- This sculpture reveals a poem as light filters through it over the course of the day. - post by dsgran
- the poetic, transitory, site-sensitive and time-based nature of light and shadow
5.16.2008
Dispatches from the Revolution 05/17/2008
5.15.2008
The Process is the Product
Just about all my favorite websites have already posted this video, but if you haven't seen it yet, give it a look and you'll see just why it has been so popular.
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Sometimes when looking at a work of art, its hard to conceptualize the amount of work that has gone into it. The beautiful thing about Muto is that the process is the product. In this way, its a valuable tool for students to see the amount of work that someone is willing to put into a labor of love.
Dispatches from the Revolution 05/16/2008
- Watch them on this YouTube channel. - post by dsgran
- Beautiful watercolors from his "Mountains and Creatures" show. Yang is a new member of the Robots and Monsters charity draw-a-thon mentioned here earlier. I'm a sucker for stuff like this. - post by dsgran
- An interesting idea that could be turned into a project somehow.... from the enigmatic Twitter Colorwars. - post by dsgran
Do Infants See Colors Differently?
- Article from Scientific American. - post by dsgran
5.14.2008
Guernica in 3D
This lovely rendition of Picasso's Guernica offers a unique opportunity to explore the painting from the inside. As the video moves through the painting it highlights some of the salient images in a way that could get students motivated to engage in the details of this masterpiece.
Dispatches from the Revolution 05/15/2008
- An interesting (if not definitive) list of films that break the rules. - post by dsgran
- Raku Ray Guns are one-of-a-kind ceramic sculptures made by West Magoon. They are inspired by alien technology unearthed at a secret UFO crash site, known only to a tribe of Wyoming Hill People.
I know what I want for my birthday. - post by dsgran
- Raku Ray Guns are one-of-a-kind ceramic sculptures made by West Magoon. They are inspired by alien technology unearthed at a secret UFO crash site, known only to a tribe of Wyoming Hill People.
- Interesting collage about the "true value" of the dollar. - post by dsgran
5.13.2008
Changing The World
When I was in graduate school, I did my final research paper on Social Action in Art Education. The conclusion that I had come to (as far as I can remember) was (a) its harder than it sounds, and (b) you have to create an environment that is open to integrating social action when there is a need.
The problem that I keep encountering, even with many well intentioned themed projects that I've witnessed and participated in, is what Jonathan Kozol calls "learned helplessness". In other words - you do a project with the kids. They tackle something like "global warming" in an art project. Your students create posters to go around the school to encourage other students to use less paper cups or ride their bikes to school instead of driving Mom and Dad's Hummer. When the project is finished, the hope is at best that some small changes are made in your local community. On a grander scale, your student's brilliant anti-global warming poster does nothing to stem the tide of greenhouse gas emissions even though it was clever enough to get listed on Boing Boing.
The end result is that the students learn that for the really big issues, they have no power to change anything at all.
And maybe that's true. Chalk it up to a move from my earlier idealistic 20s into my rational 30s, but I've largely settled for the "Think Global, Act Local" mantra that serves a pretty good reminder to set reasonable objectives. Perhaps a lesson plan that begins with Objective: Students will learn that good composition and design can end world hunger might be a bit of a reach.
However, today's rant post is a draft for some thoughts about the confluence of education, social action, and what we call "learning 2.0". This comes on the heels of yesterday's post about the disaster in China and wondering what can be done to help. Two things popped up in my RSS feeds today that prompted this post. The first was this page on Gandhi’s Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World. A familiar quote on that page reminded me that its not the immediate result of a lesson that matter as much as the lasting learning. The persistence of working towards larger goals with the knowledge that nothing worth doing is easy is a key lesson that can't be taught in one unit.First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
The second thing I found was this video, thanks to my buddy Mike Romard, a colleague and fellow blogger on U Tech Tips. Learning to Change, Changing to Learn paints an important picture of the impact of what it describes so beautifully as the "death of education and the dawn of learning":
It's a bit sound-bite-y, but each new voice adds an important thought that can and should be examined more thoroughly.
.So the coin of the realm is not going to be memorizing the facts that they're going to need to know for the rest of their lives, the coin of the realm will be do you know how to find information, do you know how to validate it, do you know how to synthesize it, do you know how to leverage it, to you know how to communicate with it, do you know how to collaborate with it, do you know how to problem solve with it. That's the new 21st century set of literacies...
If we are sufficiently engaging students in these 21st century literacies, then how will these connections empower students to reach out with their message beyond the classroom and engage other students? The big questions to me is, what becomes of "Think globally, act Locally" when students audience is global instead of local?
Robert Rauschenberg, RIP
Robert Rauschenberg, American painter (and artist of other mediums), died on Monday evening. Love or hate is work, his impact on American art cannot be denied. Read the New York Times obituary.
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
-Robert Rauscenberg
1925-2008
Dispatches from the Revolution 05/14/2008
Mark Jenkins: The Last Graffiti Artist
- A funny image to include if you're doing a lesson on street art... - post by dsgran
Horrible Day
The first thing I heard when I landed back in Shanghai yesterday was that The Sichuan province was hit by a massive earthquake, the results of which have been absolutely devastating. Particularly tragic are the stories of collapsed schools among other catastrophes that brought the death toll to about 10,000.
