Smarthistory: Khan Academy for Art Teachers

Smarthistory, presented by the Khan Academy in collaboration with several museums, is a wonderful resource for art teachers looking to add some technology components into their lessons.  The website explains their purpose as:
Smarthistory.org is a free and open, not-for-profit, art history textbook. Part of the Khan Academy, we use multimedia to deliver unscripted conversations between art historians about the history of art.

My first impressions of this resource after stumbling upon the site while searching for video about Van Gogh's Starry Night are that this could be a great tool for the art teacher, especially at the Middle and High School levels.  Art and Art History are expansive topics, but the site organizes artists and movements through an interactive timeline making it easy to find what you need.

All of the features of the site are well thought out and highly organized.  The conversations, links, videos, and shared Flickr images give the art teacher multiple methods for presenting art pieces and explaining their significance to the art world.  Since I am an elementary art teacher, I would share with you that my students are not going to be browsing this site on their own due to the many nudes that are displayed in several different pieces, but the middle and high school teachers could probably let their students use this site for research as long as there is an understanding between the teacher and his/her students about how to approach such images in art.

1st grade Fairy Tale Castles

The first graders started a unit on architecture and we discussed what I have found to be the best way to get kids psyched about architecture is to introduce them to castles and fortresses.

Why castles and fortresses?  Well 1st grade girls are immediately interested in anything that involves Princesses and castles.  The boys, however, take a little bit more effort to get them to think about castles so I use the "fortress" term and discuss the differences between a fortress and a castle (Castles are for royalty and fortresses are for protection and do not necessarily have royalty living in them).


We looked at different castles and fortress pictures on the big board and discussed the different elements that each one of them have to develop some criteria we could use to create our own castles and looked a diagram of a castle to get some more ideas.  Then, we discussed in detail the need for arched windows when building a castle with stone.

Next, we took a black sheet of paper and drew the front view of a castle using a white oil pastel.  We then cut out the castle drawn and learned how to fold our paper and use a snip of the scissors to make a hole in our windows to start cutting around and out.  After this, we broke out the sponges and a couple of different colors of paint to "stack" the bricks of our castle. 

Once the paint dried, we used colored cellophane to add windows.  To finish it off, we used a strip of paper attached to each bottom corner to stand them up.  I am thinking of lining them up in a display case with some string lights behind them to illuminate the windows.  Any thoughts?

Kindergarten Machines

The Kindergarten students at MES have been working hard on our technology components of the curriculum for the last couple of weeks, especially discussing machines and how they are used to help people get jobs done.  We talked about how we do chores around the house and how some chores are fun and others not so fun.  Wouldn't it be great if there was a machine to do our chores for us?  What would it look like?  What kind of parts would we need to create that machine?  After a few ideas were discussed, we cut loose with different sizes of square paper and some old jigsaw puzzle pieces to build a machine that would help us complete a job we don't like to do.  The students jumped right on the task and began planning out their machines and gluing pieces of paper to the page to complete their machine.  After some gluing, we busted out the construction paper crayons (and some spakly ones too because machines are usually very shiny!) to add the details to their projects.  Take a look at some of the pics at the Kindies hard at work.

4th Grade Mechanimals

Two great things that go great together!  Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is an old concept gaining ground recently that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example. I think of it as "innovation inspired by nature."
I presented this Prezi presentation to the students:

Biomimicry in Design on Prezi

After brainstorming some of the special skills that animals have, we look at some of the works of Murray Tinnkleman and how he merged animals and machines together in a series of blueprints to highlight how machinery developed by humans have special skills and functions just like specialized animals in nature.  Now what if we put an animal's special skills to work by creating our own mechanimal?  These are some of the results:

Thinglink: Interactive Images for your Classroom Pages

I can't believe I haven't talked about this web app yet!  Thinglink is a great little app that allows the user to create interactive images by simply copying and pasting links on top of the image to create a richer learning experience for the viewer as well as creating a one-stop location where teachers can add interactive content that students can access quickly and easily.

I use Thinglink so much as an art teacher, that I have just adopted it into my daily uses until I directed a friend (also an art teacher) to some resources I had in a specific content area.  She immediately asked "how did you do that?".  That was when I realized I must have found this gem and squirreled it away in my daily routine and never shared.

I can see this app being used for anything from explaining science concepts with links to demonstration videos to creating an instructional on how to make something where each component is tagged with a video on how to make the separate pieces.  I use it a lot in art class where we can add videos about the artist and the specific piece we are looking at, leading students to extended learning opportunities and expanded exploration of content.  Check out the one I made on Chihuly below.  The link to the Interactive pic is here