Navajo Weavers and Symmetry

A Navajo legend credits a deity named Spider Woman with teaching them weaving. The first loom was said to be of sky and earth cords with tools of sunlight, lightning, white shell, and crystal. In reality, Pueblo Indians taught the Navajos how to weave. The Spider Woman appears in the mythology of several Native American tribes, including the Navajo, Keresan, and Hopi. In most cases, she is associated with the emergence of life on earth. She helps humans by teaching them survival skills. Spider Woman also teaches the Navajos the art of weaving. Before weavers sit down at the loom, they often rub their hands in spider webs to absorb the wisdom and skill of Spider Woman.

After watching this video, the 4th grade students Began to look at different examples of Navajo textiles and found the lines of symmetry within.  then, we adjourned to the computer lab to create our own symmetrical design using MS Paint.  After fighting over some formatting issues, we were able to print out our designs and finish our Navajo-inspired textile that was customized with our name.

while finishing up our project, we discussed how the computer helped us create a piece of art quicker than if we would have actually weaved a rug.  This led to us watching a textile machine create patterned fabrics.

Watching these two videos led us to discuss how machines can both help and hurt us.  These large weavings can be quickly made and cheaply sold, but the most important part about the Navajo weaving is the tradition and processes handed down from generations.  A great lesson in how technology plays a dual role in our lives.

Tech Tool(s) 'O' the Week: Drawing Tools

I have been looking for a good web-based drawing tool for the 4th grade students to use to create a cityscape instead of using MS Paint or PowerPoint's drawing tools to practice our CTRL-C and CTRL-V keyboard shortcuts (windows on buildings can be tedious until you learn about Shift+click for multiple selections).  I came across a blog post that showcases 11 different free online drawing tools and decided to pick a few of my faves from them.

1.  Sketchpad
Lots of options, all kinds of ways to create, print, and save without the need of a username or password. very cool for just free-drawing and using all of the options to make something cool.
2.  ArtPad
Not a lot of tools, but having the ability to replay your steps to create a movie of you making a drawing is really neat.
3.  Odosketch
Again, not a lot of tools, but what it does is use charcoal and watercolor brushes well to give your artwork that nice sumi-e effect.
4.  WebSketch
Great introduction to vector art, but the controls are a little weird and I can't quite figure out where the drawing goes when you save it.  The app does, however, solve the problem with making vector art understandable.
5.  Sketchcast
People in my profession have to be raving about this!  I haven't played with it nearly enough, but what I have done I likey a lot!  Record your voice and a drawing at the same time?  Sign me up!

That's just five drawing tools, there are more in the Google Chrome web store and apps for your IPads and smartphones as well.  None of these use copy and paste functions or have easy to access and control shape-making tools, which is what I need for the project!  I'll keep looking...

Chagall's Floating Worlds

The second graders took a look at two paintings by Marc Chagall, one painting is of his hometown in Russia, the other is of his time he spent in Paris perfecting his paintings.  Can you tell which is which?

The differences can tell us a lot about the artist and how life was back then. First, we can look at the village painting and see that it is cold and bland. In contrast, we can see that the second painting is more decorative and vibrant. What do you think this tells of about life in both of these places?

As we discussed these pieces, we could not help but notice that Chagall seemed to have a problem with gravity, always placing his subjects in the air as if a ghost floating through the memories of his paintings.  The second graders then used their knowledge of patterns and colors to create a vibrant figure ready to go out on the town for an evening of excitement in Paris.  To "top off" the project, we decided to give our figures the power to float through the air as well.  Can you tell what we used for our solution?

Another Bad Hair Day

During this thanksgiving holiday, the first graders decided that we should look at the Native American totem carvers for inspiration.  We learned that a totem pole is an object representing Native family kinships and stories.  We also learned that the totem pole carvers could be quite the jokesters and love to carve images and symbols that told funny stories.

As we discussed the bold lines and symmetry in the Totem Pole carvings, we can not help but notice the hand-tooled textures in the wood. This leads to a discussion about human-made objects and machine-made mass produced objects.  We watched two videos, one of a totem pole being carved using traditional hand-carved methods, and another video of a CNC machine milling a sculpture out of a piece of wood.

Students then set out to make a figure telling the funny story of a bad hair day and were asked to draw an oval for the face and a variety of lines radiating out from it.  We then broke out white oil pastels and drew shapes and patterns between the shapes made by the radiating lines to give the look of things getting stuck in our bad hair.

Out came the watercolors  to add some zest to the project and then we finished it off by outlining our lines with a black oil pastel.  The results, as always were fantastic.  Our next step is to bend them into a half-tube shape and stack them like a totem pole!

Two Shameless Video Games in Education Plugs

All of you that know me know that I am an avid believer in the discussion that video games are more important in learning than most teachers think. The discussion is still in it's data-collection phase and the verdict isn't out yet, but there are plenty of debates in the field taking place and I always like to point out the successes when I see it.

