Collaborative Class Project in Art Club Online

For years I have dreamed of creating a mural or other large artwork with my students. Logistically this can be a bit of a challenge with my students being scattered all over Ohio without the ability to converge in one location very often outside of graduation and perhaps prom. So this year I set out to make my dreams come true with a collaborative project for my Art Club students.

First came first, choosing a theme. For this one I was inspired by "The Eye Project" (above, more photos here). I liked this project because it shows the diversity of students but also ties them all together into one composition. Myself and the other Art Club facilitators held a meeting with students to discuss how eyes express ideas and emotions within artwork. We provided tutorials for creating eyes and encouraged students to think beyond a typical realistic eye if they wished.

Second, I had students sign up so I could mail them the materials they needed for the project-in this case that included a letter of directions and a rectangular piece of watercolor paper. The students chose what media to work with for the project, created their compositions, and mailed them back to me. Then, I had a blast putting it all together. See below!

The final product!

Aiming for Higher Achievement

Over the past 5 years, I have written about my passing rate, reluctant learners, and working to increase the number of students successfully passing my Art 1 class to earn their fine art credit. But this year, I have grown tired of pulling teeth for my students to achieve the minimum. I am tired of begging for students to do work when I really want them to learn more than the minimum, try more than the minimum, and achieve more than the minimum. So, I wrote a goal on my whiteboard that hangs in my office this year, "Aim for A's, not just passing."
Until this semester, I believe I have been aiming too low at times for my students. So, this semester I have been working through some new strategies to increased achievement, rather than simply pass rate. And, it is working!
Here is what I have been trying:

Page 1 of the catch-up packet

• Emailing all students who are missing assignments from the previous week every Monday morning with helpful strategies and scaffolding worksheets when applicable
• Increasing my phone calls by an average of 20 more reaching out calls per week, encouraging students to complete their work and addressing any questions
• Freeing myself of the "passing packet" and replacing it with a catch-up packet (click here to download) which includes more weeks of art projects, better directions, and is marketed towards improving a student's grade with no promises of receiving a passing grade.

Surprisingly, students seem to gravitate towards the catch-up packet far more than they ever did the passing packet, and it doubles as an intervention tool for students with an IEP or who simply prefer to work in a worksheet-style method. It works well as a way to help students who were added late to the course get caught up as well. 

We are only halfway through the semester and already I am seeing an overall 10% shift to higher achievement (letter grades) than at this time last semester! 

With 2% more A's and 8% more C's (and 8% less D's) I am over the moon. Go students go!

Process and Progress Checks

I think one of the biggest challenges I have teaching art online is helping students mid-project as I would if I were walking around a brick and mortar classroom. Of my two courses, Art 1 is the most fast-paced, and I am able to see a student's growth and process as they progress from project to project as well as through practice sketches and one-on-one sessions. However, I rarely see an "unfinished" project before I see the final one. This is because students are generally completing one project per week and students often do not choose to show me what they are working on in this condensed time frame. Art 5 is much slower paced with artwork being created over many weeks as they are higher level, more independent, and aimed at portfolio development. Thus, this course became my guinea-pig for developing ways in which to see a student's artistic process.
This year I have instituted progress checks for Art 5 students where they check in several times throughout the process of creating a piece of art. It is important in an online environment when working with students individually, to plan out structured checkpoints and have clear expectations. Each project begins with a brainstorming sheet such as the one below.

Following the brainstorming sheet, students have a progress check dropbox where they submit their project at least once before the final project. Though I only require them to show me one time, my students have all chosen to show me their work multiple times for each project. These progress checks give me an opportunity to give each student detailed feedback through screencast-o-matic and dialog about their artwork on the phone or via email. Below are a couple examples of progress checks and final work.

The conclusion of this process is reflecting upon the piece and self-assessment. In Art 5, students are encouraged to grade their own work in order to develop their skills of selecting work for a portfolio. They are also asked to answer reflective questions which differ based on the goal of the project. An example of one is below.

Adding progress checks to my Art 5 class has been very successful so far and I am receiving higher quality work from my students and having more conversations about their goals for each piece and how they are effectively communicating their ideas. How do you encourage process-oriented thinking in your classroom?

