TheVirtualInstructor Blog

The world that we live in has changed.  And education has not changed with it. This is the root problem with education today.  We continuously throw money at educational programs and expect results.  The results aren’t coming like they should.  This is because most of the educational programs are flawed in the most fundamental way.  We are trying to teach students in outdated ways. Public Education needs a makeover, or faces extinction as we know it.

Technology is an Answer

We are living in the most exciting time in human history. Stimuli is everywhere and is constant.  This is the world in which our students live.  Smart phones, iPods, Tablet computers, Facebook, MySpace, and the internet are here to stay (and for good reason).  Our students have embraced this technology.  Why haven’t the educational systems embraced them?  In fact, it seems that school systems fight against technology.  On the surface, they say they support technology, but then limit it’s use and access.  This has got to change. We need to embrace the possibilities of educational growth inherent in technology.  This is how our students learn.  This is what excites them.  If we can’t speak to students in a language that they understand, how can we expect them to learn?

The following video supports this…

It is unfortunate that this technology was awarded to this teacher because of a contest.  Do you see the problem here?  Why aren’t school systems investing in this technology? What if we gave iPads to high school students instead of textbooks?  Would our systems save money? Let’s do some simple math…

Average cost of textbook- $100 x 8 classes a year= $800 for year of textbooks.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that textbooks are purchased every 4 years, which means the cost of textbooks per student for an entire high school career is $800.  The cost of an iPad is $399.

Think how much the school systems could be saving while reaching students in an effective way.

The Arts are an Answer

The Arts are the future of the world economy.  You can see it already.  Our future will consist of interactivity and intelligent design.  (It already does.)  Economic freedom will belong to the creative.  If we do not prepare students for this future economy, we are setting them up for failure.  Instead, we need to shift our focus from testing and concentrate on creativity.  We should awaken students to their inherent creativity.   We need to assist students to develop their creativity.   And lastly, we need to teach students to use their creativity.  The Arts accomplish all of these things.  Why then are so many school systems cutting Art Programs?  Instead, the Arts should be the center of education.

This video nails it…

Education is need of a reformation and is in danger of extinction.  Public Education is under constant attack and without change, the attacks will continue.  Drastic change needs to happen now.

Understanding the stages of artistic development can help you become better at creating art. It can also help you become a more effective art teacher. We develop artistically. Just like we develop other skills like talking and walking in stages, we develop artistic skills in the same way.

In 1947, Dr. Viktor Lowenfeld published “Creative and Mental Growth”, which quickly became THE textbook for art educators. Lowenfeld argues that are six clearly defined stages of artistic development and that these stages can be witnessed in the artworks of children. According to Lowenfeld, the six stages of artistic development are:

1. Scribble Stage- (1-3 years old) Children at this age are engaged in the physical activity of drawing. There is no connection made between the marks and representation during most of the scribble stage. However, towards the end of this stage children may begin to give marks names. This stage is mostly about the enjoyment of purely making marks.

2. Preschematic Stage-(3-4 years old) Children at this stage of artistic development are beginning to see connections between the shapes that they draw and the physical world around them. Circles and lines may be described as people or objects that are physically present in the child’s life. It is in this stage that a child first makes the connection to communicating through their drawings.

3. The Schematic Stage-(5-6 years old) Children at this stage have clearly assigned shapes to objects that they are attempting to communicate. They often have developed a schema for creating drawings. There is a defined order in the development of the drawing. Drawings at this stage have a clear separation between the sky and the ground. Often the sky is a strip of blue at the top of the paper, while the ground is a strip of green at the bottom. Objects are often placed on the ground instead of floating in space. Objects of importance are often drawn larger than objects of lesser importance.

4. The Dawning Realism-(7-9 years old) At this stage in artistic development, children are beginning to become more critical of their own work. It has become evident that a structured order to drawing objects is no longer sufficient. While a schema is still used to create drawings, it is more complex than the schema used in earlier stages. Overlapping can be seen and a sense of spatial relationships is more evident.

