Although I found Pinterest a while ago, I've really only started using it more significantly in helping organize some ideas and images.  If you're not familiar, basically Pinterest allows you to organize your favorite images by 'pinning' them to different boards that you create.  Not only is this a great way to organize images for your classes, but its a great bookmarking tool for us visual learners as well.  I've found a number of different uses.  Specifically, if you scroll down some of the boards that I've created, you'll find a few that are relevant to my classes.   For example, I've created boards to inspire my IB Art students to imagine new ways of approaching their Independent Workbooks, and even a base to start to seek out their own project ideas.  You'll also notice quite a few boards dedicated to the Operational Techniques for Transformation that I suggest using for the Surrealistic Me project (still time to sign up, by the way).

Once you've gotten your invitation (although it is free, you have to request membership to the site), you'll want to also follow other art teachers who are pinning.  The Pinterest Group on Art Ed 2.0 is a great place to start!

Its time to cast your votes once again for some of the best edublogs out there, and there are once again plenty to choose from in the art categories. I'm thrilled once again to see so many of the sites that have meant so much to my own teaching.  SO if you're looking for a quick primer on which art blogs have been shortlisted, I'm glad you asked:

• Best Group Blog: The Teaching Palette
• Best Teacher Blog: Art is Messy 
• Best New Blog: Ameria
• Best Class Blog: Art of Apex High School
• Best Resource Sharing Blog: The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet
• Best Use of Audio / Video / Podcast: Dryden Art
• Best Wiki: Art Online Studio
• Best Educational use of A social Network: Art Ed 2.0 

If there are any I've missed, please drop a comment. Otherwise, happy voting and don't forget to vote early and vote often (you may vote once per day).

Last year we had a stupendous showing of art blogs nominated for edublog awards, and even a few finalists!  Art did indeed rock the edublogs, and this year its time to crack the winner's circle wide open. I've found some amazing resources in the work of my colleagues from around the world, but more than anything else, there is one site that deserves recognition:


Best Individual Blog: The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet
Best group blog: The Teaching Palette
Best new blog: ameria [blog]: A Level Art
Best class blog: ISB IB Fine Arts
Best resource sharing blog:  Learning IT
Best teacher blog: Art is Messy
Best librarian / library blog: Tech Library Classroom
Best educational tech support blog: The Thinking Stick
Best educational use of video / audio / podcast: Dryden Art
Best educational wiki: Ib Art Online Studio
Best educational use of a social network:  Art Education 2.0

A few years ago, my colleague Ellen introduced me to the book Art Synectics by Nicholas Roukes.  The section on Operational Techniques for Transformation has become a mainstay in my classroom when discussing surrealist techniques, but the more I've used them, the more I've become convinced that these techniques are brilliant brainstorming strategies for almost any project.  Once the students have a basic idea or subject, they can use these techniques to challenge themselves to look at their idea in a wide variety of ways.  Techniques can even be combined to create more unusual and unique approaches.


Of course, this is indeed a perfect exercise for any surrealist project, and since we're working on a certain international collaborative surrealist project, I've converted the list of techniques into a slideshow.   

Transformation: Operational Techniques

If you're planning on participating in the Rotoball 2012 and/or Surrealistic Me international collaborative projects, please take a moment to register your classes at these survey sites.  It just helps us keep our information better organized and it makes getting back in touch with you easier as well.  Thanks!

• Flavorwire » Inside the Sketchbooks of Famous Artists

  • 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Surrealistic Me by Ying Ying

This post is your one-stop shop for international collaborative projects that your students can start now!  The Student Creative is back with challenges both old and new. If you're teaching photography or digital media, check out our Surrealistic Me project. Heck, if you're teaching any traditional media, check out our Surrealistic Me project. 

Let's face it, you're probably teaching surrealism anyway.  