Dressing Up Engagement Strategies

As I mentioned in my September blog post, I have been working on making tip videos in my classroom which highlight tricky concepts for students and seek to correct misconceptions before they happen. I have been successful with these videos and noticed an increase in the quality of student work that I have been receiving since I made them. However, I noticed that some students were still not watching the videos (Screencast-o-matic lets me check my view count for each video). I did notice that I had a higher view count than any other week during the week that I dressed up for Halloween. This got me thinking, perhaps students would be more likely to watch a video if I dressed in something silly or unusual. Students are able to see a thumbnail of the video when I embed it into my announcements. Cassie Stephens, a fellow Art Ed blogger is the queen of dressing up for the art classroom. I am not quite to the point of making my own outfits, but here are some of my silly video outfits:

This seems to be entertaining students as much as it is entertaining me. My view counts have almost doubled since I switched to costumes!

Tablets as an Option for Art Making

I am getting very excited about next semester starting next week and I am preparing my semester 2 classroom with new technology on my mind! Big surprise right? I have been working with my team this semester to create tablet options for all of my Art 1 projects. Previously, all projects were required to be done on paper through traditional techniques. However, I have found that students really enjoy the option of creating a different way and it also benefits students who do not have art supplies or are having problems with their scanner. Also, having a digital option prepares them for all kinds of careers and it helps meet UDL guidelines. So, I have finally done it!
Each lesson in Art 1 offers two options for the assigned projects: a traditional option and a tablet option. All of my students have Android tablets to work on and all the apps I use in my class are free. Some of my projects offer a similar option for the tablet option as the traditional. For example, students may paint traditionally for their Impressionist Landscape, or they may use a painting app such as Sketch Guru.

Traditional watercolor

Using Sketch Guru

Other assignments have a different way for students to show their understanding of a given concept. For example, for my proportion lesson involving foreground, middle, and background students are able to draw the interior space of a room with pencil, or they can create a digital collage using PicCollage. Both assignments accomplish the creation of a piece that shows depth and understanding of proportions but some students might prefer one over the other. 

Traditional drawing

Using PicCollage to manipulate images

Some of these apps add additional materials for students to use that they would not have access to at home easily such as the texture tablet option. Students are learning about visual and tactile texture and then asked to either create a drawing showing 4 textures or create a sculpture showing 4 textures in TrueSculpt. 

Traditional drawing

Using TrueSculpt

I thoroughly believe in teaching traditional art skills and would never want to move towards 100% digital in my classroom but I think options are important. I am excited for students to have the opportunity to experience more diverse materials in their art making and get a taste of digital art if they choose. Stay tuned! 

Shameless plug: I'll be giving a presentation at NAEA this year on Saturday at 2pm all about using free Android apps in your art classroom!

Addressing Weaknesses and Clarifying Concepts

This school year I am working on addressing common mistakes students have made during previous years at the beginning of a lesson so they can be more successful this year. I am doing this through a short weekly video announcement.

Each video presents 3 tips for the current project. I am getting a good amount of student views on these videos. Aside from increasing the quality of student artwork, these videos also serve as a weekly greeting from me that my students see when they enter the classroom. 

Student Recognition

The new school year is up and rolling! I always enjoy the energy and inspiration that come at the beginning of the school year. I am feeling well rested and ready to conquer the world! One of my many goals this year is to make my students feel special. In the online classroom, the key to student engagement is to make students feel cared for and noticed. One of the ways I seek to accomplish this is by creating a weekly student art gallery. I use Animoto (which offers free educator accounts with pro features!) to create an exciting gallery video each week.

I have always posted this gallery for students to access, but this year I am also emailing students who earn a spot in the gallery video to let them know how proud they should be. I send along a certificate which they can print and hang up if they desire (seen at the top of this post). I am hoping this little bit of extra effort gets my students feeling excited about creating artwork and feeling valued in their classroom community. 

