I Wish I Still Had Netflix

In an attempt at a little levity (my blogs have been very dry and academic), I'm starting with the title: it refers to the connection made between how RSS works and Netflix vs the video store.In fact, I cancelled my Netflix when I started back to school, and truly I miss the convenience. This is a great sequey into the RSS application. It really does seem simple and direct and extremely useful for the unorganized type (like me). Some ways I thought RSS might be useful for art students could be to subscribe to the NYTimes and the LATimes for current information on the gallery scenes in their respective cities. It's really time consuming to read all of the newspapers and keep up with the current art scene. RollingStone is another subscription that would be useful for them. In this way, the students could work from a common ground in terms of researching current exhibitions and artists. It would cut down the time for the teacher to present the material and for the student, all the information could be accessed from their computers and they would all be receiving the same material. Another application would be for the students to subscribe to each others blogs in which they would be writing about art-related topics. The students could receive each others thoughts automatically. In that way the student learns from others in the class, through blogging, the way a critique would function in a class: a collective discussion about an artist, article or event/artwork. This would be great for a Criticism class.

I picked diigo.co for no reason and my address is http://www.diigo.com/user/carol12345.

Some thoughts about Excel. I'm still a novice at this program and I had a little trouble coming up with ideas/applications for Excel and the art student. Here goes:

1. The student would make a list of color names, then make a list of titles of paintings within a certain style (Pop Art or Impressionism). Then check the boxes that correspond to the colors found in each painting. Add up the colors and discuss the color range within each style of art.

2. The students could organize a random list of paintings from a museum into art style categories to determine the museum focus.

3. The student would use the graph function to make a random linear graph that would correspond to a horizon line or mountain. By plotting numbers on the graph, making a new series for each new image or shape, the student could create a simplistic picture exploring front to back, overlap and scale.

4. Pick a room in a museum, like the Native American room in the Reading Public Museum and categorize the items found there, for instance utilitarian, clothing, decorative or religious. Use the data to to discuss the lives of the people and create a day-in-the-life model based on the distribution of the data.

5. This one is tricky: It uses ranges of numbers or conditions, like equal to or less than, to create colors in a field or a block on the spreadsheet. Once the first color is established, then by selecting boxes in the field, and then put a number in, the second and third colors can be added making a "painting with numbers".

6. Extra credit: I found out by talking to someone at the busstop that pictures can be imported into Excel. This can be used as a way of having fun by stretching the picture.

Response to Google Apps

Yes I can see how the application of Google Apps could be great for collaboratively writing documents/papers. In trhe past, learning was done individually (most everything). So writing was a solitary activity. This new application could create a wonderful environment for students to see how and what others are writing and to create a piece of writing that many are involved in. I can see how group projects for children also help in aquiring confidence in the process of writing; knowing that the draft is the process and that the final version or product has many lives before it is complete.
In addition, though I have'nt tried it, I can see how the cloud concept can work for images as well. Where one student imports an image, then another edits/draws on it etc. This has so many lessons in it, the most important is to teach the importance of process through "disowning" your work - not being so precious about it. I found lots of interactive drawing/painting sites that do this.
Lesson Plan #1
In the past I used to teach very traditionally, lecturing and then having the students apply the concepts in drawing. The concepts presented were subject to all kinds of factors relative to the environmnet that the students were in. In this lesson, using Google Apps, specifically Google
Earth and Google Site looks at a simple photograph and dissects it, rather the students dissect it by reading about photography, placing it in a timeline in history, placing it geographically and asking and answering questions about the power of the image and it's impact on history.
The students enter Google Earth and create a folder and then Placemark eash of the photgraphs they have chosen from American photographers. Then they can view PBS series about a century of American photographers and learn about the history of photography. Then they work collaboratively on a site that talks about the different photos as they are simultaneously researched. These conversations will be guided by questions from the teacher and therefore the student can immerse themselves in the concept rather than merely listening.
Lesson Plan #2
This lesson is also interactive but I dont think nearly as helpful in understanding concepts. Essentially the student creates a timeline of artists birthdays in history as well as other critical moments in the history of art (Guernica, Sistine Ceiling, discovery of Tang soldiers). The students will link the events to a place on the map. I can see how this lesson could be an introduction to Art History for younger students. The final piece of the lesson is to create a Google Calender with all the events they have found. The calender is linked to Google Maps so the place of birth can be accessed from the calender. Essentially the calender project is an individual one but the other students can access it all the entries made.