Maybe you're already approaching it in the form of a self portrait.  If you are, great! Submit! Its free and we'd love to include your students work.  If not, Why not adapt your project and make it work in our book? Students will submit surrealistic self portraits, the end result of which will be a cross section of surreal students from around the world.  Similar to our earlier projects, the final selected images will be published in book form, the profits of which will again benefit the Jacaranda Foundation for AIDS orphans in Malawi.  Those books, by the way, are still available.

No? Teaching film, video... animation?  Something along the moving-image lines? We got you covered.  The Rotoball Project is back for 2012- our fifth year as an international collaborative project!

Join us, won't you?  These big international collaborative projects give students the opportunity to see how other students in other parts of the world respond to similar creative challenges and connects students through a love of art-making. 

• Marcel Duchamp’s Étant Donnés
  What was Marcel Duchamp doing for the 20 years after he had 'given up' making art...?  This was one of my earliest revelations about the mysteries of art.  Growing up in Philadelphia, I passed these doors many times before I realized there was more to them than meets the eye.  That was due, in part, that for many of those years I wasn't tall enough to see through the peepholes.  I probably didn't even realize they were there.
  
  
  tags: philadelphia art Reference
  
  
  • Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

We're back at our Perspective Towers project in our Foundations Art class, and just for fun, I showed the class Dick Termes' great explanation of 1 though 6 point perspective.  Until now, I've taught 1-3, and for fun I showed them how to do 4 this year.  To be honest, I'd never given 5 or 6 point perspective much thought, but one of my ninth graders, Esther, got really into the idea of pushing this project further and figured out 5 point perspective on her own.  In order to demonstrate it to the class, she found this fantastic video -which we'll watch tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Esther's on to figuring out 6 point perspective (which apparently involves drawing on a sphere).  I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it, but she's determined...

My good friend and NBCT mentor, Kris Fontes, has posted a fantastic lesson on the Adobe Education Exchange that has gathered a lot of attention for the 2011 Educators' Choice Awards.   Based on the work of Ashley Gilbertson, whose photographic series documents the empty childhood bedrooms of fallen soldiers, Kris' lesson asks students to document the impression that is left by their own rooms. I think this would make another great collaborative project... perhaps we'll have more on that soon!

Check out all the great entries and vote here.

I have a lot of catching up to do, so I'm going to refrain for the time being from my common reflections and musings on a given topic (you're welcome) and simply let the pictures speak for themselves. Just a little while ago, Kim, Amaya and I spent an amazing week visiting friends and family (or more accurately, friends who are like family to us) in Singapore. However, we also got to do a little sightseeing (as much as the attention span of a toddler will allow), and we checked out a fantastic exhibit of Dali's work at the Art and Science Museum on the Singapore Esplanade (the building itself merits a second entire post on its own when I have a little more time to do so).

 Here are some photos (including some of Amaya having some fun in the museum- couldn't resist):

 

 Also, I spied this interesting juxtaposition of signs in a mall just above the subway station:

 

 Or is that just honesty in advertising?

As mentioned before, this is a year of major change for our art department. One of our most significant changes is the addition of a fourth art teacher who just happens to be an amazing educator, author of the Edublog Award Nominated Art is Messy blog, and my wife, Kim.  After many years of planning, debate, and discussion, the new Shanghai American School art wing is fully operational.

Join me, won't you as I give you a demonstration of its awesome power!  Be sure to click on the 'expand' button at the bottom, and then the 'Show Info' button for detailed descriptions.

• DSLR Simulator

  This is a great resource for your digital photography classes - it doesn't beat actually taking the camera out and experimenting with it- but its a fantastic demonstration tool.

  tags: photography digital Reference

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Our students just finished up our first project in foundations art- this is traditionally a class that uses traditional art making materials. However, we've been wanting to shake things up for a while here at SAS, and with our new facilities and new spaces, this seemed like just as good a time as ever. This project was based on some of the work of Mark Jenkins (warning: creepy baby alert), and executed with instruction from his helpful tape sculpture website.

