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. 

Thinking About Instructional Design

I am excited because this week I began a class at the University of Cincinnati all about curriculum design for online learning. Though I have created my own curriculum before, I have not had much formal instruction on how to plan with the online learner in mind. I have been learning and working through trial and error. For my first assignment in class, I was prompted to design my own instructional planning model based on research and existing models. Here is what I came up with.

What does your model look like? Think about the steps you go through when planning instruction for your students. What do you find most effective?

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.

                      

ECOT Teacher Uses Google Glass in Online Classroom

From Recall to Higher-Order Thinking

This year is all about growth! Both student growth and teacher growth. With common core and an increased focus on literacy in the art classroom, we are challenged to look at our weaknesses and evolve to meet new standards of learning. Last year, my team and I spent a large amount of time working on converting our curriculum to include more writing and reading. Two years ago, I went through the process of adding quizzes to my classroom to check student's ability to recall the information they were assigned to read. This mostly assured me that students were being held accountable for reading the material as sometimes they would get away with simply completing the project by looking at examples. Now, my task is to take a basic recall quiz and turn it into one that pushes students to answer questions about comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

I used a very simple and helpful guide I found on pinterest to learn more about how these questions could appear in the art classroom. Then, I reflected on my current quiz questions which included one such as this:
1. Which objects appear the largest in a drawing?
A. Objects in the foreground
B. Objects in the middle ground
C. Objects in the background
The answer to this question was simply provided in the assigned reading and it does not ask students to apply their knowledge. So I came up with a series of new questions that challenge students to apply and then analyse.
Examples:
Apply: In this image, which part is the foreground?



 Analyze: Which option shows the correct use of proportion?

 



 And I have even added a question where students have to choose the drawing that shows the most depth in order to fulfil the evaluation question. I believe these new questions will test more than if my students can read the information and put it down on paper but if they actually understand it.

Understanding Linear Perspective Through Glass

In the past I made a video about how to draw a building using one or two-point linear perspective but I hadn't yet made a video about how to relate linear perspective to what my students see in the world around them. I attended the Ohio State Fair today and recorded a fun video about linear perspective that will hopefully engage students and help them understand that linear perspective isn't simply a drawing technique but also relates to the way they see.

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!

Motivation Frustration

It is the last week of school this week and I am finding myself wishing I was a motivation super hero for my students. With a current pass rate for the semester of 58%, I am scrambling to motivate 42% of my learners to pass my class. In online learning, student motivation is the biggest challenge I face. If a student fails my art course, it is solely because they have not completed enough assignments to pass the course. It is easy to get sucked into my own frustration this week rather than continue to do everything I can to let them know it is not too late and I have not given up on them.

Here are the methods I am focusing on this week:

• Passing instructions: I started my mission to save my failing students with an email that listed all the assignments they could choose from and how many they need to do in order to pass my class. Sometimes it is a little disappointing to know students want to do the bare minimum to earn their credit, but as teachers we all know this is true sometimes and it is easier to motivate a student when they feel the goal is within their reach.
• Phone calls: Reaching out to students over the phone is sometimes the make it or break it in their motivation. It's easy to forget they are more than just a overlooked name in my classroom if I do not reach out to them. As I have spoken with my students who are failing this week, many of them have been thankful for my call and already working on the assignments they need to submit. 
• Personal emails: Not all of my students answer me when I call, and sometimes their numbers do not work. At this point I turn to emails, but they still need to be personal. Now, instead of many options for passing I have moved to specific assignments for each student to complete that will push them to a passing grade. I look at the number of assignments they need, pick the ones I want them to do, and send out the message with a read receipt. I have found that for some students, a specific list is more motivational than many options. To remind students that these emails are personal I put in the subject line "Passing instructions for (student name)" or if they are only one assignment away from passing it will say "(student name) you are ONE assignment from passing". 
• Offering extensions when possible: Deadlines are important as they give procrastinating students a reminder that they really need to get it done. However, when possible, offering extra time gives students the extra push they need to know that you care about their success enough to grant extra time. I never offer this extra time until the very end so as to not promote more procrastination.