Thanks to everyone who emailed asking if Kim and I are ok, we are, and your concern is so much appreciated.
Update: This event has me thinking a little bit more about the whole "what can we do?" factor, and while I don't have any answers, I did stumble upon this page about 10 ways to change the world through social media. An interesting article about 2.0 activism.
Update 2: The Shanghaiist has some resources if you'd like to help.
5.10.2008
Art Education Blogroll
At the new Art Ed 2.0 Netvibes Page you can quickly browse your favorite Art Education blogs through their RSS feeds. This site is a work in progress, and all the current blogs were submitted to us from members of Art Ed 2.0 so feel free to leave a comment here with any site that we should add.
5.09.2008
5.08.2008
Dispatches from the Revolution 05/09/2008
- An exhibition about Super Heroes at the Met! Wish I still lived in New York... - post by dsgran
5.06.2008
Ready to Innovate?
In a recent post, David Warlick points out an interesting report called Ready to Innovate(.pdf) from The Conference Board and Americans for the Arts, in partnership with the American Association of School Administrators (AASA). This is where it begins:
U.S. employers rate creativity/innovation among the top five skills that will increase in importance over the next five years, and stimulating innovation/creativity and enabling entrepreneurship is among the top 10 challenges of U.S. CEOs.
Great- this is what arts educators have been saying for years now, and its nice to see further examples of that idea reflected in the the larger education and business worlds. However, the report also finds that the actions of companies and school districts doesn't quite match their claimed advocacy in a number of important ways. First of all there is far less requirement of creative activities in both schools and the workforce than offerings. The second point, which raises important questions, is that there is little consensus on what constitutes creativity and creative activity (23% of employers judge prospective employees' creativity on their appearance - remind me to wear that batik tie I made in the 11th grade for my next job interview).
It would seem that the message has been received - that the arts, along with right-brain directed activities need to play a more central part in our curriculums. Now the challenge is equating idea with action.
5.03.2008
Empire Strikes Barack
This one's for you, David. Yet another example of how Star Wars is a metaphor for everything. How does it relate to Art Education? Watch and be educated.
-rey rey
5.01.2008
Your New Model
I read about this site on Drawn! a while ago, but it was all in Japanese. The only thing that I can understand in Japanese besides "hello" and "thank you" is "Where is the bus"? This leads to endless deep philosophical conversations with my Japanese friends in which I ask them to direct me towards a specific form of public transportation in a variety of contexts.
Anyway- Drawn! has now redirected my attention to Pose Maniacs because now their site is now in English, and its more fantastic than I realized.
The site allows you to choose from regularly updated three dimensional anatomical drawings to use for posing- it also allows you to shift these models around in space, and easily switch into 3D mode. This little widget below, apparently will give you a new pose every day.
Next year, when I start teaching my foundations class, this will be a great resource for sketchbook assignments.
All I can say is "Wow!", or as they say in Japanese, "Basu wo doku deska!"
Dispatches From the Revolution
Jason Welker just explained to me that Jeff Utecht's daily links over at our collaborative blog site U Tech Tips are posted as an automatic function of Del.icio.us. So- if I've set this up correctly, anything I post to My del.icio.us account will show up here as a posting. Pretty cool! We'll see if I did it right...
4.30.2008
Visual Progression and Education Progression
My wife Kim has often done a few variations of a "hybrid project", in which students imagine new animals through mixing and mashing real ones (actually, its probably more mixing, less mashing). Its a great project because its both imaginative, and it touches on the cross cultural experience of mythic creatures, from the Mayan feathered serpent to the egyptian Sphinx or Chinese Chimera. In one version of the project, she had high school students explore this idea as they learned to combine various Photoshop tools.
Here is a useful tutorial that would have been great to use with that project:
I found this tutorial at Visual Progression - a learning community of digital and graphic artists who are looking to share their experiences with their colleagues and peers. These professional learning communities to me, are a critical new development of social networking and 2.0 tools. Certainly, Art Ed 2.0 was one of the best things to happen to art teachers last year. Here we've found a space to exchange ideas, collaborate on projects, and keep ahead in the vital ways that technology is transforming the art room.
4.29.2008
Flat Camera
I missed Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, but I did find this great site from my all time favorite photography blog Photojojo - it has templates for pinhole cameras that you can print out and assemble.
S2F2: Wrap Up
A final post on the Shanghai Student Film Festival and then I'm self-imposing a hiatus on posts about video projects. I have almost all of the winners of the fest uploaded to our new S2F2 YouTube Channel. The work you will see there was created by students grades 3-12 from 5 schools in Shanghai - Shanghai American School Puxi and Pudong, Shanghai Community International School, Concordia International School, Shanghai, and Dulwich College. Don't be shy, leave the students some comments, praise, or constructive criticism!
That about wraps up the Film Fest for this year... interesting things are happening in 2009 though...
4.24.2008
ROTOBALL 2008
We've finally finished! This rotoscoped animation is the result of a collaboration between more than 80 students from 11 schools in 4 countries around the world.
Rotoball 2008 from david gran on Vimeo.
This was an especially exciting project for me. Downloading and opening each new segment was like getting a new present- and now I can share it with all of you in one big package. Special thanks to all of the teachers and students who poured all of their hard work and creativity into this project.
Click Here for more information about the project, or go to this page to get on the mailing list for participation in Rotoball 2009.
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