Blog Topic: Summative Reflection Project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6rI6CrxqkI

For my Summative Reflection Project, I (along with my students) have created a video kaleidoscope that tells an abstract tale of our colorful, collaborative first semester with VTS.  I introduced the idea of a stop-animation video piece, and my students worked together to create the design and it's meaning.  I also used the knowledge of a couple of my student Tech Mentors to help me take photos and put them into iMovie.

First, we started with the basics: they chose the arrangement of colors they wanted to use to make the long banner-like background.  They decided they wanted to start with orange, then move through the color-wheel order, ending with hot pink rather than red.  Sticking with the Elements of Art, they decided to use a variety of different types of lines to transition from one color to the next.  These lines represented the boundaries we crossed when using VTS.  Students mentioned how the road to learning new things can often be bumpy, scary, like a winding road, or even like trying to keep your head above the water, so we chose lines that reflected these feelings.

Next we built up layers of shapes made from scraps and other collage materials I had available in my classroom.  Students chose a variety of colors and sizes and arranged them thoughtfully in order to represent how each person brought a different viewpoint to our VTS discussions.  Those different viewpoints often inspired others to share their opinions and build off of the ideas others mentioned.

Students then added drawn lines throughout the piece to "connect the dots," which is something they did when VTSing.  They figured out the artist's meaning by picking up on visual clues in each image we looked at and openly discussed their thoughts about the meaning.  The lines were also a way to connect each section to one another and to represent literally how each student could leave their mark on their own visual images.

Lastly, my Tech Mentors helped take nearly 60 pictures of the piece, moving it and two mirrors inch by inch underneath a makeshift tunnel that held a camera still.  We slightly edited the pictures so that the edges were blurred and the focus was the center of each image where the mirrors split to create a new design.  The images were put into iMovie and with the help of various transitions, a kaleidoscope-esque video was completed.  A kaleidoscope is a constantly changing pattern, phase, or event and perfectly represents our work with VTS this semester.    

Blog Topic #13: VTS Through a Differentiated Lens

According to the Tomlinson article, differentiation means tailoring instruction in the classroom to respond to a variance among learners.  I would say without a doubt that VTS provides differentiation for students of all abilities and needs in my focus class.  As previously mentioned, my focus class has  quite a range of ability levels.  In becoming familiar with VTS strategies this past semester, I have found that VTS allows for differentiation in all four of the classroom elements that Tomlinson describes: content, process, products, and learning environment.

In facilitating VTS with my students, I have observed content and product differentiation because of the variety of images the students had the opportunity to discuss.  This variety allowed students that struggled and who were advanced to extend their thinking skills.  As mentioned in the Johnson article Differentiated Instruction Allows Students to Succeed, VTS allowed me to bring all levels of learning together by providing learning activities that not only catered to students' strengths but brought all of the students to the same learning objective.  In essence, with the variety of content, students were able to use problem solving and critical thinking skills to use what they already knew to figure out what they didn't, therefore producing their own ideas. 

Process was differentiated by using VTS by giving all my learners the opportunity to "work with the same important understandings and skills, but proceed with different levels of support, challenge, or complexity" as stated by Tomlinson.  Even though students were seeing the same image, they could create their own path to find meaning in the work, enabling them to transfer their own cognitive skills to develop confidence.

Lastly, the learning environment was differentiated because VTS allowed for quiet introspection, which lead to thoughtful discussions about the artwork shown.  When we VTSd, guidelines were always clearly stated so that students always felt comfortable with the routine, ensuring confident and creative responses.  

Blog Topic #14 (con't): Pre VTS/Post VTS Assessment Photos

Pre VTS Assessment Photo:

Post VTS Assessment Photo:

Blog Topic #14: Pre VTS/Post VTS Assessment Data

Paired t test results

P value and statistical significance:   The two-tailed P value equals 0.0106   By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be statistically significant. Confidence interval:   The mean of Pre VTS minus Post VTS equals -10.89   95% confidence interval of this difference: From -18.89 to -2.89 Intermediate values used in calculations:   t = 2.8716   df = 17   standard error of difference = 3.792 Learn more: GraphPad's web site includes portions of the manual for GraphPad Prism that can help you learn statistics. First, review the meaning of P values and confidence intervals. Then learn how to interpret results from an unpaired or paired t test. These links include GraphPad's popular analysis checklists. Review your data:

Group	Pre VTS	Post VTS
Mean	52.68	62.89
SD	14.11	19.26
SEM	3.24	4.54
N	19	18

By looking at the intersection of my df value row (17) and the .05 alpha level column (to ensure 

95% certainty), I found my critical value is 1.74.  Because my t-value is 2.87, I can reject the null 

hypothesis and say that there was a significant difference in the written word count from my Pre 

VTS Assessment to my Post VTS Assessment as a result of one semester of VTS.

