Eagle Scout

On Saturday March 29,2008 My son Austin was presented with the rank of Eagle Scout. I am very proud of his achievement. Austin finished all the requirements for Eagle Scout just days before he turned 18. After that birthday he would have no longer been eligible for the rank but by waiting till the very end Austin was able to be a Scout for the maximum amount of time.
Austin started Scouting in first grade when he was just 6 years old so by the time he earned his Eagle he had been a Scout for 12 years. He will tell you he loved every minute of it. Camping, hiking, peeing on trees, building fires, and having adventures with a bunch of his friends. Austin also learned to be a leader, he leaned respect for others. He learned to be a man and I know that this is just the start of great things.

Austin job well done!
Love Dad

Strange Bed Fellows

I am far from a one issue voter; I’m more of a stir the pot, turn over the apple cart type thinker. But there is one issue that I will be taking a serious look at this voting season. That is the arts and art education. I think that the arts are the canary in the coal mine of our children’s education.
While our policy makers point to the easily testable subjects as gauges of the success or failure of the educational system. Often those tests depend heavily on lower level thinking and questioning. The arts on the other hand by their very creative nature move past the lower levels to the higher levels of application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. These are areas of critical thinking that will allow students grow as learners; developing the skills that they will need in the new economy that is developing around the information age of the 21st century.
Below is a link to the Art Vote page of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund with the different Presidential Candidates Arts Policy Brief.
Read and decide.

The Luck of

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Racing ahead, falling behind.4

From the networking class I learned a very basic idea of how the network at our school worked and with that knowledge came the opportunity to fix every ones computer problems. Ooh didn’t see that coming. But also by having to solve many different problems gave me the confidence to include technology more actively in my lessons.

I created a web page that students could access at home. They were encouraged to work with their parents on writing about different artworks that I posted on the web site. Once a month I collected the “home work” and had the students discuss what they wrote in class. Some parents enjoyed the time working with children while others viewed is as a burden and just one more thing to do. OK this was using technology but this could have also been done with a handout that students took home and wrote about. I was doing something with tech that I could have done without tech. I still wanted to have the kids do things that they couldn’t do any other way.

One thing that I did was with a first grade class and their teacher. We created a claymation animation. This was doing something that could not be done any other way. In their class the students wrote the story or script. In my art class we created the clay figures then working during an enrichment time we all worked together photographing the figures and recording the students telling the story. The students actually photographed and moved the clay figures, with a minimal assistance from me. But I still did the computer work of putting together the animation.

Then earlier this school year I discovered the K12 Online Conference. This was a great resource of information of how others were using technology in education. I learned about other teacher used wikis, blogs and other web 2.0 tools with their students. Soon after that I began to create wiki web pages for my students to work with. I also used this blog to record and report on the FAEA State conference. I hoped that my fellow teachers that were not able to attend the conference could share, virtually my experience there.

http://blissthink.blogspot.com/2007/10/faea-state-art-conference.html

http://blissthink.blogspot.com/2007/10/faea-state-conference-day-2.html

http://blissthink.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-create-large-public-artworks-for.html

http://blissthink.blogspot.com/2007/10/drawing-from-students-perspective.html

http://blissthink.blogspot.com/2007/10/jive-foil-puppets.html

To be continued…..

