Show and Tell

How to utilize cell phones in the classroom.
A big problem in schools is the debate of whether or not to incorporate or even allow cell phones in the classroom. When I had my internship in a high school ceramics classroom my mentor teacher used a site called polleverywhere.com
http://www.polleverywhere.com/

One can create a poll or ask questions to either a specific group of people or to the general public. This can be used for many different things, but my mentor teacher would use it to instigate talking within the class. At first I thought this was strange, using cell phones to instigate a conversation in the "real world", but what I saw really worked.
She would use the site to create a poll with questions like "Which work do you think was the most successful... What piece did you like the most and why... What did you like about this assignment" and others. The students would go on their cellphones and submit their answers. The website would gather their answers and the teacher would display the results on the projector. After looking at the answers the class would discuss the work and the answers to the questions asked. Normally in a critique the hardest part is actually starting a discussion. No one really wants to be the first to talk, yet using this process they write out their answers anonymously. I feel when the students saw that others thought similarly to their responses they were more confident and able to talk freely during the critique.

Interview with Alex Myers: Popplet

Darts, Visual Culture Jam: Art, Pedagogy, and Creative Resistance

Darts speaks about edutainment and how political ideals are mixing with entertainment. He states that visual culture is our everyday lives and that it is everywhere. Hidden forms of power (exposing and addressing oppression and encouraging social transformation) lie within visual culture. Within a school setting many students will resist and seemingly oppress themselves. These students attempt to make those around them acknowledge their identities and their lived experiences by setting themselves up for either apathetic aggressive behavior toward schooling. “Resistance need to be an effective pedagogical tool for exposing oppression and encouraging personal and social transformation… a location where students and teachers together are able to critically reflect upon and effectively challenge repressive practices and dominant structures that reinforce the inequities of the status quo…”(Darts, 317)

How can we as educators help empower students to meaningfully engage in the ideological and cultural struggles embedded within the visual?

Boyd, "Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites"

Boyd mentions in the article that networked publics are where norms are set and reinforced. These sites are where identities are formed, status in negotiated, and peer-to-peer sociality or a way of connecting is utilized.

Not only can a person choose how they are viewed by the “publics” they are also given certain powers over others such as “friends only” restrictions and who they choose can be their friend. Teens join these sites to maintain connections with their friends. Yet things such as “Top Friends” allow a power play to grow between each “friend”, much like an invitation to a party or adding someone to speed dial. As long as you keep the leader happy, they will allow you to stay their “Top Friend.”

Along with these powers and privileges, communities or “networked publics” grow. Social networks allow publics to gather, therefore creating a new kind of public. “Publics, not simply public, and networked publics, not simply publics” (Boyd, 8). In real life the entire world is not watching because it is not physically possible. They might hear about something from word of mouth, but it is impossible for the world to be watching unless a form of technology, such as the television or newsprint, is involved. Using the Internet, four simple properties (Persistence, Searchability, Replicability, and Invisible Audience) make it easy to locate one’s “digital body” and view anything there is to offer.

How can an art educator utilize the "digital body" and the idea of networked publics in their classroom?
What sort of hidden powers lie in networked publics?

Jones and Fox

This article was quite interesting to read. It compared things such as email, gaming, social networking, broadband usage, online shopping and banking, between multiple generations. The results were fascinating. I enjoyed going through each chart or graph to compare my generation with others. I found it informative in certain areas such as the use of social networking sites between the generations. 

I know that both of my parents and my sisters have websites of Facebook. My parents use theirs to set up events for work, and to stay connected to their family and friends, usually by commenting on walls and uploading pictures. 

My older sister once used the site to promote her self-owned company, but now my feed from her has been taken over by pictures and stories about her children. I fear that my niece and nephew will have their own websites before they are 5, and that it will be completely normal to do so for your child.

 Social Networking Site for Babies!

Do you think it is acceptable or right for babies and toddlers to have their own social networking sites?