Definately technology has evolved and I'm running to catch up with it. I think, intellectually, I am more comfortable talking about it than using it. But I have come to realize in a very short period of time that using it is an intellectual experience, too. Not just knowing the terminology or the nuts and bolts of the machines, but really making choices about why and when to use technology. The use of technology has sprouted an intellectual curiosity in me - not in the sense of an animal in a cage to be viewed from the outside, but diving in and trying it on.

From the Educause chapters, I gleaned that the Net Gens use technology as a way of life and as a result they require instant feedback, they learn by exploring (the wonderful"briolage" word from Levi-Strauss), they are driven by hope in that technology has solved many problems in their lifetime, they learn in multimedia environments, they require constant access to communicate through IM and social networking and yet they are very optomistic about the future. Where we come together is the need for facetime from faculty and that motivation mostly comes from the teacher. Technology is just the tool. That in itself is hopeful and still puts the responsibility of teaching to teachers.

Response to R/W tools
It's all about information, isn't it - reading it, writing it, cataloging it, seeing it, sending it, sharing it. I learned about RSS feeds as the rapid sharing of internet content, what collaborative wikis are, online graphing tools, how there are so many applications to online digital photo tools for the artist and what del.icio.us is. So mush to know and use. What is a mashup? I read it and still am not sure. I learned that Google.doc is a free web-based word processor for documents sharing, spreadsheets and presentations. I'm still unclear about their applications even though the video on the Googl.docs website was great. I'll haver to look at it again to sink in. I believe that it is an R/W program because it uses the web as a platform, it is interactive and is a publication tool for ideas. No, I have never used it. It's all simultaneously exhausting and exhilerating.

Response to Marc Prensky- DN, NetGen and DI

I have just read the article about Digital Natives or the Net Gen and Digital Immigrants. At first the tone of the article was, in my mind, purposefully argumentative and challenging. I resented the clear-cut distinctions between the DN and DI, yet I understood his purpose.
To answer the question do DNs learn differently, I believe that they do, to an extent. Yes, my nieces and nephews are plugged in all day every day, recieving hundreds of texts daily. That has to impact the way they learn and experience school in general. But the readings, particularly the text in Educause states that the majotity of students find that motivation is the best teacher and that teachers do that the best. The person-to -person and peer-to-peer strategy for learning and teaching has long been a successful model. They like to do rahter than listen and it has been proven that interaction with information has a direct relation to studnet retention.
The second question bates us into the realm of feelings and bites at those of us who have had a "classical" education where the authority of the teacher was assumed and that information was fed rather than gathered by us. Mr. Pensky lays out a series of observations about DNs such as the amount of time spent reading is half of the time they spend in front of the screen, they prefer graphics rather than text, they require information faster as well as responses to information more quickly and they prefer experiential learning by doing rather than being told what to do and how. I feel alarmed at some of the statistics like reading vs screen time and intrigued by the experiential learning preference. Yet I cannot lament the lack of self-reflectiveness in this generation because of the speed of their lives as well as the need for instant gratification of information. Some things, like certain kinds of drawing, take time, and in that time is a measure of control and self-reflection. The time it takes to see, react and then make something is a valuable skill. There are many other applications of a slower pace that should be taught to the DN. Are these concepts radical? Yes and yet they do make sense and should be noted as an educator. Mr. Prensky said something brilliant: which is more difficult, learning new stuff or learning new ways to do old stuff. The marriage of Legacy and Future content is the rub, not whether one should exist and the other disappear, but how to teach them in a way that keeps our children caring about themselves and their world.

The Beginning

Nothing to say - it's invisble.