5. The Pseudo-Naturalistic Stage-(10-13 years old) The use of value and light is now apparent in drawings. Children at this stage of artistic development are very critical of their own success. Success is determined by the level of realism achieved in the drawing. Frustration is a common occurrence. It is exceptionally important to encourage students at this stage.

6. The Decision Stage- (13-16 years old) Children at this stage will decide to continue drawing or view it as an activity without merit. Because of the level of self criticism inherent at this stage, many children, (now young adults) view drawing as an skill that do they do not possess. Others, however, decide to continue working on their drawing skills and continue to develop. I think that it is important to encourage students to continue drawing despite their level of skill. Any skill level can be attained with practice. This stage of artistic development is perhaps the most critical to the development of an artist.

Why are so many art programs, music programs, and drama programs being cut across this country?  I don’t know if I have the answer, but I do know that these programs are central to child development.  They are also essential to our community and our cultural well being. These programs foster critical thinking skills and creative thinking.  They enhance student achievement and progress. They develop a student’s awareness of problem-solving and the ability to think “outside of the box”. Yet so many districts across this country look at our programs as secondary. Our programs should be anything but secondary, in fact in my opinion, they should be mandatory for all. Countless studies have supported this position. Yet so many lawmakers remain ignorant. The following video presented is refreshing since it does present a lawmaker who does understand the importance of our programs.

I was working with a student the other day that was struggling with drawing. Nothing I said to him or showed him seemed to help. His response was always, “I can’t do this”. I must admit that I was becoming frustrated. I like to think that I can always find some way to connect to each student and give them the confidence that they need to succeed in drawing. This was a different case. I could not get through. I could not get him to see that he was capable of drawing and drawing well. I would spend a large amount of time with him daily, trying to break through and get him to understand that drawing was in him. I tried every teacher trick that I have in my bag. But still nothing could instill confidence in this kid with drawing.

Then it came out.

He finally said “I can’t draw because Mr.(insert name of a previous art teacher here) said that I can’t draw. “  I couldn’t believe what I had heard. This student had had an art teacher tell him that he could not draw. And as a result his confidence was shattered. In fact, it was so shattered that I was at a loss. I immediately told him that what that teacher had told him was untrue and that he could draw. Honestly I was still in utter shock. How was I to undo this. The unfortunate truth is that I couldn’t undo it. The damage was done. We need to be very careful what we say to people, especially students. They hang on every word we say. We truly have influence on them and thier lives. Encourage your students. Never limit them or tell them hurtful things. The damage is deep.

Teaching harmony and unity in art can be a little challenging.  Helping students to understand the need for harmony in art is easy, but having them understand how to implement it into their own artwork is the hard part.  Harmony and unity are principles of art.  They deal with the way the the elements of art are arranged in an artwork.  Harmony deals with similarities and unity deals with the quality of “oneness” that is created by these similarities.  Both are important to successful art creation.

Harmony and unity are created by three methods…
1. Repetition- By repeating elements such as shapes, colors, or motifs, harmony and unity can be achieved in an artwork.
2. Simplicity- By simplifying elements, such as colors (color scheme), or shapes, forms, etc. you can create unity.
3. Proximity- Proximity, in this case, refers to limiting the amount of negative space within the picture plane of an artwork.  By limiting the negative space, you can create unity.

So how can you make teaching students these principles fun and memorable?  Play a game.

Each student should begin with a clean, fresh, sheet of drawing paper.  Each student should also have the same medium in hand.  Have the students begin by putting their name on the back of the paper. (You may decide to laugh as they all turn their blank sheets of paper over to put their name on the “back”.)  Tell them that they have 3 minutes to draw whatever they want. Time the drawing.  Then, the students should turn their paper over so that their name is showing.  Have them pass their paper to another student.  Tell the students to add their name under the previous student’s name.  Then tell the students that when they turn the paper over, they must add an new element to the image.  You can choose the element.  (For example, you may say that they need to add aliens to the scene.)  The catch here, is that they must make it look harmonious and unified.  In other words, it must look like the same artist created the image.  Remind them that they can achieve this by using repetition, simplicity, and proximity.  Repeat this process several times with new creative elements of your choosing, timing the drawing part to 3 minutes.  Finally, have the students return the drawing to the original student.  The original student now needs to pull the image together with the final 3 minutes of timed drawing.