Keeping Parents and Students Informed

My summer school course has wrapped up and was a very positive experience. I conducted a parent and student survey at the conclusion of the course about the efficacy of the course to help them achieve their goals and how their experience was. I received many positive results and one thing both my parents and students mentioned being helpful was my consistent communication.

Each week I sent out an email to students and parents about the subject of study for the week unit, assignments, and due dates. I have discussed emails like this in previous entries (Communicating with Students Part 1, Part 2).

The main new type of communication that I incorporated in this course was to email parents and students progress reports every other week. Because the course was only 5 weeks long, it was important to keep parents and students informed. As a policy, I always allow students to resubmit projects through my course after reviewing my feedback. Even though students had access to their grade books, sending these progress reports seemed to do a nice job of alerting students to potential issues and put parents at ease. A school may already have a schedule for sending out midterm and quarterly grades as mine does during the school year. I have found that student achievement improves when students are parents are more aware of what is going on in the online classroom. It was helpful to employ this knowledge to a summer course and to include detailed information about each assignment for everyone involved.

Click here to download the progress report template:
Word version
Pages version

Impressionist Landscape Watercolor

I have been really enjoying teaching my summer school class so far. My students are creating wonderful artwork and making meaningful connections with the world around them. It has been awhile since I brought my Google Glass out for a spin to create a demonstration video, but today I took it on an adventure in painting "en plein air".



I am very excited to see what students create for this project and I was happy to have an excuse to go paint outside on a beautiful day like today.

Active Learning in the (Online) Art Classroom

As part of my the Online Teaching and Learning Certificate I am currently pursuing, I recently took a course all about creating interactive learning objects for my classroom. A learning object is an interactive activity which presents lesson material to students in a way that offers opportunities for practice and sometimes employ digital storytelling. Learning objects are great because they allow students to explore a topic at their own pace, offer practice and feedback, and sometimes even provide branching (think choose your own adventure) that takes a student through a branch based on their responses. The possibilities are endless and learning objects can be implemented in all types of learning environments including brick and mortar or blended art rooms. They can be a great opportunity for independent learning, without being as static as book work.

Creating a learning object can be hard work! I spent weeks creating one all about Feldman's Model of Art Criticism that puts students in the role of the art critic. I used Articulate Storyline to create my learning object which provides many interactive features and is fairly intuitive to use. This tool does have a cost associated with it, but there are many free tools available (click here for a list) and it is even possible to create learning objects through Microsoft Powerpoint by adding links to buttons.

But, there is an easier way to start using learning objects (LO's) in your art classroom without creating them. There are many art education learning objects already created online.

Here are some of my favorite Art Ed learning objects:

This activity is the one I created which puts the student in the role of the art critic and presents Feldman's Model of Art Criticism. 

Click here to check out my Art Criticism Activity. 

This LO allows the student to explore the elements of art and practice using them in a free form composition tool. 

Click here to check out the Artist's Toolkit

This LO allows students to test the affects of a manual DSLR camera.

Click here to check out CameraSim

This LO explores the color wheel, tints, tones, shades, and color schemes. It also allows for students to practice blending colors and building their own color wheel. 

Click here to check out the Color Theory Simulation

These links barely scratch the surface of what is out there so explore on your own as well. I have really enjoyed learning about new ways to insert some interactivity into my asynchronous environment and I hope you enjoy them too!

Facilitating Individual Learning Synchronously

This semester has been a very busy one. As all teachers know, each group of students and each student we teach is different from the last. Last semester I had a very independent class as a whole who did not generally find synchronous sessions to be necessary to attend. This semester, I have a group that finds my synchronous sessions to be the ideal place for them to complete work and I have many students who attend once or twice every single week.
In general, I would say that online education encourages students to be more independent than they would be asked to be in a brick and mortar setting. Students need to be able to find and access lesson material independently and need to take steps to ask for help when they don't understand something. This can be particularly difficult for students who special needs or who just learn better with structure facilitated by a teacher and direct instruction. I have students on both ends of the independence structure this semester and I have been able to create a synchronous environment that students who need more structure seem to enjoy and depend on each week.