I would agree with the finding that my students have grown significantly from their first semester of VTS.  

They are moving beyond making lists of details and instead are beginning to build an emotional 

framework for the pieces they look at using their own perceptions and values.  For these reasons, I would 

put them between Stage I and Stage II at this point in their VTS education. I think with more practice, my 

students will be able to have even more juicy discussions about the artwork they encounter in the future.

Blog Topic #12: Video 3--Teacher's Choice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n16ppg0fOZY

• Reflecting on Yenawine's article on image selection, I believe my Teacher's Choice image was an appropriate choice for my students because of it's accessibility and potential for narratives, and because of it's emphasis on culture and history.
• I think the image challenged them just right.  They are still getting the hang of VTS, but they seemed very comfortable opening up and discussing their ideas about the meaning of the piece.  One challenge that they surprisingly avoided was discussing who they thought the African American women might be, with the exception of one student mentioning that Rosa Parks could be one of the female figures depicted.  I think this was probably because they weren't confident enough in their historical knowledge to specifically name any of the females, or discuss their achievements.    
• This seemed to be one of their best sessions as far as picking out details I hoped they would notice.  They were very intrigued by the repetition between the sunflowers in the background and the sunflowers on the quilt or tablecloth in front of the women.  They focused a lot on the written bits of the collaged border and whether or not it was a blanket or part of a newspaper.  I was happy that they noticed the figure behind the women was Vincent Van Gogh, based on his looks and also their previous knowledge of his sunflower paintings.
• VTS sessions always allow for the scaffolding strategies of Show and Tell and Give Time To Talk, as well as Use Visual Aids because students are studying a picture and thinking aloud about what their version of "what's going on" in that picture might be, therefore allowing for critical thinking.  As far as this image is concerned, the scaffolding technique Tap Into Prior Knowledge was definitely used, specifically when mentioning Rosa Parks and Vincent Van Gogh, two prominent figures from history they have previously learned about.  A strategy similar to Pre-Teaching Vocabulary is paraphrasing after each student comments about the piece.  This allows for students to hear a different, and often more complex, translation of the words they are using so that they can utilize new vocabulary in the future.
• As mentioned before, I was surprised students didn't focus as much on WHO the African American women might be in the piece and instead were more focused on the way the quilt was being displayed.
• And piggybacking on the above comment, I would like to VTS the image again with a similar class of students to see if they could come up with more historical narratives based on who the female figures might be.  I would also be interested in using this image when introducing a unit on quilts in art and the stories they tell that I created in my Curriculum in Art Education class.

Blog Topic #5 (continued): Pink's Introduction and Play

In the introduction to his book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink introduces his readers to the Conceptual Age: an era where artistic-brained people will prove to be a major asset to the forward movement of businesses, and in our case, schools. 

  

Pink first discusses the old view of the differences between the left side (or crucial side) of the brain versus the right side (or subsidiary side) of the brain.  He mentions that it was Caltech professor Roger W. Sperry who first brought to light the realization that the right hemisphere could reason, recognize patterns, and interpret emotions and nonverbal expressions.  Taking note of these ideas, and showing the art world how the right brain could be used effectively, was Dr. Betty Edwards with her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.  I have always loved this quote by Dr. Edwards: "Drawing is not really very difficult.  Seeing is the problem" (15).  While, as Pink mentions, her techniques are thought to be a bit oversimplified, I agree with the notion that you must quiet the left brain in order to better visually comprehend and interpret the whole picture with your right brain.  Pink maintains that the two hemispheres ideally work best together, whether in physically controlling the body, or in processing, understanding, or analyzing information.    

Next, Pink breaks down the three main reasons being art-minded is so important in this Conceptual Age: Abundance, Asia, and Automation.  First, because the previous Information Age produced such a high standard of living, we live in an incredibly abundant world where we own more, hoard more, and waste more.  But is this abundance making us happy?  Not according to Pink's research.  He finds that though prosperous, our country still yearns for "beauty and transcendence" (36).  Second, Pink discusses the influence Asia has on the Conceptual Age.  He states that "today's knowledge workers" will have to "command a new set of aptitudes" and that "they'll need to do what workers abroad cannot do equally well for much less money" (39).  Employers will be looking for people that can forge relationships, tackle challenges in creative ways, and synthesize the big picture.  The third topic Pink discusses as an integral reason for the shift to a more conceptual way of thinking is Automation.   Whereas "last century, machines proved they could replace human backs," "this century, new technologies are proving they can replace human left brains" (44).  Unless professionals develop those creative, right brain aptitudes that "computers can't do better, faster, or cheaper", their services will be rendered nil (47).