Racing ahead, falling behind. 3

At my first school I used Macs and with them I was good at organizing data from the classroom. I also used the computer to research and create overheads for my lessons. But that was the limit of the computers/technology in my classroom.
Then in 2002 I moved to a new school. This was a brand new elementary school with all new technology. All PC, OK new learning experience. Laptops, LCD Projectors, SmartBoards and document cameras. Wow a challenge to learn about all new stuff with all new stuff.
First thing I did was check out an LCD projector from the media center ( the school started out with 12) I then played around with PowerPoint till I could create a simple slide show of images.
I teach elementary art and it is a great advantage to be able to show large images if the artworks I am studying with my kids.
This worked out great for the first part of the school year but then I noticed that there were other goodies in boxes in the back of the media center. Time for me to browse for new toys.
I talked the media specialist into allowing me to "store" a SmartBoard and document camera in my room. Oh I was off and digitally running. And I was learning a little about PCs, I found them a little more awkward than Macs but I was learning.
I took a course called Intel "Teach to the Future". Teach to the Future is a good course once you get past the thought that this ia an ad for Microsoft. This class encouraged me to look at ways to not only include technology in the things that I did in the classroom but also the things that kids do in the classroom.
I began by having a weekly art class in the computer lab and having kids draw using MS Paint. This was great the kids were learning a new skill and found that the computers were more that just fancy game consoles.
But the things that I wanted to do with the computer in the classroom were outstripping my skills on the computer. I needed to know more that I could learn on my own. So I convinced my Principal that I needed to take a networking class that was offered by the district to a chosen few. I should have know better.
To be continued....

Racing ahead, falling behind.2

Now that I have thought about my previous post for a few days I thought I would describe my journey of incorporating technology in the classroom.

I have been teaching for less that ten years and when I came into the classroom most schools already had computers in the classroom and they were networked together. But at that time the primary use of computers was word processing. Some were using e-mail but not for important communication that was hand written or printed out and sent via student to the teacher or placed in their mailbox. A few teachers were using "Learning" games on the computer.

Coming to teaching later in life and having used computers in my business I knew that they were capable of doing much more.
Keeping records was something that I always found tedious at best. And much to my early dismay I found that most teachers are very consistent record keepers. Computers also do tedious and consistent very well. We were using Macs at that time in the schools and Apple had a great simple program for creating databases. I used that to create a student behavior database and was beginning to create a grading database when our tech teacher said that the school owned a grading program Orbis GradePro. but no one used it but the software and instructions were in the box and I was welcome to give it a try.

Ooh I was in heaven. This program allowed me to keep track of students grades, attendance, seating chart and notes on the student. I was able to print out charts and graphs on my students after just a little set-up (ok that set-up consisted of typing in all 500 of my student names) But it was worth it because it gave the illusion that I was as organized as a veteran teacher.

The graphs and charts proved to the other teachers and administration at my school that I was some sort of computer savant. Because of this I was able to move into my room a really cool blue and white Power Macintosh G3 and the only scanner in the school. People came by to see that the computers in the classroom could be used for something other that showing screen savers of kittens or grandkids.

To be continued.......

Racing ahead, falling behind.

I have been grappling with incorporating technology, web 2.0, and other "alternative" methods of teaching for the past few weeks. I have a Twitter group of educators and technology pioneers that I follow regularly. From this I read how others are using various technologies in their classrooms. Of course being very curious I follow links provided and discover new web 2.0 sites.
I also use an RSS feed to aggregate blogs that I read. This allows me to quickly scan what other bloggers are thinking. I also blog myself but not as regularly as some.
A web 2.0 that I have been using in the classroom is PBWiki. A wiki is an easily edited read write web page. I have been using this in my classroom having my student create web pages about their art work. The kids are very interested in publishing to the web but I do not have the time in my class to devote to an in depth study of wikis by the students.
Another wiki that I use regularly with web 2.0 is Wikipedia. Some view the information on Wikipedia as suspect because anyone can create or edit entries. But because of the rapidly developing aspect of web 2.0 wikipedia is often the only source of information. (That is why many of the references in this blog use Wikipedia) Often current events are updated on Wikipedia as they happen. I am writing this on the evening of February 19th 2008 and early this morning Castro announced that he was steping down as the leader of Cuba. Just a short time later that day contributors had begun changing the entry on Castro to include the fact that he had stepped down and his brother is taking power. I think that this feature of a wiki is very interesting.
I have also begun a lesson plan wiki to collect and share lessons with other art teachers. Blissart is also a PBWiki that I encourage other art teachers to add to, the password is #1art, go figure.
To be continued.....