I have written about my Open Art Room before, but this semester is has been used more than any other! I now have step-by-step powerpoint presentations of every single art project in my Art 1 class and students are eating it up. I put my slides on "roam" so many students can access different pieces of the content at the same time as needed. I have also been able to employ students' webcams for them to show me their work in progress and once it is complete. Open Art Room provides students a space where they can get the lesson content in a different way than reading the classroom pages and get individual help along the way.

Using Video Snippets in the (Online) Classroom

I have always been a proponent of video in my classroom. They offer great demonstrations of both vocabulary and techniques in a way that visual learners benefit from. Here is a link to some samples the videos I have created that fit into the demonstration category. 

Recently, I have started using videos in a few new ways due to the ability to pull in videos from sources like YouTube and embed them into my classroom pages. I use short, fun videos that I find to spark discussion via reflective questions. I have had a weekly discussion board in the past where I use articles from Scholastic Art to generate discussion, but I have found it is fun to mix up the sources that students are viewing, and it can lead to some great creative thinking! 

This is the first video I used in my discussion board. I looked for videos that were less than 5 minutes long and that could be used to prompt students to think about the big question, "What is art?" I asked them to reflect on the following:
1. Which definition of art from the video do you most agree with?
2. Do you think “bad” art still art? Why or why not?
3. At this moment, what do you think is the most important function of art?
At this point in the course, students have had a little bit of exposure to different styles of art but have mostly focused on drawing techniques. I really enjoyed reading their responses, especially from the third question as it prompted a great range of ideas from personal expression to visual communication and everything in between. 


The other more recent use of videos in the classroom is a variation on recorded live lessons I have used in the past. I have always recorded my synchronous lessons for students to watch at a time which is convenient for them (check out this post for more information on how that works). However, due to a shift in focus this year in my live instruction schedule, I haven't had a high attendance rate for my lessons each week. With this change and the availability of a new tool called Screencast-O-Matic I have begun to make lesson snippets: an overview of lesson content for the week summed up in 5-10 minutes. This week I am out of my office for much of the day due to state testing, so it is especially important that I was able to post a short lesson video into my weekly announcements for students to access this week while they are working. 

The Open Art Room - Creating Structure as a Team

During my first semester this year, I had a student ask to meet with me one-on-one in our synchronous classroom software, WebEx. Often when I am trying to help students get caught up with their work, we meet and discuss which assignments to focus on and I can show them examples of the projects and answer any questions. I also showed this student demonstrations using my document camera. He really found our meeting helpful and we continued to meet like this once a week until the semester ended. He told me that working with a teacher like this made him feel more like he was in a classroom, like he was not working alone.

This got me thinking, how can I regularly create this environment for students? After speaking with some of my colleagues, "Open Art" was born. Open Art is offered to students once a week. The session is run by myself and 3 other teachers and it is open to students in any of our sections. During the session, we walk students through each step of the weekly project, demonstrate over the webcam, and answer questions as students work individually. We allow students to work at their own pace by letting them roam freely through the slides after we have reviewed them. At the end of the session students will have their project done or developed enough to finish on their own.

Here is a sample presentation from one of our sessions:

We have seen consistent attendance at these sessions and find that students appreciate the extra structure that Open Art offers them. Students know that they can plan to do their art homework during the session and can have someone there to guide them through it. Also during these sessions, our special education teacher is able to open breakout rooms to work with students one-on-one. It has been wonderful to collaborate with other teachers on my team to make sure these sessions run smoothly. I will definitely be implementing Open Art again next year!

My Experience as an Online Student-Take 2

Last year, I took a MOOC (massively online open course) focusing on an Introduction to Spanish, which I signed up for through Class-central.com. I wanted to see what it was like to walk in my students' shoes and take a class online. I learned a lot from my experience and though I succeeded in "passing" the class, I ran into many issues that stopped me from doing my best. See the post here.

Now, almost a year later I decided to take another online course. This time, for the fun of learning and because of the topic! The course is called "The Music of the Beatles". As a huge Beatles fan, I was intrigued and excited to take this course. And, the experience was completely different from my online Spanish class.