Pink proposes that the answer to preparing ourselves for the Conceptual Age is by mastering six aptitudes that are high-concept and high-touch.  One of those aptitudes is Play.  

Brian Sutton-Smith is quoted as saying, "The opposite of play isn't work.  It's depression.  To play is to act out and be willful, exultant and committed as if one is assured of one's prospects" (187).  As art teachers, we know what the business world is finally catching on to: that play inspires creativity and collaboration, and that it enhances satisfaction, therefore leading to greater productivity.  In my classroom, I try to facilitate this type of playful atmosphere.  In the future, I hope to introduce more projects in which students can collaborate, invent, game, and joke.  I loved that in the Portfolio section of this chapter, Pink suggests to businesses scheduling their staff retreats at an elementary school so that employees can take in children's uninhibited joy and exploration.  

I enjoyed the Play discussion thoroughly, especially watching Tim Brown's TED video in which he gives examples of the relationships between creative thinking and play.

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html

  

His discussion inspired me to try some of these ice-breakers with my staff and students on the first few days of school to help them unself-conciously surrender themselves to creative ideas and interaction.

Blog Topic #5: Teaching Students of the Conceptual Age

We've thus far learned the "whys" about discussing visual culture with our students.  We know that because our society is in constant flux, we either have to go with the flow and try new methods of teaching that contain contemporary problems and solutions, or we're going to get dragged under by the current.  The readings from Friday tell us how we can manage this challenge using a more modern form of art curriculum.

In Freedman's words, curriculum "is a form of social action" (106).  While including visual culture can be a challenge, she believes we must reconceptualize our current ideals (in which technical aspects are of utmost importance) to focus on the cultivation of ideas, imagination, and style.  She mentions that curriculum theorist Patrick Slattery thinks that because curriculum is created by people who leave parts of themselves within said curriculum, it should focus on issues of self, because that is where learning takes place.  If we put ourselves into lessons, our kids will undoubtedly follow suit because, per Freedman, "students are active learners and construct individual meaning from experience" (127).

With the Common Core standards currently being pushed so heavily in our schools, this type of curriculum only makes sense.  It's a perfect way to show administrators that the art classroom is an invaluable part of a school structure: that our lessons contain problem solving, ways to improve literacy comprehension, and encompass various cross-curricular subjects.  Eisner mentions in Chapter 6 that "when the teacher's perspective is one that might be called emergent rather than prescriptive, the stakes for pedagogical innovation are higher and the demands greater."  We, therefore, hold the key to unlocking our student's highest potential.

But again, how can we achieve this?  In the article The Visual Literacy White Paper, written by Dr. Anne Bamford, the author lists various strategies we can use to promote visual literacy in our art classrooms, like: exposing students to a variety of interesting images and having thoughtful discussions regarding the images; discussing the intention of images that have been used throughout history; and experimenting with a variety of computer-generated media.  These are great examples of the "inquiry-based methods of instruction" mentioned by Freedman and they "are particularly appropriate for studying contemporary imagery" (127).

Blog Topic #4: The Social Life of Art

Previous to last Thursday, I didn't have much knowledge of gaming.  The most time I'd ever spent really considering this aspect of visual culture was during Visual Literacy and Visual Culture this past Spring and, because the subject wasn't broached in depth, if you'd asked me point-blank if I thought gaming was a "Fine Art"-form, I would have been hesitant to answer.  My thoughts about the media have solidified upon reading Eisner, Freedman, Thomas and Seely Brown, and listening to Paola Antonelli discuss the MoMA's recent acquisition of fourteen video games.  I've always found video games visually appealing...but I didn't really "get it".  Antonelli herself states in the TED video that she never claimed video games were ART; she instead calls it "interaction design."  So what's the argument?

Antonelli's justification for the acquisition is that the museums job is to tackle popular culture, but to tackle it as something that has to be researched.  The research criteria involved figuring out how to exhibit the pieces and how to preserve it for future generations, among other things.  In Freedman's Chapter 5, "The impact of contemporary imagery has generated a wide range of sociopolitical and economic issues, including its influence on student identity, notions of citizenship, beliefs about democracy, and so on" (94).  Antonelli's research and development of the MoMA collection brings to the surface the idea that, to paraphrase Eisner in Chapter 5, we must understand these forms of art as cultural artifacts that both reflect and affect the culture in which they appear.   

Arguments and controversies will constantly arise over what is and what is not art.  Could part of this be a breakdown in communication from art teachers to their students?  The bottom line with visual culture like technology and especially video games, is that "children use play and imagination as the primary sense of their new and rapidly evolving world" (from A New Culture of Learning).  Eisner proposed in Chapter 5 that, "arts education programs not only pay attention to the forms of thinking that make sensitive and imaginative imagemaking possible, that they not only cultivate the forms of perception that enable students to read the qualities of the visual world, but also promote students' abilities to describe those qualities intelligently."  If we don't evolve with these forms of culture, we're going to get left behind.  Or worse, leave our students behind.    