In addition to these end of school year efforts, I send out midterm and final grades through the mail, contact legal guardians and students regularly, and send out weekly emails of tasks to complete. It often feels like we are fighting an uphill battle as online educators but each time I see a student work hard and earn a passing grade (even at the very end), I am reminded that my efforts have all been worth it. 

The Perks of Data

Pre-test grades earned by students

I am beginning the second week of my semester this week and learning a lot about my students. As I have talked about in previous entries, I have students fill out an “interest inventory” or get to know you assignment at the beginning of my class. This semester, I am also piloting a pre-test that measures what students already know about art. At the end of the class they will take this test again (with some different questions on the same information) to display the growth they have made in my course. My interest inventory has always told me much about what my students wanted to learn and what they already knew, but the pre-test has taken it to a new level. I am now able to gage the level of understanding for specific concepts. I put a question in the pre-test asking students if they had ever taken an art class before, it turns out that 55% have prior art experience while 45% do not. Almost half of my students are completely new to this subject so depending on their interests, they may have never drawn realistically before. I analyzed the data from the test to see what concepts students were widely familiar with and which they were often incorrect about. Students understood foreground, pattern, texture, portraits, primary colors, mixed media, and abstract art, or they were at least able to guess the correct answers for them. I was surprised to see how much they already feel comfortable with coming in. This tells me that when I get to these concepts in the curriculum, students won't need as much time in the lesson to focus on the terms, but perhaps we can spend more time going over examples and brainstorming for their projects. On the other hand, students were often incorrect on the questions about linear perspective, value, art criticism, and cubism. This data seems to match up with what are usually some of the most difficult lessons to teach. Having this information early will help me focus in on these lessons and provide multiple ways of learning. I added a question to my interest inventory that I found to be very helpful in understanding what methods I should use to teach these lessons. When asked which method students preferred for learning a new technique, they preferred demonstrations most often (see below).

Now I know what my students feel more comfortable with, what they will most likely struggle with, and how they learn best. With a class of 260 students, trends in data are very important to pay attention to! I will use this data to guide my instruction and look forward to seeing student growth at the end of my semester. 

Collaboration Between Students

Last week we closed up the first semester and I said farewell to my students. Two of those students are particularly special to me as they created an experience I didn’t expect to see in my large course of over 200 students. These students met in my class and became close friends. Every week of this semester I held an optional art sharing and critique day and the students who attended really gained a lot in their discussion skills and many of them created art outside of class to share during these sessions. Nearing the end of our class, I presented a project about Cubism in which students create two pieces of art, one being realistic and then a version of the first piece that reflects Cubism. The two students who became close friends asked me if they could work together and instead of changing their own pieces of art to reflect Cubism, they would like to change each other’s. The students met in our art critique sessions each week and shared in progress work while myself and their other classmates gave feedback. My students were able to collaborate and successfully completed the project, working off of each other's pieces of art to change them. It was a very positive experience for myself as a teacher to watch these motivated students work together (without the ability to speak with each other outside of class or in person). Next semester, I am planning to work with my Art 5 students to collaborate on a virtual class art show and I have high hopes for them after seeing these students use the tools and time we have to work together. Below you’ll see their finished pieces. 

"Realistic" by Barbara

"Cubist" by Bowen

"Realistic" by Bowen

"Cubist" by Barbara

Developing an Online/Blended Studio Art Course

I have recently been asked by a former cooperating teacher to share my incites about creating an online art class. His department is being asked to do this for their brick and mortar school. So many schools are starting to create blended learning programs within their schools and I decided to share my ideas I'll be presenting to these teachers here as well.

