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2/1/2013 0 Comments

Soda Can Art

Yesterday was day #2 of my 3D art elective class.  Since many students in the class had not taken art for a year, I wanted to do a quick project to get them back into a creative mindset.  This soda can art project was something I had seen on Pinterest and it ended up being the perfect one day intro activity! 
The vocab word of the day was "transformation."  We talked about how a sculptor must transform materials into something new each time they create a three dimensional peice of work.  For example, a mound of clay is transformed into a mug.  Then I had each student pick out a clean soda can.  I asked them to transform the can into a new piece of art by changing the form as well as embellishing it with acrylic paints, Sharpie makers and duct tape.
It was great to see the surprised look on the kids faces when I asked them to stomp on their cans. They had so much fun with this activity! And while this project is actually much harder than I imagined it would be, the results were fantastic! I was very impressed with their creativity and ability to come up with unique ideas.
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8/31/2012 2 Comments

Welcome Back & Art Room Makeover

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It's always hard to believe how quickly the summer goes by!  Hopefully everyone has had time to relax, reflect and recharge their batteries. With every ending, comes new beginnings. As we start up this new school year, it's exciting to think ahead to all the amazing possibilities the year has to offer.  New connections to students, new project ideas and the use of even more technology are all things I am looking forward to in the months ahead.

I spent a lot of time on Pinterest this summer getting ideas for the art room.  I can't say enough how much I am in love with this site! It is my number one resource for everything school related.  I thought I'd share some of the art room makeover that took place of the last few weeks.  

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Tables are now named different colors.  I hot glued fabric inside buckets and then hung them from the ceiling with fishing line so that it gives the illusion that paint is spilling out of them.  I can assign each table a clean-up job and simply call them by color name now to get things rolling. (I can't find my source for this! I saw it on someone's blog or Pinterest. If it was you please let me know so I can give you credit.)
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I thought these tissue paper poms were really fun! This idea came from the Clutter-Free Classroom Blog. She has wonderful ideas.  I'm hoping to have students help me make more of these throughout the year when they are finished early with a project.  I'd like to have them going all around the top of this wall.  I also saw the time flies idea around the clock on Pinterest.
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Another idea that I give Pinterest credit to. The kids reaction on the first day was "Whoa! That's cool!" It was fun to paint chalkboard paint on my storage room doors! I will probably leave this up for a few weeks.  My grand plan is to let students draw on it.  I also ran across this physical Facebook wall which was a second part of this idea inspiration.
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This was a great classroom management idea that I found on Pinterest.  If students get too loud, I will simply turn over the letter "A" letting them know it's too loud. If I have to turn the "R" over it is the last warning.  If the "T" is turned over then students loose the privilege of talking the remainder of class.  I like this idea because there is a visual reminder to students and a specific consequence if it has to be said three times. 

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I've had these posters up for a few years now.  I like the constant reminder that the skills they are learning in art class prepare them for hundreds of different jobs. 

Hope you enjoyed the tour of the Coolidge Art room.  Good luck to everyone starting up a new school year! I hope it is filled with amazing adventures and possibilities.
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4/18/2012 3 Comments

PLN: Pinterest, Twitter and Blogs...Oh My!

This past Friday I presented a workshop at the Blueprint for Educational Excellence National Conference.  This is the fourth year that my school district, Reading Public Schools in Reading, Massachusetts, has hosted the conference.  It was a fantastic day and a half of professional development, with hundreds of sessions to choose from and keynotes by former teacher of the year Warren Phillips and brain based expert David Walsh.

Administration is always encouraging us think about taking the opportunity to present.  Last year I did a session on Web 2.0 tools for art education. For that session it was me presenting to a small group of art educators.  This year I decided to tackle a much broader topic dealing with the benefits of having a PLN. Over the past year I have been amazed at how much I have been able to learn and grown as an educator through the use of social media sites.  I called my session,“PLN: Pinterest, Twitter and Blogs…Oh My!” and hoped to get more educators on board.

Since the workshop was located in a lab with 25 computers, I didn’t expect to have a crowd any larger than that.  Wow, was I wrong!  There were people pulling in chairs from the room next door, others sitting on the floor and even more that would have attended but there was no more space in the room.  It was amazing to see so many people interested in PLNs, and yet completely overwhelming to me at the same time. 