First, John D. Sutter over at CNN wrote a great post over on the "What's Next" blog for innovation.  He cites two examples of how video games and video game theory are giving scientists the ability to "crowdsource" gamers and use that energy to help solve epic scientific puzzles like "protein folding".  A Canegie Mellon computer scientist is developing these puzzles into a game format where gamers can generate discoveries scientists might ever have imagined.



Next plug is from this TEDTalk that Sutter posted about on the same blog.  12-year-old Thomas Suarez's TEDTalk about kids and not just wanting to play games, but also make them is an inspiring clip.  Very cool stuff!

In my building, since the purchase of the interactive projectors, teachers are beginning to shift their thinking on how they are using technology to enhance core standards.  It is refreshing to see this development of how we can best get students thinking about these concepts and how teachers are pushing their own comfort levels in technology concepts to provide students with a variety of learning opportunities.  I wish, however, that the conversation starts to begin discussing some of these videos and articles and opens up a process for evaluating our pedagogical procedures and how we can use student-centered tasks and project-based learning procedures to enhance learning.

Tech Tool 'o' the Week: Page-o-rama

We were having discussions around the building last week about how we can give the students a little more online presence and this tool seems to have everything we need. Page-o-rama is a web-based tool that gets students published on the web without the use of an email address or password (unless you want to continue editing the page after your first visit, that requires an email address).

This little web app could be the answer that teachers are looking for to get elementary students without email accounts to publish online.  Other applications could include creating a quick, standalone page for class announcements or a group project that the teacher can do with their class to create a learning guide for a specific topic. Think of any other ideas?  Hit me up with a comment and share!

This tech tool can be found on our Monroe splash page under web tools

Art/Tech Sighting:Techno-Magic!

Augmented reality is not something everybody knows of, but this is a great example.  Cyber-Illusionist Marco Tempest uses technology to create a vignette of man interacting with the digital world.  It is the collaboration of open-sourced software communities and creative thinkers to create a new way we interact with our digital world.  Imagine the possibilities if we were able to open these tools and opportunities to kids- they would blow us away!

Webs of Color

Part 5 of the 5 Posts of Fright series

Did you know that a spider's silk has a tensile strength 300 times that of steel?  First graders learned this as well as the fact that spiders didn't always use their webs to catch food, but rather used it to pad their nests, learning along the way that they could build webs to catch tasty treats!

After learning these facts, the students learned how to create both sheet and orb style webs, then used their white glue (slow and steady!) to create the a web on black paper.

After drying time (next class) the students used colored chalk to color over the web (the glee keeps the chalk from binding to the paper, so the web shows through) creating a wonderful example of pos/neg relationships and looks almost like a stained glass window!

Haunted Houses

Part 4 of the 5 Posts of Fright series

Have you ever noticed that almost all haunted houses on TV, in books, and other places all seem to look the same?  A little more research and you discover that all of these haunted houses share the gothic revival archictural style that was prevalent in the US in the early 1900's.  I found this lesson about haunted houses from another art teacher's blog and decided to use it as a way to teach the 4th graders about architectural styles and how different periods of time used different building elements and construction techniques that you can see if you look hard enough.

The students began by looking at famous haunted houses in TV and then we listed and created a study guide with images to inspire our own haunted creations.  The impossibility factor (having rooms that looked like they didn't fit onto the house) and Asymmetry of haunted houses are what drove our designs.   Then we began adding details and coloring in the house with black markers to give it a silhouette look that really brought out the colors in the windows which was from the background paper we created by coloring a paper towel with water based markers and the sprayed them on top of the white paper and let the colors bleed.  Fantastically creepy!

Picasso Monsters

Part 3 of the 5 Posts of Fright series

For the 2nd grade halloween project, the students and I looked to Cubism and Pablo Picasso for inspiration.

Cubist works often depict figures and portraits in a highly contorted way, often revealing a Halloween mask or something:  Definitely a creep factor involved in Cubism.  We took that to our advantage and discussed how we could create a Halloween spook or ghoul by making a single portrait from two different viewpoints :  the front and the side (profile).

The students used cut paper to create the monster portraits, adding large noses, two different types of eyes (they look different from different viewpoints).  and howling mouths full of gnarly teeth.  Then, they added all of the gruesome features that go along with the their scary spooks, so much extra details and flowing ideas from the students that we had to add some paper to the background to fit witch hats, glowing moons, and other scary scenes.

What a great way to learn about Cubism!

Tech Tool 'o' the Week: Class Parrot

Class parrot is a wonderful alternative to the usual ways teachers communicate with their classes.  Class Parrot is a website that teachers can use to send group text messages to parents to inform them of activities going on in the classroom.  Have a spelling test tomorrow?  With class parrot, you can input parent's cell phone numbers (they are kept private and are never revealed) and send them a text from the website without using your phone or giving out your cell phone number.  Almost everybody I know has a cell phone with text capabilities.  It gives teachers the ability to bridge the digital divide among students and parents by meeting the people who are unable to check your website halfway and communicate with them by text, which most people have available to them right now.
A link to Class Parrot can also be found on our splash page under the web tools tab.