Important Points to Remember

• Set a timeline and due dates-This allows a flexible class to still have structure and keep students on track with their work. See image to the left.
• Provide multiple forms of instruction (written instructions, visuals, student examples, videos)-You should provide everything you would in a traditional classroom but in a digital format. If you were to do a demonstration, make a video. Images of artwork and student examples can really get students interested and communicate the content better.
• Provide multiple forms of assessment (quizzes check reading, project demonstrates mastery, reflection questions show understanding)-I use projects as the biggest form of assessment in my classroom but I find quizzes and written work show another view of what students understand and are taking home from each lesson.
• Simple materials unless provided-Unlike the traditional classroom where you order supplies, in many cases students need to provide their own. Keep it simple when choosing supplies keeping in mind safety and cost.
• Be available for questions-Students need to know they can reach you if they need help by email, telephone, or in person.
• Give feedback for every grade-Written feedback is essential for communicating to students who are working independently about how they can improve or what they are successful at. In my classroom students are also able to make corrections and resubmit work for a better grade. This is something I have found to work well but it is up to you.

Sample Lessons

For a complete look at all the elements I include in the lesson visit my What Does a Lesson Look Like? post.
Here I have provided some images of what the curriculum pages look like in my classroom.

 

Art 1 Sample Lesson

This Art 1 lesson includes many visuals, some vocabulary, and many written instructions for students because this is an introductory course. I also included a video in this lesson to show what it looks like when someone is doing the shading techniques. I encourage students to include objects in their still life that tell a story. For most Art 1 projects they have a week to complete them.

 

Art 5 Sample Lesson

By contrast, this Art 5 lesson includes lesson visuals, more writing, and a project about concept rather than technique. The students in Art 5 should have much more experience in working independently on projects and are working on creating a portfolio for colleges. For Art 5, students have multiple weeks to complete projects but I ask for in progress work checks to provide feedback and direction when needed.

Remembering to Make a Difference

I have spent the last two days filling up my brain with new knowledge about teaching. I learned about motivating students, new technology I can use, how to involve parents and guardians, and various other techniques to improve my teaching strategies. I am excited to implement new multimedia into my classroom and to increase attendance of my live lessons. I am excited to try new ways of motivating students to make the right choices in their education despite their many barriers. I am excited to work even more closely with my inclusion teacher in a more effective way that helps us be a team. However, I took home more than just helpful tools this week. I was reminded of a philosophy that sometimes gets pushed to the backs of our minds. As teachers, we are here to change lives, to teach students more than simply our subject matter. Our first keynote speaker, Steve Gilliland told a story about the 5 people in his life who have made the biggest difference, one being his 6^th grade teacher. I remember the teachers who impacted my life and who made me want to do the same. Sometimes as teachers we get sucked in to our daily tasks. For me its grading, making PowerPoints, and trying to reach out to those reluctant students I have in my classroom. And sometimes they get lumped together and its call after call and answering machine after answering machine that I am speaking to. But Steve’s story reminded me that I want to be the teacher that students tell stories about later in life, long after they are no longer students. I want remind students that they CAN do it, and that someone believes in them. Though I have been learning about new tech programs and approaches I can use in my classroom, the fact is that none of this matters without remembering to make a difference. I can craft the most wonderful lessons and creative projects but at the end of the day I must always remember my purpose. I am a teacher and I am here to change lives. Every moment of extra time I take to learn about a student and talk on the phone about things that don’t always have to be about art class, every time I stop to appreciate a student’s work, or commend a student on working through a personal challenge, these are the moments that matter. My goal now as I move into the end of the first quarter of our school year is to marry my new knowledge of practical skills with my enduring passion for teaching to make my students successful not only in my class but in life.