After experimenting with creating forms in packing tape, the students were asked to create a hybrid form combining parts formed from their bodies with other forms that they'd find and create.  Finally, they wrote a myth explaining the origin or significance of their transformed figure.

This ended up being a great introductory project to our class- it had the student collaborating on large scale projects in which they were up and actively moving around the room. After the bodies of the sculptures were finished, we added some LED lights for a night installation exhibition. This was inspired by some of the other projects we'd seen online (as well as some other projects that we've worked on in the past).

The addition of the lights created a beautiful courtyard constellation depicting the epic heroes of our students' imaginations. 

Process:



Product:

Surrealistic Me: The New Challenge from The Student Creative.

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory. 

The new project from the student creative will challenge students to reveal themselves through surrealist self portrait.  Start paying attention to your dreams.  They are trying to tell you something.


 

• Dream Worlds

  Beautiful paintings of dream landscapes

  tags: Surrealism

• 45 Epic Blender Tutorials

  We're going to begin to explore Blender later this year in Digital Video class, here are some great looking tutorials for different levels.

  tags: digital video

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Sketchbook Secrets: 50 Beautiful Sketchbook Scans

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Image Credit: ToGa Wanderings

 The final Shanghai installment of the Learning 2.0 conference has finally come to a close.  After five years and four conferences, I have to say that I'm proud of the event as it grew and transformed into one of the most unique PD experiences that I've had.

Over the past five years, the conference has shifted from a more traditional model to one that involves learning cohorts, un-conference sessions, and mini-keynotes.  The learning cohorts gave subject area teachers the opportunity to come together and look at how technology has transformed their curriculum.  Our Fine Arts cohort, led by Kevin Honeycutt of Art Snacks fame provided an amazing opportunity to have an open exchange with other art educators.  For example, I was excited by all the amazing stuff that Nick Coulter is doing both on and offline in his classes at the Australian International School in Singapore.   His photography students are doing some amazing things with simple objects (like fruit), and I'll link to them when he posts them online.  He's got some second life activities going, great HDR photography, and he's got an installation project based on the Australian Satin Bowerbird's nest- which it makes out of any blue objects it can find*.

The short inspirational TED-like keynotes were a perfect way to accommodate the large numbers of accomplished speakers who were in attendance.  Most memorable to me, was when a student got up to talk about how her experience making a video about her brother who has autism had transformed her school life.  It was a video that we had been proud to feature at the Shanghai Student Film Festival two years ago.

Its been a great honor to be a part of the Learning 2.0 conference planning team for the past five years, and although I'll miss working with the great people involved, I'm thrilled to see it grow further and evolve.  Next Year in Beijing!

*Discovering the existence of this bird is, I think, the most interesting thing I've learned all year.

I was just having a discussion with my colleague Joan about whether or not the upcoming Transform: Shanghai event is a conference or a workshop. Joan is one of the founders of the event when it was started in Beijing four years ago. Since then it has moved to Shanghai, and I'm proud to be helping out on the organizing committee. I assumed we were calling it a conference because it contains multiple workshops, talks, and excursions, but Joan said it was conceived a a workshop because its a place for people to get together to learn new skills and approaches. Since she is a founder of the event, I deferred to her categorization; however, we then agreed that it was actually somewhere in between. Sort of a Confshop, or Workfrence.


Either way, if you're reading this from your art room anywhere in Asia, what are you waiting for? We got great presenters, great art detours in the city, and great company. Register!

On another note entirely, I thought that this was an insightful and humorous look at merit pay.

One of my first class icebreaker games is "Two Truths and a Lie". Students have to come up with two interesting facts about themselves, and one fact that is a total, utter, not-even-close to reality lie. This was the conversation that I had with one of the students who was presenting his "facts (or lie)".

Joe: I'm a little bit psychic.
Me: Really?
Joe: Yes.
Me: What am I thinking?
Joe: That I'm not a little bit psychic.
Me: Wow!

That ended up being one of his 'truths'. Nice!