After giving them a few minutes to struggle with the predictions, we played each instrument again. Their attention was much more focused on the task this time. We think we could improve the activity by creating a movie showing us playing each of the instruments, without sound of course, so they could refer back to it. This would make it easier for them to reproduce each sound more accurately. Another way would be to do another movie as the “answer key,” to play at the end of class.
Recording the instruments.
Recording the instruments.
Comparing sound waves.
Below are the handouts that Jay, J.P. and I created for the lesson. Feel free to use these materials under Creative Commons license. We would love to hear your feedback if you use this lesson.
Over the past few weeks I helped a middle school science class to create movies demonstrating three of Newton’s Laws. This is one of the projects that the teacher is especially proud of.
I recently posted about the “push start” Jane Harris gave me for integrating Scratch (programming) projects into the curriculum. I had been working with an advanced high school math elective class before Jane gave me all the great advice about how to set up the projects. I think that the students and teachers did some great work and I would like to share it with you. Please feel free to leave comments on the student blogs about their project or reflection. I know they will appreciate the feedback.
The projects:
This tech tip from my middle school Tech Gurus is about Pages, but you can customize the toolbar on most Mac applications using this same process.
See more of my student’s tech tips.
