Summary of Learning

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18CLKh_PHt-SxlBUNPvbUpCT4DpcgUwzpaNqSZ2aXcK0/edit#slide=id.p

The link above is a link to the site where my "Summary of Learning" is located. I chose to use a Google Slides document and create a presentation that provides a detailed, but aesthetically appealing view on my take of this semester's course. The presentation covers the most important things I have learned, some pictures of the projects I've created in class that I deem useful for future use in my own educational setting, favorite quotes, as well as numerous resources that I have found helpful throughout the semester and felt like I needed to share. I just personally believe that using a presentation app such as PowerPoint, Prezzie, or Google Slides is a great way to pull everything together and go over the information in a orderly fashion. I love the little information on each slide that can be paired with audio or imagery. This way of presentation is an extremely useful tool for summative explanations of information. Are there better ways to make presentations? Most definitely. With today's technology, there are so many awesome apps or websites that can be taken advantage of to make these incredible digital stories, presentations, video material; however, I love Google Slides. It truly is an "oldie but a goodie". It's easy to navigate, functional, and truly serves it's purpose for supplying a great format to present information. 

With all of that being said, my biggest take away from the this class, "Integrated Expressive Arts" is how much you can actually use arts in your classroom to go hand in hand with any lesson. It's amazing how now in any of my other classes when I'm asked to create a sample lesson plan, they ALWAYS have an integrated arts aspect, because they it is such a significantly useful tool that can enhance literally any subject area. I have always been really big on using kinesthetic activities to further learning in the classroom, because I truly believe the best way children learn is through doing, not necessarily listening. Therefore, I have learned that integrated arts is another way to incorporate kinesthetic activities into any classroom. And that doesn't mean that in each lesson the students are painting or making crafty messes; however, it does mean that any lesson can have a hands on visual component added to enhance the material, which is extremely helpful for visual learners. Art isn't just making things either, art can be looking and discussing about photography, singing, or any number of creative arts - they are not necessarily all visual arts. In conclusion to this, I just see how extremely, entirely, overly important it is to add arts into the classroom as well as how much more I as a "model student" got out of the material by learning through integrating arts. 

As far as my own classroom goes, I definitely plan to use integrated arts in there one day. I am not exactly sure on the technicalities yet, for I have no idea which grades or subjects areas will be required by me to provide that specific material. But, I love the idea of pairing drawings with literally any lesson, even in note taking, because it is great to have a picture with text. Especially, for those visual learners that physically need to see everything drawn out on paper in order to retain and comprehend the information. I also really enjoy the idea of creating illustrations with a narrative. In any grade, my students will definitely write and publish their own opinion/argumentative/explanatory/informational/narrative piece of writing and I love love love the idea of having them illustrate each page. This shows that the students can put together word and image relationships as well as adds a "fun", create environment for the students to express themselves. There are millions of different ways in which to add integrated expressive arts to any classroom, unit, lesson, or subject area topic. I plan to do so, I just literally won't know exactly how until I step out on the field and do it for myself. 

In conclusion, I would just like to stress how extremely important using arts as well as kinesthetic activity is in anyone's current or future classrooms. As educators, we need to build children's creativity and allow them to self express in a positive, uplifting environment. It is more than just painting pictures. This is about building a child's self image, having them comprehend visually in order to fully understand material, as well as self express for an encouraging learning setting. After this class, I feel 100% more ready to become an empowering educator.  

Art Tech Task #5

For this week's art tech task, I have chose to use a digital story telling tool called "Slidestory". This browser based tool was great for creating a story through technology. I used this application to show how I would create an integrated arts activity in my future 2nd grade classroom. However, this would be great in a classroom as well to use for visual instructions. Like you could explain what the class will be working on through the video, while actually working through the assignment in it as well. This would be an awesome way to help visual learners and engage all students in the project.

This tool could be used to create integrated arts experiences in the classroom in several different ways:

1. students could use this to create their own story. An autobiography that is essentially told digitally. It would still bring in all of the speaking/listening, and language requirements while adding a creative element that would allow he/she to express themselves.
2. This would also be great as a replacement of powerpoint. Instead of memorizing what to say when giving a presentation, a student could use a tool such as this one and actually make it a smooth speech, with solid creativity thrown throughout. It would be way more interesting and engaging.
3. This could also be a collaborative project where students get together and create a narrative through this digital story telling tool. They could add illustrations and narrate it how they want the expressions or prosody to sound. Great for testing multiple areas if ELA requirements.

