PostSecret

When looking at blogs, there is a blog I sometimes refer to for some of my more mature photo students. It is well known by a couple of my art colleagues and I use it. PostSecret is blog created by Frank Warren, started this 5 years ago in which he asks people to share a secret to the world. Everybody has a secret, ranging from small things like singing in the shower when no one is around to dark ones that can wreak havoc on a person's life. This whole idea of posting a secret that no one knows i think is an interesting way of using a blog setting and could be an interesting approach to use this blog as a conversation starter. What I love about it is how the people who post use photography, image and text together to show their secret. All the images are a gallery of postcard-sized images posted anonymously to unveil a secret.

Check it out:
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

School of One

As I was flipping through Time Magazine this week, I came across the 50 greatest inventions of the year. One of them was school related and the name of it was School of One. School of One is a pilot program some schools are trying. It is a groundbreaking way of school instruction in which each day, students in the school are given a unique lesson plan, a "daily playlist" taylored to their learning style and rate of progress that includes a mix of virtual tutoring, in-class instruction, and educational video grames. Its learning for the xbox generation.

I'm thinking this might be interesting to add to the group project based on the main question of the paper which is what is the future of learning. What do we think about this kind of setup in schools? What about the social aspects of learning? Those are some things I think we need to look at when seeing if this program would be effective.

Here is an article about it in the NY times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/education/22school.html?_r=1

Violating Copyright and High School Students

Because of the accessibility of Limewire and other free downloading music sites, student think they are untouchable in regards to dealing with Copyright. I presented them with these copyright issues from the readings this week. It definitely helped them to not use copyrighted music in their still frame animations, a project we are currently doing. Many of the students were bummed they couldn't use the entire song and could only use 30 seconds of a popular song. When directing them to open source sites like jamendo.com,the students had mixed feelings. Some kids embraced the idea of using different music, while others did not. I run into copyright issues every project in which a student brings in their work. I always wonder if the student actually took this photo or if they took it from a flickr site and played it off as their own. Even after going over these copyright issues with students, the tend to want to forget that those laws are intact. We, as teachers, need to spend more time instilling copyright issues in schools so that students are aware of what they can and cannot use. Otherwise, then we are allowing our students to think its okay to beg, borrow, and steal information, photos, and music without any consequences.

How I Ran: Personal Story

Here is my digital story :) It was nice to reflect back and tell a story of my running experiences and see what kind of path my life has taken. Almost all of the images were taken by me, family member, or friend. The toughest part I found was making music that was directly related and didn't want a song with words that would sing while I would be talking as to confuse the viewer. I used part of the song at the beginning and the end of the story. I used www.jamendo.com a creative commons music site to find my music and used one creative commons photo from Flickr. Enjoy!

Schools are killing Creativity!

After watching the TED video on how schools are killing creativity, I couldn't agree more with what was being said by Ken Robison. Maybe because being an art teacher I've seen how the arts have always been an afterthought in American school system over so many other subjects. I was so inspired by his story about the girl not being able to sit still who then was told to either be put on meds or be put into a dance school. She picked going to a dance school and then ended up being one of the top dancers in the country. It just goes to show that not all students will become professors proficient in the subjects of math, science, or engineering and we really need to be nurturing art as much of the other subjects. Ken made so many great points that I had to send this video to the powers above so I really do hope that they watch it. I worry about my job becoming non-existent as schools will become less and less giving children the ability to be creative. By the time students get to high school level, they loose that freedom to be expressive as they had as a child in elementary school. All I can hope for is like what we continue to talk about being an advocate for change but also be an advocate for the creative, imaginative, expressive kid in all of us.

Future of Learning

What is the future of learning? I don't know what the future holds for our teaching profession. I see the future of learning going through many different phases and changes. Even in the last four years of teaching, I've seen a substantial shift in learning even within my own school, specifically on how learning is assessed and analyzed. With the additions of online curriculum programs to mastery manager in which to input all tests and assess a teacher's coverage of certain topics and subjects. What does the future of learning hold for our profession and students? Our teacher description will include facilitator and collaborator due to the amount of technology that is out there. When I look to the future, I see students using their own mode of technology to connect with learning done in the classroom. I see computer labs being non-existent and computers in the palm of the students' hand receiving and sending information back and forth via blogs and wikis. Interactive whiteboards become as common as chalkboards. Every school is on a different path in what they want to achieve with their students and its our job as teachers to make sure we start students on the right path in learning.