This game will provide a memorable experience for students to help enhance their learning of harmony and unity in the creation of artworks.

It is important for us as art educators to prepare our students for life outside of the classroom.  One way to connect students to the world beyond the classroom is to expose them to some of the careers that artists fill.  One career that is especially exciting for students is video game design.  Many artists are finding their way into this arena and many more are aspiring to be a part of it.  Love ‘em, hate ‘em, or shun ‘em, video games are part of our culture.  This is a medium that our students are familiar with, and more importantly recognize the relevance of.  The multimedia industry  is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world economy.  This industry is a natural fit for many of our creative students.  So now is the time to start showing them what their creative minds are capable of.  If you are knowledgeable in Adobe Flash, you can use it to teach video game design.  But not of us have that luxury.  So how can we expose students to video game design, if we are a (ahem) inexperienced in video game design?  Easy- use Scratch.

What is Scratch?
I first introduced to Scratch through ARTStem and a workshop held at The Center for Design Innovation where I was able to create an interactive math game for my daughter in just a matter of a couple of hours.  Scratch is a program developed by MIT.  It is completely free to download.  It is actually it’s own computer language that helps students better understand how programming works.  Students can easily create their own computer games using Scratch and then share them on the site for others to play.  This program encourages dynamic learning and aligns nicely with 21st century learning.  Scratch is designed for students from 8-16, but younger and older students can definitely find the process challenging and rewarding.  Still intimidated?  You shouldn’t be, because Scratch features educator support through ScratchEd, which is a great resource for teachers.   Take a look at Scratch in the following video…

Scratch: overview from andresmh on Vimeo.

So, give it a try and implement video game design into your art curriculum.  Show your students what their creative minds are capable of.

Visit the Scratch Website here and download the free software.

Maybe you’re like many of us in the Art world that have admired the realm of animation, but were always put off by the inherent technical apsects that often seem like a mystery.  Or maybe your excuse not try animation was that the equipment needed to create it was either too complex to learn, or too expensive to buy.   Or maybe you’re an art teacher that always wanted to try  and do animation with your students, but you felt like your lack of experience or resources made it impossible.  Well, kiss all of those excuses “good-bye”, and consider stop motion animation.

Stop motion animation has been around since the creation of early movies.  This type of animation is created by taking photographs within a sequence and playing that sequence of photographs at a high “frame rate”.  In each photograph that is taken, the object that “moves” is placed in a slightly different location.  When the photos are played in order, the object that was photographed, appears to move naturally.  Stop motion animation is used to create all kinds of creative animations.  Just do a quick search on Youtube.com for “stop motion” and you’ll see what I mean. 

Using stop motion is a great way to introduce yourself or students to the world of animation.  It can be a fun and creative project to do on your own or with a class of students.  It doesn’t require any fancy equipment, or advanced degrees in animation.  You can create stop motion films with just a camera and some free programs that you can download.

When I am teaching animation to my students, we use Adobe Flash.  Adobe Flash is not a free program but you can download a trial version for free here->Adobe Flash Download

Here is a short list of some free stop motion programs…

MonkeyJam - “What’s MonkeyJam?
MonkeyJam is a digital penciltest program. It is designed to let you capture images from a webcam, camcorder, or scanner and assemble them as separate frames of an animation. You can also import images and sound files already on your computer. Although it is designed for pencil and paper, MonkeyJam can also be used for StopMotion animation and has several features just for that. Movies created in MonkeyJam can be exported as AVI files.”
-From MonkeyJam Website

StopMotion Pro- Professional Animation Program that features a free trial.