I started excited and continued strong through all six weeks of the course. Each week I watched all the lectures, participated in the discussion board, and aced all the quizzes. I ended the course with a 97% and much historical knowledge I did not previously have about the Beatles. The course did not get pushed to the side in my mind and I never failed to make time for it. It was easy to be highly engaged in this course and I have several ideas about why.

What worked well:

• Interest in the topic
• Getting to know you survey to begin the course, and asked to introduce ourselves to our classmates
• Class map where each student pinned where they are from (over 10,000 students took this course!)
• Discussion board which was student-led where the professor actively participated as well
• Facebook community for the course created by students. This was a big plus for me, as I am on Facebook all the time, I would see posts on my news feed about what my classmates were discussing so I would think about the course several times a day.
• Students actively learned as a community by researching and sharing external resources from youtube and other sources that deepened the concepts we learned in the lectures
• Video lectures where the teacher showed his face and his personality! Videos were informative, broken into small chunks, and visually appealing.
• Released course content one week at a time with deadlines
• Instant feedback from quizzes

I believe these practices helped me be the best online student I could be and I hope to employ as many as I can into my own course.

Getting Students Talking

Lately, art teachers have been focusing on creating more opportunities for reading and writing in their classrooms to align to the Common Core. This semester, I have begun using the discussion board in my classroom to provide students more opportunities for writing, but also in hopes of creating more of a sense of community in my classroom.
Each week, students have a prompt to respond to that uses an issue of Scholastic Art Magazine. This magazine has fantastic digital resources I would recommend to anyone trying to expand their text resources in the art classroom. I have tried to keep these prompts fun and intriguing to encourage engagement.
For Week 1, I wanted insight into students previous experiences with drawing and art. I found an interview with Tim Burton where he discussed his experiences as a student throughout school. I asked students to respond to the following:
Read or listen to the interview by Tim Burton (an artist who has worked on The Nightmare before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands...etc.).
1. Why do you think some children stop enjoying drawing?
2. When has a teacher inspired you in school?
The results have been very impressive. 73 of my students responded to my prompt which is an extra credit assignment in my class. Below is a student example.

During the first week, students were responding to me only. I made sure I replied to each student to show I am reading their responses and to model communication with others in the discussion board.
During the second week, I asked students to reply to each other using the prompt:
Read the article "Is there Art in your Xbox?"
1. Do you believe video games are art? Why or why not?
2. Respond to a classmate's post
Below is a student example:

As you can see, student responses started out generic. I provided feedback to help students expand their thinking and make sure they address specifics when replying to a classmate. I am hoping to see growth in their responses throughout the semester. So far, I am happy to see students engaging in this type of assignment and with each other.

                      

Success!

I have concluded my semester 1 with my highest ever passing rate as a teacher. 74% of my students passed Art 1! I believe the passing packet and my other efforts to engage students during the last 2 weeks of the semester really made the difference this time.
The method I used:
1. Send out mid-term grades for the 2nd quarter.
2. Send the passing packet to all failing students (see previous entry)
3. 2 weeks from the end of the semester, send each failing student an email with the subject line, "Name, you are X assignments from passing!" outlining some assignment suggestions to get them to a passing grade
4. 2 weeks from the end of the semester, call each failing student to tell them about the email
5. Last week of the semester, call each failing student who has not completed the work assigned in the email and remind them of the amount of time they have left to complete it
6. Provide an extension of the weekend to complete all missing work

With this method I was able to engage my reluctant learners so they could succeed and earn their required fine art credit. I'll continue to use this method next semester and hope for similar results.