Retouching Self-Portrait

Artist’s Statement

I wanted to make my self-portrait a comment on the skewed vision of beauty in the mainstream media. It is foolish to assume that the celebrities we see in magazines actually look that way. I took an old photo of myself, from when I was three, and morphed myself into something that could be seen on a magazine cover. When looking at the photo I want people to feel unsettled. What they are supposed to be looking at is a young child, yet now they have been presented with something sexualized and morphed into somewhat of a cartoon. I changed my eyes, hair, lips, neck, and the general shape and size of my body in the picture. Afterwards it seems to be a completely different person. This is a good comment on how people change themselves on the internet and how they can create a completely different persona. 

Compositing Big Ideas

I based this idea on Sweeny's "Network Society". I wanted to explore how we are all interconnected through the Internet and how we have created multiple online communities. These Clouds are examples of my thought process.

This is the process I went to to get to these clouds...

1.    Select one Big Idea concerning technology broadly defined.

a.    The Internet as a Community

2.    Brainstorm a list of  themes that apply to this big idea

a.    Networking Sites

b.    Communication

c.    Inclusion

d.    Exclusion

e.    Connectedness

3.    Explore synonyms to this theme.

a.    Admittance

b.    Embracement

c.    Ban

d.    Boycott

e.    Ideas

f.     Connection

g.    Language

h.    Acquaintance, Friend, Enemy

i.     Link

4.    Use these synonyms to search Flickr tags. Prepare 3-5 clusters of images that are from your tag searching.

a.    Communication

b.    Computer

c.    Connection

d.    Ideas

5.    Pay attention to the tag clouds that you run into as you search through the Flickr photo streams. Include 2 clusters that come from an interesting tag that you found on Flickr.

a.    Linked

b.    Social Graph

This is my finished Collage. I used the information and images I found when creating the clouds...

Photoshop Semiotics: research in the Age of Digital manipulation : Michael J. Emme and Anna Kirova

Semiotics is defined as the study of symbols or the interpretation of those symbols. The article discusses how programs such as Photoshop stretch and skew the social semiotics and how we view the image. At one point it mentions that “Taking a camera into a classroom is seen as an ethical problem because the degree of contact it can create though the production an distribution of images is very difficult to control.” 

Taking a photograph and distributing it is a touchy subject because of how specific and detailed a photograph can be. Artists and others use photoshop to change the image and create something, that I believe is completely different from the original. Although it references the original it can never be the same because of the action taken to change it. 

I believe that as long as a student is old enough to not only grasp the basics of the program, but to also understand the ethics behind photography and it’s manipulation it should be included in the art curriculum. 

More crazy Photoshopped creatures here http://www.anvari.org/cols/Photoshopped_Animals.html

Does Photoshop have the potential to make the situation of photography in the classroom better, or worse?

How would you explain to your students the ethics of photography?

Lines of Sight in the "Network Society": Simulation , Art Education, and a Digital Visual Culture : Robert W. Sweeny

It is very important for art educators to learn about visual culture and how to integrate it into their classroom

"... there are no aspects of contemporary life that lie outside of complex 

social, cultural, and technological networks, no individual whose actions 

are not in some way interconnected with those of another. " (Sweeny, 2)

In some way we are all connected by the "Network Society". Between "Global trade, telecommunications, and commerce, including but not limited to digital technologies" we are all interconnected developing social connections into relationships, communities, and societies. I thought it was very interesting, this thought of an interconnected Internet community. 

In one second on the networking site Facebook I can find hundreds of people who not only share the same interests as myself, but we are close enough geographically to interact. Before the Internet and the "Network Society" this action would have been much more complicated and time consuming. It is almost easier to create a community over the Internet than in real life.

How would you integrate Sweeny's ideas in your own lesson plan?

Do you believe it is easier to create a connection in person or over the internet?

Magazine Cover : Connotation and Denotation

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Walter Benjamin

I found this article very interesting solely because I am taking a basic printmaking class this semester. 

The article discusses the reproduction of artworks and how it is effected by the advances in mechanical reproduction technology. In my class we have begun working on our woodcut prints. Before woodblock printing there were only a handful of items one could reproduce. 

