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!

I feel blessed to work in a school district that fully supports the arts.  This year marks the sixth annual ArtsFest show for the Reading Public Schools.  It is an amazing celebration of visual, musical and performance art in our district!  Artwork from grades K-12 will be on display all week down Main Street at Reading Memorial High School.  Musical performances will be happening throughout the evening tonight at tomorrow, also at RMHS.  The schedule below notes performance times.  Please come see how the arts are thriving in our district!

 Tuesday, April 10th
 5:30 p.m.
 6th Grade Combined Band
 6th  Grade Combined Chorus

 6:30  p.m.
 Elementary All District Chorus
 RMHS Fermata Nowhere and The Crescendudes
 Middle School Select Chorus

 7:15 p.m.
 Middle School Jazz Band
 RMHS Stage Band
 RMHS Jazz Ensemble

 Wednesday, April 11th
 5:30 p.m.
 7th  and 8th Grade Combined Band
7th and 8th Grade Combined Chorus

 6:30 p.m.
 RMHS Symphonic Band
RMHS   Concert Band

On a side note, this is the 4th year that our school district will also be hosting the Blue Ribbon Blueprint for Educational Excellence National Institute on Thursday and Friday of this week.  Hundreds of educators from around the country will also be treated to seeing our arts programs in action through musical performances and
classroom visits on those two days.

Tessellations are pretty cool!  They are congruent shapes that fill a space in a pattern, with no gaps or overlapping.  In other words, they fit together like a puzzle.  I’ve been doing these simple slide tessellations for a couple of years now.  After we create the shapes using cardstock paper, students try to turn their abstract shape into a recognizable form.  Some kids are great at this step while others need some help from their peers.  Once the shape is tessellated on the paper, students use Sharpie markers to outline and either watercolor pencils or colored pencils for color.

Zentangles seem to be all the rage lately.  I keep seeing them pop up all over Pinterest and other art education sites. Here is just one example of Zentangle artist trading cards that I found on a Pinterest board.   I've even heard them to be "yoga for your brain", which I thought was really cool!
As my 6th grade students started up art a few months ago, I wanted to remind them about the elements of art.  I thought Zentangles would be a great way to talk about the use of line.  Rather than doing a straight up Zentangle, we first sketched living things...animals or plants for the most part...that happened to have natural patterns in them.  We then put our line and shape patterns inside the natural patterns of the living things using black Sharpie markers.  As a final touch students used colored Sharpies in either the animal or the background to give it some contrast.  They worked hard on these and are very proud of their finished work!

Yesterday I mailed in our school's entries for Doodle 4 Google. This year’s theme was, "If I could travel in time, I'd visit..." There were lots of creative and innovative ideas! Many students thought it would be great to go back in time to witness a specific historic event, while others thought it would be neat to visit a different era in time all together. Check out some of the Coolidge entries below and good luck to all of the participants!

Recently I was searching around the internet for some new lesson ideas and I came across the Blick art supply site.  They have TONS of lesson ideas to try out with various grade levels.  One in particular that grabbed my eye was one called Architectural Letters.  

I already had most of the supplies, so I decided to try this lesson with my eighth grade 3D elective class with a few modifications.  We started using the paper tape that was suggested in the lesson, but then switched over to paper-mache.  The paper mache actually worked much better as it was quicker to apply, covered more surface area and went on smoother.  It also required a LOT of cups.  I must have gone through about 300 cups with my forty students.

My students had a lot of fun with this project.  The best part was seeing the variety of ways they decorated the surface of their letters.  Once a few kids started using glitter and splattering paint it became contagious! 

I just recently started following The Clutter-Free Classroom blog.  They have some wonderful ideas about how to declutter your spaces, including how to purge unused items and organize the things you actually need in
your classroom. I’ve gotten really into this idea lately and have spent a bunch of extra time over the last few
weeks tackling the project of cleaning out my classroom.  
 
I have to admit, things have gotten pretty messy over the last few years.  Art teachers naturally accumulate a lot of materials, including those things that I like to call “treasures.”  You know, the items that most people would throw away in a second, but as art teachers we hoard them for when they might be useful for some type of creation.  The problem is that I've just accumulated too much junk and over the years and these items have been tossed into random piles everywhere, making for a very messy art room.

It’s been a slow road trying to organize.  I decided to tackle the storage room first because it was in the worst shape.  I went through each area of the room, sorting out things I didn’t use or want anymore into piles: items someone else could use, trash and recycling.  I compiled a list of all the things I didn’t want and e-mailed them to the other art teachers in the district.  Within a matter of hours everything was claimed! I also compiled two boxes for goodwill, a few for trash, and a few for the recycling bins.  
 
It’s amazing how much better you feel when you don’t have to look at a mess all the time. I’ve posted a before and after photo below. There is still more organizing that I can do down the road to make it even better. However, I now feel compelled to tackle my office and the kiln room. I also need to devise a plan for keeping it all clean and clutter-free!

If you are interested in this topic, you may also want to check out Zenhabits.  They have been hosting a “Clutterfat Challenge” all month.  Really good ideas about how and why you should get rid of things taking up space in your home. 

My 7th grade classes are currently working on finishing up a still-life project.  In order to accommodate large class sizes, I set up three different still-lifes around the art room.  While I usually create a random grouping of objects for this type of activity, this year I decided to be a little more organized and grouped objects together based on a theme.  Still-life #1 was sports, still-life #2 revolved around little kids and still-life #3 used items found in the kitchen.  Students were able to select the still-life that they wanted to work on and gathered around it to get a close view.

Students have learned a lot about composition, shading with both pencil and colored pencil and have strengthened their observational drawing skills through this project.  I’m posting the photos of each still-life below for the students that wanted to work on them at home this weekend!

Artist Trading Cards are miniature works of art that are the same size as baseball cards.  The purpose of these cards is for artists to create original pieces of art in a relatively short amount of time that can be traded or exchanged with other artists.  Some people even collect their cards in plastic sleeves, just like baseball card collectors do!  

The fun of these cards is to see what other artists from around the world are creating.  Recently, all of the 7th grade classes currently taking art participated in an ATC swap!  Each student made several cards with the theme of “Elements of Art.”  This was the determined topic for all of the schools participating in the trade.  Students had fun using a wide assortment of materials, such as scrap papers, magazines, gel pens, watercolors and colored pencil to create their cards.

After they created several cards, they picked their best one to trade with another school.  They labeled their first name, title of card, date and state (MA) on the back.  We then mailed the 100 cards Coolidge made to Ridgely Middle School in Lutherville, Maryland. Several days later, we received a box in the mail with 100 cards created by students from the Spring Oaks Middle School in Houston, Texas.  Each Coolidge student picked one of the cards that were mailed to us to keep. They also traded the extra cards they had created with other students in their class.

This was a new experience for all of us, including me!   It was fun to see all of the different ideas students came up with using a single theme.  We also enjoyed seeing the variation of materials and concepts from one school to another.  I think that students got a lot out of it and we hope to do more swaps with other schools down the road!