Getting Silly and the Passing Packet

As we approach the end of semester 1 for 2013-2014, there has been a big focus in my department around pass rates. This school year is the first time in Ohio that a fine arts credit is required for all students to graduate. As an art teacher, I think this is fantastic news! However, it has been a challenge this year with an increased population of students being placed in my Art 1 class who do not want to be there and also might not know about the new requirement. Engagement is always a challenge in an online environment, especially when students are not interested in the content. I also often find that students have high anxiety about drawing and art in general. There are many ways I work to soften and break down these barriers of learning in my class through video, step-by-step instructions, live lessons, demonstrations, and working with students one-on-one. However, for the students who aren't looking at my lesson pages at all, it is a bit more difficult to help them. Thus, I have begun to get a little more creative with my approach to reach reluctant learners, and even a little silly. 
I have created a document called the "Passing Packet" which is a word document that includes all of the lesson materials and project instructions for all of the projects students are required to do to pass. I have broken it down to make it as simple as possible. Complete the packet, earn your credit. Now, I do not distribute this information to students who are already engaging and being successful. I only give it to students who have not engaged in the content throughout the first 15 weeks of school. It is my hope that I can engage even the most reluctant learners to engage and pass Art 1. I also worked with my co-teacher Dana to create a fun video that helps remind students we have a sense of humor, and even though they might be frustrated, we are here do everything we can to help.

FIPing the Classroom

As a team leader this year I have attended a training to learn about Formalized Instructional Practices as a new-ish more formal way of teaching with a focus on student growth and evidence of learning. I am still learning and have more trainings and online courses to attend but I wanted to try something new in my classroom last week just to see how this teaching philosophy might play out in my online classroom.

"Formative instructional practices (FIP) are the formal and informal ways that teachers and students gather and respond to evidence of learning. It helps to think about learning as a journey, and formative instructional practices can guide teachers and students along the way, just like a GPS. These practices include four core components:

• Creating and using clear learning targets
• Collecting and documenting evidence of student learning
• Analyzing evidence and providing effective feedback
• Preparing students to take ownership of their learning" -from the Battelle for Kids Ohio Student Progress Portal

The week focused on Feldman's Method of Art Criticism. Generally students go through this lesson by first reading the content in the classroom (like a text book) and then writing a paper using the 4 steps. We practice using Feldman's Method in a live lesson as well.





New setup for FIP

 

To try out "FIP"ing my classroom I incorporated a different structure this week in my classroom. First, students were to read all of the content they would normally read for the lesson. Secondly, they check their understanding in 2 different ways.

First, they take a non-graded quiz that gives them clear feedback about why they are correct or incorrect.

Secondly, they complete a self-assessment on the learning targets for the week. They include their biggest weakness and what steps they will take to earn a 3 on all of the learning targets. This allows students to take ownership of their learning.



From there, students have options. They may use the additional resources available in the "Expand" folder such as a structuring guide, more in depth instructions for art criticism, and the live lesson where we practice. If confident about all of the learning targets, they may go straight on to complete the summative paper assessment for the week in the "Project" folder.

I was pleased with the results of this so far and am excited to learn more about FIP and new ways to help my students succeed in reaching and exceeding learning targets in my classroom.

ECOT Teacher Uses Google Glass in Online Classroom

Google Glass Lessons

I have just ordered Google Glass and I am so excited about using it in my online classroom. Here are some ideas I have come up with so far. Check in to see how they are received by my students!

Virtual Field Trips

I would stream field trips to art museums around the state through Glass. Students would be able to “attend” the field trip by logging into a live session and could ask questions and participate in the field trip while Glass acts as their eyes and ears. Sections of the field trip could also be recorded for watching later in the asynchronous classroom.

Demonstration Videos

I will make a large collection of art demonstration videos to be used in all 4 sections of Art 1. These videos would show students how to use drawing techniques, what to look at when drawing from observation, and how to set up a still life scene. I would like to have one of these videos in each week of our semester course that students could access any time in the asynchronous classroom.

Interviews and Artist Studios

I would visit local artists in their studios to discuss what it is like to be an artist and I could use Glass to show students the artist’s work. Students would get a taste of a “day in the life” of an artist.

Perspective and Proportion

I would use Glass to teach students the difficult concepts of perspective and proportion. By students being able to view the world from my eye level, I can show them how objects get larger as you approach them and the objects in the background are smaller and how to capture that concept on paper. When I teach student about linear perspective they can view buildings through my eyes and see what a vanishing point looks like if they were to stand right in front of it. Many concepts in Art 1 involve students looking at the world in a different way. These lessons could help give students a more authentic experience that will help them understand the content better.

Stay tuned for more!