Posts
9.28.2011
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.
9.23.2011
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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.
9.22.2011
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:
9.21.2011
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.
9.16.2011
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Beautiful paintings of dream landscapes
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We're going to begin to explore Blender later this year in Digital Video class, here are some great looking tutorials for different levels.
9.14.2011
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| Image Credit: ToGa Wanderings |
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.