Could students use this app to create their own digital media artifacts? Absolutely. But, I would say they would have to be older, like in middle school. BECAUSE, there are so many steps while doing this, I think it would get confusing and challenging for the younger learners. All of the pictures I incorporated on mine were either emailed pictures that I had to download in or pictures I had to search through google. Typically, younger students don't use google anyways, because of the wide array of content that one would find on this site. Also, you have to record all of the audio in separate clips, which means one would need to know how to work the microphone on their computer as well as have an idea about chronological order. And then, I had complications publishing my video, which means that others will probably fall into the same trouble. Once fully produced, you have to go back online and find it on the site's page in order to do anything with it afterwards. Therefore, I think it's totally manageable for the older students, just not the younger kiddos.

Easy:

• all of the buttons are super easy to use and self explanatory
• pictures are easily uploaded and switched to whichever order is preferred
• audio is as simple as clicking the button, and if you don't like it, you can hit cancel and redo it!

Challenging:

• there were unknown errors while publishing that I couldn't figure out what to do with
• you have to create an account and verify it through an email (which it goes into a spam folder, never your actual inbox)
• labels, tags, titles, and category names are required to produce the finished product

Standards that fit my integrated arts activity: (also included in my presentation)

My personal review of slidestory though:

I spent 4 HOURS making a 20 minute presentation through this site, which it wouldn't let me save or publish my digital story. I googled forever what to do or how to at least embed my work into blogger, and everyone else seemed to have the same trouble I was having, with absolutely no resolution to the problem. Slidestory DOES NOT WORK and should not be used by anyone. If you can't save or publish your work, then what good is the site? It isn't. Plain and simple. I was seriously so upset about this. And therefore, why I cannot show all of you what I have created (which it was an awesome story by the way). Ugh!

Studio Project #4

For this weeks studio project, we created a 3rd grade project pertaining to how words can be used to create an illustration or in our case, a visual character. This actual relate to many of the English reading standards for Ohio, because students are required to comprehend/explain how illustrations contribute and further influence the words in a text. 

For this particular project, we thought of numerous adjectives as to what we wanted our character to look like to portray a specific emotion. We wrote all of these down on a separate sheet of paper, then began sketching with pencil what we had envisioned. Then, we took a translucent laminate sheet  and placed it over our sketch. We colored in our character with all different colors of markers in attempt to make the character even more realistic. After this, another, thicker sheet of paper (which was sprayed with water to dampen it) was placed under the translucent sheet and the two were pressed together. The marker was then transferred to the thick, white piece of paper and a new creation of art was made from one plain penciled sketch!

My adjectives: 
Age: 25
Gender: woman
Emotion: stressed
Hair color: purple
Hair style: short/straight/smooth
Eye color: blue
Eye type: short/round
Facial type: defined
Ears: small/pierced
Lips: slumped

This project was extremely appropriate for a third grade project, because from my personal perspective, this integrated arts activity would be great to show students how words as well as thoughts can be represented visually. This would pair along lovely with the reading standards and actually further text comprehension, because once the students understand the relationship and correlation between words and illustrations, they'll be better able to look for it as well as comprehend it while reading. Or, even create visuals in their mind while reading, which also contributes to those reading attributes and skills of higher order thinking. 

As far as potential difficultly for students while doing this project, I could see several areas that would pose a challenge to the children. First of all, the translucent paper is obviously extremely easy to smudge, and therefore I think students (who rest their arms on everything, especially while controlling the markers) might have trouble coloring on this type of paper because of the lack of tuned fine motor skills developed at this particular age. Another area of difficulty I could foresee would be when the translucent paper is transferred. If the paper is too wet, or isn't evenly spread throughout the piece of thicker paper, then the marker won't transfer over correctly, which will make everything smear together. This leaves the student with one big messy project. This happened to several people my age in our class, so I can only imagine how many children it would happen too. Other than that, I thought it was a really fun, creative project that the kiddos would thoroughly enjoy. 

Art Standards:
1.1.1., 1.1.2. Elements: line and shape

Common Core:
3.SL.1.d. Explain their own ideas and understanding in light of the discussion
3.W.3.b. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective techniques, descriptive details, and clear event sequences 
3.L.5.b. Identify real-life connections between words and their use 

ELA Standards:
RL.3.7. Explain how specific aspects of a text illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story
RI.3.7. Use information gained from illustrations and words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text