Animator DV Simple- Use this free software to create stop motion films with your webcam.

iKITmovie- Animation software that includes lots of sounds.  The website features lots of examples that people have made and includes a free trial version. 

If you know of any others, please comment and share.

Art is often considered a side serving when it comes to education. Many consider the main course to be the “STEM” subjects. The “STEM” subjects being Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics. This is unforunate because of all of the benefits inherent in arts education. Art teaches students the importance of creativity and how to use it. Look at some of the most successful people in the world. Most of them are successful because of their creativity. But this article is not about the benefits of art education. Instead it is about a recent trend of appreciation of the arts and how the Arts are actually naturally infused within the ” STEM” subjects. In fact, many have begun to notice the correlations between the arts and the STEM subjects. Some are exploring new ways to teach the STEM disciplines in their classrooms and are turning to the arts to help. Why not sing the Periodic table or dance the graphing of an equation? Using these strategies to teach may result in students becoming more active learners, help them retain information, and most importantly, make learning fun. Two projects seek to blur the lines between the Arts and the STEM disciplines. These projects have different approaches but similar missions.

ArtSTEM
Taken from artstem.org…
What is ArtSTEM?
“The ARTStem initiative is inspired by artists and scholars who efface the lines between “the arts” and the “STEM” disciplines of science, engineering, technology, and mathematics—from Brecht’s Galileo and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s Ferocious Beauty: Genome to John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic and Jonah Lehrer’s recent bestseller, Proust Was a Neuroscientist. In its inaugural year, ARTStem will bring academic and arts faculty members from UNCSA together with an interdisciplinary team of public school educators for an academic summer seminar about teaching and learning at the intersection of the arts and STEM disciplines, followed by a year of creative teaching collaborations and programming. ARTStem continues the Kenan Institute’s commitment to leveraging resources in support of K-12 public education in North Carolina, and aims to provide valuable professional enrichment opportunities for public school teachers while exploring new directions for learning in and through the arts. For 2009-2010, the public school partner institution is RJ Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem.”

The Intersections Project
The following taken from theintersectionsproject.org…
“In a unique partnership and professional development opportunity, artists and classroom educators worked together to develop arts integrated lesson plans and residencies for classroom applications, all of which support the North Carolina Standard Course of Study in multiple disciplines. These lessons, along with documentation from their classroom implementation and other resources, serve as the foundation for this educational website.

SECCA launched TIP with a collaboration between art and science educators from RJ Reynolds and Mount Tabor high schools along with public artists Jimmy O’Neal and Kyungmi Shin. Lesson plans and residencies were inspired by the artists’ public works that were commissioned for Winston-Salem’s Downtown Center for the Arts.

During the planning phase of the project (December 2009–February 2010) commissioned artists, SECCA staff, Arts Council staff, and WS/FCS art and science educators, worked collaboratively to develop a series of arts integrated lesson plans. The team of teachers from RJ Reynolds consisted of Matt Fussell, art educator and Ashley Witherspoon, science educator. The team of teachers from Mount Tabor consisted Alice Morley, art educator and Taryn Kendig, science educator.

The Intersections Project will continue as artists from upcoming SECCA exhibitions partner with educators to design exciting learning opportunities, all of which will all be available on the TIP website.

For more information on The Intersections Project please contact Michael Christiano, SECCA Curator of Education, at michael.christiano@ncdcr.gov or 336.397.2108.”

Could our educational system be killing the creativity of our students?  I believe that our students are losing the ability to think freely and be creative.  Today, teachers teach for tests.  Students strive for grades, not knowledge.  Our future does not lie in tests or grades.  Our future lies in the creativity of the generations to come.  If we are destroying their creativity, then are we destroying our future?  Sir Ken Robinson delivers an entertaining and insightful view of the shortcomings of our educational system in this video.  I think his points are completely accurate.