Art Studio 3 Reflection

For our third art studio, we watched a video of a short story called Rosie's Walk. Throughout the video, Rosie, a rooster, goes for a walk through the yard while a fox follows her. Once we finished the video, we were asked to create a collage illustration of a single event from the story. I chose the scene when the rooster walks up and over a haystack and the fox follows her by jumping into the haystack. For this collage, I simply used colored construction paper, scissors, and glue to put my illustration together. I placed the rooster ahead of the fox to show that he is following her. I also made the fox look like he was walking by showing movement with his front leg.

This lesson applied to many different learning standards. The visual art standards that were expressed were shape and space. Shape was exemplified when students had to decide what size to cut each shape out as before they put it on the paper. Space was exemplified when students had to decide where to put something on the paper in relation to something else on the paper. The visual art skills and techniques standard of exploring the tools and processes of visual arts was also addressed in this assignment.

This lesson also addressed a few english language arts standards as well. Students were asked to recount details from a text presented through a read aloud on the video. Students were also asked to describe the structure of a story such as the beginning and end of the story. Students also used information in their illustrations to help demonstrate an understanding of the characters, setting and plot of the story that was read to them.

I think one difficulty that students might come across with this lesson would be that they would want to simply copy almost exactly what they see in the movie or book. Rather than using their creative mind to create their own illustration, they may just make a replica of someone else's illustration. Perhaps one way to avoid this is to listen to the audio portion of a story only. This allows students to create and illustration in their head as they listen to the story before they put it onto paper. It would be interesting to see and compare students' illustrations of the same scene to see how each person imagined the story differently.

Art Tech Task 4

For this week's art tech task, I chose to create a movie using the iMovie application for Mac computers. My movie was about an artist known as Don Drumm. I chose this artist because he is a local artist in Akron. I think that this movie could be used in the classroom to inform students about an artist that is close to home. Also, Don Drumm uses aluminum  as his art medium which is very different from other artwork students are introduced to in school. This allows students to think creatively to create artwork with a variety of art mediums.

I thought this tool was awesome! I was able to create a short movie and it was super easy and user friendly to learn how to maneuver the application. There are two options for what users can create, trailers or movies. I decided to create a small movie for this assignment. I think that this tool could be used in the classroom to introduce a new unit to the class. There could be a summary of what will be taught and learned in the next few weeks as well as what is expected of the class. Technology is often not associated with the arts as much as music or painting. Showing students that you can use your creative mind to create a movie will help explain how technology can be incorporated in the classroom. At some points, I found the application to be somewhat confusing with all of the settings that can be adjusted. This became better with time as I maneuvered through the application to create my movie. Overall, I found iMovie to be an extremely helpful tool and look forward to using it in my classroom.

Art Tech Task 3

For this week's art tech task, I created an audio file of myself reading a portion of a short story. I had a difficult time finding a source to use from the list of tech tasks provided. I experimented shortly with several of the website given and found difficulty using many of them. I decided to try GarageBand out because I have used it in the past. GarageBand is an application on Apple computers that allows users to create music. I'm a big fan of Apple products and enjoy experimenting with the different applications that are available on the computers. I have found GarageBand to be a very confusing tool. I am a nonmusical person and do not know much about different instruments or other musical concepts. Because of this, I decided to do a read-aloud of a book rather than creating my own song. I read aloud a portion of The Popcorn Shop by Alison Low. I included this story as a read aloud in a lesson plan that I created for another class. Audio tools would allow me to be able to turn on the audio recording of myself reading the story so I don't have to actively read it to the class. Once I completed the recording, I shared the audio file on a SoundCloud account that I created and found to be very easy to use. I do not think that GarageBand would be a good tool to incorporate into an early childhood classroom. I don't think that the tool is very user friendly for a group of young students. Perhaps if the teacher is tech-savy enough to understand the application and believes that they would be able to teach the students to use the tool it would be a good resource for the classroom. Overall, I do not see myself using GarageBand in my future classroom unless I receive some type of further education on how to use the tool.

Art Studio 2 Reflection

The Jett Family: Nick, Becca, Chris (Back Row), Dad, Mom (Front Row)

For this week's art studio, we focused on secondary colors. Secondary colors are made when two primary colors (red, yellow, or blue) are mixed together. The assignment we were given was to draw a picture of our families on a piece of large paper using any color of oil pastels. I drew an image of my family standing in front of the fire place at my home. I included my two brothers and I in the back row behind my parents and my parents in front of us. Once I completed my drawing of my family portrait, we were asked to paint over our artwork with a secondary color of our choice. I chose to use the color orange for my portrait. To make this color, I had to combine red and yellow water colors together.

The visual arts learning standards that are incorporated in this lesson address color, space, and skills and techniques. Students learn about secondary colors and are able to make these colors using primary colors. Students are also able to learn about space as well as they draw their family on their paper. They can choose where they want each family member to be placed in relation to the other. Using a variety of tools such as oil pastels, and paint/paintbrushes, students are able to explore different skills and techniques they are able to make lines and textures.

This lesson also allows for incorporation of english language arts standards as well. Students recall information about their family as well as prior knowledge about primary colors to help answer questions. Students also learn to describe people, places, things and events with details and feelings. Children are able to draw and paint their family members while incorporating details and feelings in their work.

In an early childhood education art class, I believe it is important for teachers to show their students an example of the artwork that is to be created. With this particular assignment, I hadn't worked with water color paint in years and I didn't accurately remember how to properly use it for this assignment. First grade may be a student's first experience with this particular paint style and perhaps the teacher should show the example of the best possible way to mix the two colors together. Portraying an example for students to gain a better understanding of how to complete the task at hand would help them accurately accomplish the assignment.

Art Tech Task 2

For this particular assignment, we experimented with a tool that creates comics. I decided to create a comic using storyboardthat.com about a famous photographer artist known as Sandy Skoglund. This website was very easy to use and allows you to create a comic that is 1x3 or 2x3 for free. I made an account to save my comic and I had an option to go premium so they do have special features that are only available to premium members.

Storyboardthat.com was very easy to use with several different personalized modifications that I was able to make. For example, I was able to chose from several options what style and color bedroom I wanted to use in order to closely relate to the artist's real photograph.

This tool would be a great tool to use in the classroom. Similar to how I used it, students could create a biography of a person that they're learning about in class. For example, students could be assigned different scientists that they must learn about and are asked to create a comic relating to the scientist. This tool allows for student's creativity to be executed in many different ways in the classroom and i believe this would be a great tool for students to use.

I think one thing that may challenge students is the difficulty to include minimum text inside each cell of the comic strip. The size of the cells allow for little room for text. On my last cell, the text box covered a large part of the image. Perhaps in a classroom, the comic strip could be paired with a paper of some sort explaining what is happening in the comic.

Sandy Skoglund's Revenge of the Goldfish