Some of you in my PLN have been asking how things went and were hoping I would share my presentation. Overall, it was a good learning experience.  Due to the number of people at the session things got pretty hectic.  As we all know, teachers make the worst students.  Everyone was excited to try things out and the noise level in the room was really high, which was fine execpt that it made it somewhat tough to actually present the information.  In hindsight, I should have adjusted my strategy for the presentation when I saw the room filling up, but I did the best I could under the circumstances.  As I said, I learned a lot and if I were to do it again I would definitely change some things up and share some different information.

Thanks for all of you that have given me support on this these past few weeks!  I really appreciate it and am so thankful for having such a wonderful online PLN!  Here are a few highlights from the session…

Why should you use Twitter for your PLN?  
-It’s like a backyard BBQ. Lots of conversations are going on at one time.  You can roam around and get involved in the conversations that are interesting to you.
-It's free professional development, anywhere and anytime you want to use it.
-There are thousands of other educators on Twitter that are interested in collaborating, sharing resources and discussing ideas.  Together we can accomplish much more than we can alone.
-It's fast.  You are limited to 140 characters. Scan quickly to discover new information in a matter of minutes. 
You don’t need a lot of time to get involved with Twitter. Check in wherever you can to gain a little more knowledge!
Some people I recommend following from Tech Ed/General Ed:
@Web20Classroom :Educator, Speaker, Blogger, #Edchat Co-Creator…
@tomwhitby :Prof of Education. Founder:#Edchat,The EDU PLN Ning… 
@rmbyrne :  Teacher. Speaker. Writer. Google Certified Teacher. 
@willrich45:Parent, author, speaker, blogger about social Web tools and their effect…
@coolcatteacher : Best teacher blog award winner, co-founder of Flat Classroom… 
@NMHS_Principal: Principal of New Milford HS w/ an interest in EdTech +…
 @bhsprincipal :Principal of Burlington HS (MA): NASSP National Digital…

Using hashtags will help you find the conversations that you are interested in.  Including them in your tweets help others discover you as well!  The following list was compiled from several Google searches...
#artsed- Art Education
#edchat – Education in general.  
#edtech –Technology in education
#engchat – English
#HistoryTeacher– History
 #ipaded – Using the iPad in the classroom
#kinderchat –Kindergarten-aged children
#mathchat – Math
#mlearning– Using mobile devices in your classroom
#musedchat – Music
#PhysicsEd – Physics
#scichat – Science
#sped- Special education
#SSChat – Social studies

Why should you use Pinterest for your PLN?
-
It's one of the fastest growing social media sites in the world right now.  So popular and so FUN!  Addicting actually.
-There are so many inspiring ideas that other educators have already pinned from lesson plans, classroom management ideas, technology integration to bulletin board ideas.
-It’s an easy way to organize and collect information.  Make a specific board for a lesson you want to teach and keep all of your resources together in one place.  I use it in class to show students lesson materials.
-It’s perfect for the visual learner (especially all us art teachers!)

Here is an overview video on Pinterest created by Theresa McGee, an art educator in my PLN!

The key to using Pinterest for your PLN is to find other educators in your content area to follow.  Their new pins will appear each time you log on.  Once you find a few people you are interested in following see who they follow, and then follow those people too.  Build your network this way.  You can select to follow all of the boards from a person or select certain boards that interest you.  

A few suggestions of people to follow:
Education/Tech Ed

EducationWorld 
TES Teaching Resources 
Eric Sheninger
Vicki Davis 
Shelly Terrell

Art Educators
Nic Hahn 
Jessica Balsley             
Teaching Palette 
Becca Witherow 
Teressa McGee

As for blogs, I ran out of steam both at the presentation and on this blog post.  If you don't have a Google reader, you should set one up now. It's an amazing way to stay current with what's happening in education and stay connected to others in your field.  Follow this video to do that!

Two of my favorite art ed blogs are:
http://www.theartofed.com
http://minimatisse.blogspot.com/

Thanks for all of your interest!  You can follow me on Twitter here and on Pinterest here. Please share who you recommend following on Pinterest, Twitter and Blogs too!
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