Mystery Skype

           Last week we had the unusual and exciting opportunity to set up a mystery Skype call with another class of students! Mystery Skype is unlike anything I've experienced before, it is a real life game of twenty questions between two classrooms in different parts of the world! We were fortunate enough to have some very adorable opponents, a class of 4th graders in Australia! While the purpose of a mystery Skype is to discover and learn about where your opponent is from, their thick accents gave them away almost immediately. Luckily, our somewhat plain voices posed a challenge for them and kept the fun of the game alive. My favorite part of our mystery Skype was when the students offered us advice on what it takes to be a good teacher, I always get a kick out of what kids have to say! I learned about what a neat tool Skype is for teaching geography, this is something I never would have thought of before this experience. I would be very interested in using Skype with my classroom to talk with artists or museum staff, I think this could be really fun and useful for secondary art students to learn more about professional artists. 

Education.sykpe.com is an awesome resource I just discovered through this class. A few lessons I discovered through this source were

So, You're An Artist!: Meet Julie Chibbaro and JM Superville Sovak, authors of INTO THE DANGEROUS WORLD 
This lesson shows students the creative process of a professional author and illustrator. Through this lessons students will learn some new drawing techniques, how to shape a story, and how to borrow from other artists and authors. This would be an awesome project that covers a lot of ground in terms of art and literacy. 

4 Shading Techniques to Improve Your Artwork
This lesson covers the basics of:  

• making a value scale
• transferring shading techniques to a final drawing
• blending, hatching, crosshatching, and stippling techniques

This would be an interesting lesson for me to incorporate because, I'm afraid to admit, I really hate teaching shading! Its a lesson I feel is often pretty boring and dry, so having someone who enjoys teaching it more than I do would be beneficial to my students! 

Peer Reviewed Journal Summary: A Learning Ecology Perspective: School Systems Sustaining Art Teaching with Technology

Summary of:  A Learning Ecology Perspective: School Systems Sustaining Art Teaching with Technology.

            This article outlined how art is an integrated subject, and therefore can be a perfect platform to introduce people to new forms of media. Art is a subject that lends itself to many other disciplines, and in this article they found that technology integration through arts has three main implications:  

1.Ecological Attention to Technology Integration  

2. Human Infrastructure for Supporting Art Teachers' Technological Engagement

3. The Art Teacher as a School Technology Leader.

            Essentially the first implication means that technology use in the art classroom can help a school achieve technology integration, if technology exists in the art room, other teachers will feel inspired to collaborate lessons. 

The second implication suggests that if there is school wide support for introducing technology into the art room, than successful projects and practice will be put into place. This is because some of the main issues that hold back technology integration are lack of time, resources, and little support.

 Thirdly, the  Art Teacher as a school technology leader tells about how Art teachers who have experience in technology can act as tech facilitators for their school or district. Having an in school tech support will help the school develop professionally and stay relevant.

I chose this article because I wanted to read something that related directly to my content area, as well as to technology. It is nice for me to see concrete examples of how technology can be integrated into the art classroom. I believe that this article would be an interesting or useful read for other educators because it highlights how art educators can assume a fairly important leadership role within their schools and communities. By having art educators well versed in technology they can assume an elevated and important role within their school context.

Citation: Ching-Chiu, L. (2011). A Learning Ecology Perspective: School Systems Sustaining Art Teaching with Technology. Art Education, 64(4), 12-17. Retrieved May 10, 2015, from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=b166aa75-6bdc-4b20-88410520b43b2810@sessionmgr4003&vid=0&hid=4112&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==#db=aft&AN=508440642

Today we are going to be talking about assistive learning technologies! Assistive learning technologies can be anything as simple as a pencil gripper, to something as complicated as speech recognition software. One form of an assistive learning technology I was impressed by was the SMART board (you can out find out more about them here!  http://education.smarttech.com/) that we saw in the EATRC. One feature of the SMART BOARD I really liked was the spot light effect, the spot light lets you highlight certain areas of the board. This would be great for learners who need help focusing and finding key information. Using a smart board to accompany your lesson is also a great way to help students who cant keep up with taking notes from a teachers voice alone.  The SMART board also has a feature called a curtain, where you can hide information from students, this would be great to keep certain parts of the lesson a surprise, I could also see this being used during a spelling test.  

Other cool uses for smart boards! 

Take a look at this downloadable app that helps you manage your classroom by visually showing your children when their volume level is too loud. What a neat class room management strategy!!
http://www.allstudentscanshine.com/2014/04/apps-for-classroom-management.html

Here is another app that lets your students know how much time they have left to work on an assignment!
http://mattbgomez.com/great-online-visual-timers-for-kids/