B14 FINAL BLOG POSTING!

1. I think blogging is an awesome tool. It's a great way for a classrooms to communicate and share ideas. It's also nice because you can work off of other people's initial ideas to create something that is unique and you can call your own. It's an interesting way to see what people are thinking, what websites they are finding, and to discover how many ideas can come from one subject or lesson.

2. I thought blogging was a great reflection and communication tool. When we did our last blog and had to review our classmate's blogs it was really interesting. Since we have been using it so much I have noticed that people that I know (friends and family) actually have created their own blogs to get their work out there. Creating a blog is almost like having your own web page. You can post images and say whatever you what, and personalize your page to make it suitable for you. I think this is an awesome communication tool and I'm thinking about creating my own blog so that I can post art work, daily comments, links to things I think are interesting, etc. It's almost like an online diary. I think it's awesome. I'm going to Australia next Spring and Blogger will really help me keep my friends updated!!

3. I would definitely use blogging in my classroom! It's such a great way to get students to look at their classmate's work and respond! Or I would post an image/article myself and assign students to give me feedback, very familiar to the way Mrs. Tabone used blogging.

B13

http://electronicportfolios.org/portfolios/howto/index.html

In the above link, I found a lot of guidelines and ideas for how to create a digital portfolio. This website highlights the importance of the goals and purpose of your portfolio. There are several ideas for images to use and subject matter. I will use this for project 6 by concentrating on my goals the entire time and using the guidelines.


http://www.mollygordon.com/resources/marketingresources/artstatemt/

I also decided to do some researching about artist's statements. I have yet to write one, and I was really a little unsure of how exactly to go about doing so. This website really helps because it has guidelines and examples.

B12

Comment on Elizabeth Halliday‘s Blog:
http://hallea53.blogspot.com/2010/03/self-portrait.html#comments

Comment on Colleen McCarriagher’s Blog:
http://mccacm49.blogspot.com/2010/02/journal-entry-photobucket.html


Comment on Kristen Bartkowski’s Blog:
http://bartkm33.blogspot.com/2010/03/logo-design.html#comments

A. For Elizabeth’s (she was on top of me in the shared google doc), I looked through all of her blogs, and the images on her self portrait blog really caught my eye because I’ve never seen anything like it before and I know I could use it in a classroom. I chose Kristen and Colleen’s blogs to look at because I wanted to see what they were up to, and read some of their thoughts and feelings about the things we’ve been doing.

B. Again, Elizabeth’s self portrait images really just caught my eye and I wanted to let her know she had chosen some great images. I guess you could say I was easily drawn to images on the blogs. I chose to comment on Colleen’s slide show because it was eye catching and it was interested to see how people approached this assignment. There were thousands of possibilities for images in this assignment so it was fun to look at hers and see what kinds of things she photographed. I was interested in seeing what kinds of websites other people were exploring so I chose to comment on Kristen’s logo resource blog. I’m surprised I didn’t come across the same website as her because I searched for a long time, but she chose a really cool website with great ideas that we could relate to after using the adobe applications.

C. I think blogging in a classroom is an awesome tool. It is great for getting feedback from student’s for specific assignments and subjects. It’s also great for what we are doing right now. Everyone learns more when you share ideas and when you can see what other people and thinking and exploring. I really like the idea of classroom blogging and I would definitely use it in my classroom for feedback and sharing ideas.

B11

ADOBE WEBSITE:
On the adobe website I found an abundance of information and applications I could use as an educator. I think the importance of this website is to get teachers to get their students to be more technologically advanced, which is a good idea. There are many options and ideas you could come up with by using the information from this site. I think it would be really fun, but at the same time challenging for the student, to create a marine world digitally. There wouldn't be strict guidelines, I would just have students use the same background color (water color) so that at the end all of the students work could be combined into one huge marine world. This could be interesting for a variety of ages (I would say probably most successful in 3-4th grade-kids would keep interest better). By using photoshop, students can practice their technological computer skills and use their imagination to create something their own. I'm not really sure how well this would work in an age group from 6-8. I think the photoshop application would be way too complicated. But one idea would be to have students create their own images on paper, with any media the teacher wants, and then the teacher could take it a step further and try to create these images in photoshop and create a large marine environment to show the class. In a classroom where the kids are a little older and more computer skills advanced, this could be a fun way to work with photoshop. Another great way to create a lesson plan would be to use photoshop to develop different pattern sequences and have your classroom identify the patterns. Again, if your classroom is advanced enough to create their own patterns in photoshop this would be great. Students could create their own and have other students try to name the pattern.
http://www.adobe.com/education/instruction/adsc/

APPLE WEBSITE:
I know that this is working off of the idea from what we did with our self portrait, but I LOVED the idea of taking pictures of yourself in the classroom with iPhoto and creating a self portrait with an application. Everyone thought this was fun, it would be a blast for all ages. The iPhoto application has so many options that everyone would have a unique self portrait in the end. I think a fun idea would be to make a several week long photo journal (3 weeks). In 3 weeks, say the teacher gets through 4-5 lessons. Students could create a photo journal by taking a picture every day of how they feel that day and why. Are they enjoying the project? How is there facial expression letting you know? Do they hate the project? Are they in a bad mood that day? Students can use facial expressions in their photo journal and write a few sentences to pair with the photo for the day. At the end of the three weeks (or however long you decide to make it), the students will have created a photo book that contains pictures of themselves on every day, explanations about how they feel every day to go along with the picture they took, and pictures of the lesson (artwork) they are working on... all using iPhoto with a mac.
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/photos/

EUTOPIA WEBSITE:
I read a lot about social and emotional learning on this website and it was really interesting. I think it is so important for children to learn at a young age how to work together as a team, and learn with respect and appreciation of their classmates. By using social and emotional learning you can help a child so much. Children can be stressed, without even knowing exactly what stress is, and it is important for every child to feel safe, important, and comfortable in the classroom. By putting together group projects every month, children learn how to interact socially and respect each others opinions. By doing projects like quilts, or sectioned murals, this brings a classroom together. When each student is assigned a part to add to the whole, every individual has an important purpose. Without that student's input, the whole would not be a whole. It would be missing an important piece. For example, if you wanted to give every student in your class of 26 students a piece of fabric, you could assign everyone a letter of the alphabet. They would then have to choose an animal that started with that letter, and create their work on the piece of cloth. In the end, there would be an alphabet of animals. Without a letter/animal, the quilt would not be complete. This makes everyone feel important and individual. You could do things like this with the 50 states, countries, shapes, all sorts of things! Group projects help a lot, and I think social and emotional learning is crucial to emphasizing the importance of every individual in the class.
http://www.edutopia.org/social-emotional-learning-introduction