“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Manmade artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. The Greeks knew only two procedures of technically reproducing work of art: founding and stamping. Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could produce in quantity. All others were unique and could not be mechanically reproduced. With the woodcut graphic art became mechanically reproducible for the first time, long before script became reproducible by print. The enormous changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has brought about in literature are a familiar story. However, within the phenomenon which we are here examining from the perspective of world history, print is merely a special, though particularly important, case. During the Middle Ages engraving and etching were added to the woodcut” (Benjamin, 2)

Many artists use woodblock as their artistic process. In Japan this process is known as Ukiyo-e. 

Hara on the Tokaido, ukiyo-e print by Hiroshige

 Nowadays almost anyone can reproduce an image on their own, with no great struggle. Because the process allows the creator to make multiples easily the work can be sold. Many companies create T-shirts that are a mass production of one design.

 

Do you think that reproductions of the arts are acceptable?
Do you think reproduction take anything away from the original?

Walker (2001): Big Ideas and Art Making-

This article explains the importance and reasoning behind developing “Big Ideas” and implementing them in the art classroom. Big ideas are what sustain the classroom’s attention over a long period of time. By developing a Big Idea for the lesson your students are working on in the classroom they are able to gain the opportunities needed to “learn about an idea, build an adequate knowledge base for working with it, examine the idea in the work of other artists and find personal connections to the idea.” 

Students who are given a big idea along with the lesson experience deeper levels of thinking. I believe it is necessary that a big idea, essential questions framing that idea, an artist or body of work, and an activity tie together in order to create a successful unit plan. Within the article they explain the many differences between Big Ideas, themes, and subject matter. Big ideas are more like the concept of the piece, rather than the topic or matter. 

These are some sites that can help with developing a Big Idea:

The Getty - Teacher Exchange

Slideshare - Big Ideas

• What are some Big Ideas that can be used in the classroom?
• Based on the answers to question 1, what are some Essential Questions one can use?

Barrett (2003): Interpreting Visual Culture-

When looking at a visual image one can identify at least three separate parts:
“the linguistic message, the denoted image, and the connoted image.”(Barrett)
The denoted image is made up of what is actually being seen devoid of any emotion or attitude, whereas the connoted image is the subjective experience or the emotional and imaginative ideas we associate with the image. Denotations and connotations are always present in both visual and verbal communication. The linguistic message is the written word, or words within the image. Like the image, these literal words can have denoted and connoted meanings too.
Within a piece of visual communication, such as an ad or the cover of a magazine, there can be various messages and meanings. Stereotypes are usually used in media to aid in interpreting the message of the visual image. Although stereotypes are untrue, or half-truths developed by fear or hatred, they are known and easily recognized.

The artist Michael Ray Charles uses stereotypes of African-American culture in his work, Cut and Paste, 1994. 

One can connote that the figure is a stereotyped African-American with specific objects surrounding the figure. Each object, whether a positive or a negative, promotes a stereotype about African-Americans. 

Depending on a person’s library of knowledge they are able to decipher certain items, yet some people are unable to make sense of them all because their knowledge is limited. Although their knowledge is limited people of every age can interpret the messages around them. In the article Barrett leads a group of preschoolers in a discussion about their teddy bears.

They were able to come to the conclusion that although real bears are large, scary, have big teeth, and sometimes eat people that their personal teddy bears are small, soft, and are used to cuddle and comfort.


I found this Video when searching for pictures of teddy bears and it reminded me of this reading. Can you interpret this video using connotations and denotations?

• What are some stereotypes used to describe your own culture?
• What ads “speak” to you, and why do you think they do? Are they using a certain image or word that is geared to your culture?

Introductions are in Order

Hello, my name is Ms. Clay, also known as Stasia. I am an Art education major concentrating in ceramics. Recently I went on a trip to Seagrove North Carolina and I have to say, if you are a potter and yu have never been to Jugtown, it is worth the trip! I had a wonderful time visiting the studios and shops of these potters who have had clay in their family for generations.

Vernon and Pam Owens

 Vernon and Pam's son, Travis, spoke to Craft in America

 I am also a big fan of George Ohr. He was self-proclaimed as the "Mad Potter of Biloxi." His wild processes and aesthetics made his work extremely popular.

George Ohr and his crazy beard

This video shows another artist mimicking Ohr's throwing style.