Professional Development and Integrating the Arts

Over the last month my colleagues and I have been preparing for our upcoming professional development meeting in October. We are a little bit of a unique school because we have so many teachers that we cannot fit in many venues all together for a PD day. Therefore, our October PD meetings will be taking place in a convention style where teachers sign up for workshops they would like to attend from a large pool of choices. The presentations and workshops come from a variety of categories such as instruction, technology, and engagement. Our art department will be offering a workshop on integrating the arts into different subjects, which is specifically geared to our online curriculum. With teachers being asked to differentiate lessons for different learning needs and styles, and the changes coming in the Common Core standards, it seems that integration is more important than ever. For our presentation we are focusing on providing online resources, specific lesson plans that can be integrated into existing content, and SMART notebook activities that can be used in live instruction to make lessons more visual and interactive. I have focused on Language Arts for my portion of the presentation and I have worked with the Language Arts department to craft several examples of integration specific to their curriculum. I look forward to presenting this information to colleagues at PD and learning from others.

A Day in the Life

Lately I have been busy, busy, busy! My team and I have been working on a presentation for our upcoming professional development event about integrating the arts into other subjects and I attended a field trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art last week as well. I will be writing more about that soon, but in the mean time I found this interesting video showing what a typical day is like for students at an e-school.

Congratulations

It is my birthday today and I couldn’t ask for a better present from my job than a conversation with an excited graduate. Scores for the OGT’s (Ohio Graduation Test) were posted today and I knew of a student from my first semester class who was just waiting to pass science to find out if she could graduate this year as an 11^th grader. I went to check her scores this morning and found out she passed. We talked this morning all about her future plans and all the excitement she is feeling. She plans to go into nursing. I have been speaking to many of my seniors this week, making sure they are on track to pass and graduate and it is a wonderful experience to see their hard work finally paying off for them. Some of these students are the first in their family to graduate high school and many of them didn’t see this as a possibility for themselves but they are accomplishing this because of the opportunities online school has offered them and their strength to stick it out. I am very proud!

Preparing for the End of the Year

I cannot believe I am only 3 ½ weeks away from the end of my first year as an in-service teacher. I have learned so much and couldn’t ask for a more positive experience. I am starting to get prepared for the end of the year in my classroom and there is much to do. A little bit ago myself and the other art teachers sorted through all of the best student artwork we’ve collected over several years (just one for me) for the graduation art show. The work will be viewed before the ceremony where over 1,000 of our students will graduate. I am so excited to attend this event. This week I have begun to work with seniors individually to ensure they pass my class so they can graduate. In my experience at brick and mortar schools, seniors often do not participate in final projects as they get out several weeks early but in my classroom I opened up all the content for the rest of the year. I can control what students see and usually I only keep current content open for them so they don’t rush through it but at the end of the year it is nice to give students the flexibility to finish early if they choose. So far I’ve gotten a lot of assignments submitted which I hope makes end of the year grading a bit less insane (yeah, right!).

A bit unrelated, with the completion of my thesis (and defense coming soon) I have had some extra time to start working on my own art again. I am really enjoying rediscovering making art for pleasure and I hope I can bring these experiences into my new classroom in the fall. 

Mixed Media on Canvas (in progress)

Spring Things

It’s been a little bit longer than I wanted since I updated but it has been a busy time for my school and myself lately. A couple weeks ago we took a field trip to the Columbus Museum of Art and had a nice turn out of students and parents. We had a docent-led tour that was very fun and informative. As always it is so nice to meet my students. I also had an opportunity to meet with them at our recent Family Night, an event held in many cities in the state for parents and students to attend and meet their teachers while doing fun activities like trying out for the talent show! It is neat to see how an online school holds a talent show. Students audition in front of a camera at Family Nights and their classmates vote on the best videos online to decide the winner. This is similar to how the Senior T-shirt Design contest is judged as well. Our art department picked 4 finalists and students will soon vote for a winner whose design will be printed on the Class 2012 t-shirt. At Family Night I had the pleasure of gluing down our Art Club collage for the year. Students each sent in several doodle squares and I combined them into a collaborative collage. I also worked with students at Family Night to create doodles that will be used to make another collaborative collage that will be constructed by students, friends, and family members at events in the future. I love finding new ways to get students excited about Art!