Blog Topic #3: What Is Art And What Should We Be Teaching?

Transmediation, or, using various forms of media to respond to cultural texts, has been a reoccurring idea posed in my last couple of graduate classes.  Why?  As Semali and Fueyo write in their article, "because students are bombarded by multimedia" and we as teachers, "need to find methods and analytical frameworks that help students make sense of and critique the codes and coded messages of our times."

So how, as Freedman discusses, do we go about finding appropriate "connections between contemporary visual culture and the past" so that students can "develop an understanding of the complexity of their visual world"(43)?  She mentions that we must research the context and quality of the visual culture we are presenting to students.  But who determines what form of art is worth teaching?

In our class discussion today, we touched on the age-old question "what is art?"  A question that might never have a solid answer.  While we can't offer certain answers to students, what we can offer them (and what Freedman stresses in her third chapter) is an opportunity to form context that is meaningful to them by way of introducing various forms of visual culture.  I reiterate from my previous post that deconstructing these texts using Visual Thinking Strategies is a paramount tool in our modern curriculum to help us contextualize learning, or, "to help students understand that many conditions influence judgments of goodness and that those judgments are made based on the relationship of these conditions" (Freedman 54).

Back to transmediation, a way of ensuring the quality of learning that Freedman discusses, is to introduce artwork that connects our students to the culture that surrounds them: work that uses multiple literacies and ties into modern culture such as graphic novels, video games, movies, and music: work that is interactive, such as the sculptures of Richard Serra.  According to the review of his MOMA retrospective, and based on my own interactions, Serra's work creates a transmedial experience.  His work is best appreciated by physically interacting with it: walking into and around the pieces.  I always find that his work gives me the feeling of vertigo.  In the review, one participant describes his experience with the work as disorienting,  and created a feeling where "awe and fear mingle(d) with pleasure" (Kimmelman 1).

Coincidentally, I went to see the Serra retrospective in New York in 2007 when it first opened up and snapped a few pictures:

Blog Topic #2: Examining Beliefs About Art

The Eisner Chapters (3 and 4), discuss the teaching practices of successful art teachers, and how these practices can positively effect students.  He states at the end of Chapter 3 that "the art room affords students an opportunity to develop their persistence, to explore their individuality, to share what they have learned with others, and to learn from others what they themselves do not yet know."  After teaching for six years, I feel I have gained understanding about practices Eisner discussed that have worked well for me and my students.  Specifically, I would say my strengths lie in my technical craftsmanship, my rapport in providing supportive feedback after reading the quality of my student's work, and my ability to make "connections between earlier and current work and between current work and the world outside the classroom."  Something Eisner mentioned that I would like to work on would be not getting stuck in my habits and get too comfortable with my routine.  I have found that if a project turns out well with my students one year, I have had a tendency in the past to use it over and over.  While I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing in certain ways, I can see that in doing this, I'm making other mistakes that Eisner touches on in Chapter 3: for instance, I'm concerning myself more with making a product instead of checking that the content students are engaging in is valuable.  By changing my routines next year, I can ensure content is fresh, that students are learning more because of the personal meanings they are making, and that their comments are relevant when discussing the aesthetics of work they see or have created.    

Which leads me to the Freedman Chapter: Finding Meaning in Aesthetics.  Freedman states on page 23 that "definitions of aesthetic response, the conditions of aesthetic experience, descriptions of aesthetics objects, and aesthetic theorizing are at the foundation of curriculum." As I mentioned above, when working with my students, I need to monitor their aesthetic understanding of their own work and the art that relates to it.  I can do this through the practice of Visual Thinking Strategies.  The practice of VTS relates so perfectly with a selection from Freedman's conclusion in which she states, "meaning is inherent to aesthetic experience, and in contemporary visual culture and aesthetic theory interested interpretations are not only expected, but promoted" (41-42).

As for Barrett, in About Art Interpretation for Art Education, he mentions in his conclusion that,

individual interpretations can broaden the community's understanding of a work of art.  Those individual interpretations can also broaden our knowledge of one another. Communal interpretations can inform individual interpretations, causing individual interpreters to reflect more, consider further.  A multiplicity of interpretations can unify rather than divide a group of individuals, helping them form a community of understanding, a community that values diverse beliefs about art and life. (18)

This statement kind of synthesizes the main ideas I gathered from the three authors this evening.  It also makes an even stronger case for pulling myself out of my routines a bit in order to use Visual Thinking Strategies in more of my classes. Using VTS, I will be able to delve further into the aesthetics of the visual culture in my classroom.