#MSET Session 2: Integration Technology & Art in a Lesson Study

Presented by Roxanne Dean & Linda Jones, both from Baltimore County.

• Honestly, could anyone who knows me expect me to attend any other session?  It's Art! It's Technology! This is what I do.


• Demonstrating Voicethread used to teach a lesson on drawing a human face.


• "At this point they haven't thrown me out." Said RE: How many Voicethread pages she has.


• 5th graders drew self portraits then turned them into contour line drawings and learned about Andy Worhol.


• "Why do you think we need to do this in contour?"


• They reproduced their drawings on the computer.  No scanning or photography?  Would be nice to have the time for that.  In my case I may have to use something like this to digitise student work.


• Showing Art Content Standards.  Yes, this is an art lesson!  It's not just token "Let's color something and say we did art!"


• Showing lots of Pop Art.  Comment about how things that Warhol thought were important are not recognised by today's kids.  Interesting snapshots of the culture at the time.


• So apparently Voicethread lets you record video with your voice.  That could be helpful for students who are ESOL or have certain disabilities.  Seeing someone's lips move as they talk can certainly help to aid comprehension in some cases.  (It helped me in college, especially with some professors who had strong accents.)


• A cow is used to signal clean-up time.  Students expect it and are used to the routine.  Makes me wonder how I might implement a similar strategy - perhaps with a school mascot?


• Students used the paint brush tool in Pixie to redraw their line drawings.


• Copy/paste used to get 4 identical panels, then the panels were colored separately with the paint bucket.  (Watch out for cracks!  The colors will leak through!)


• While this was done with Pixie, I see how this could be done with other art programs.  GIMP, SUMOPaint, TuxPaint, Frames, even!  ... Am I starting to sound like a broken record?


• "Zoho" used to embed art on a site for parents to see progress.


• Showing an example made starting with a photo.  Apparently the photo needs to be "glued" to keep it from fading.  I imagine layer settings could protect it in GIMP/Photoshop/SUMOPaint.


• "Photoshop is a little advanced for 5th grade."  Not if my 3rd graders are making vector graphics in Frames.  Give me a day or two and they can do it.


• A conference is not worthwhile if you don't find something you can take with you and use the next school day.  This presentation is all I need for MSET to be worth it, and it's only the 2nd session!  Can we say this is an awesome conference? Yes we can!