FREE eLearning Resources

With so many of us shifting to eLearning, I thought I would share some resources I created. First, I am doing Arts Madness again this year. I crowdsourced it to create a field of 64 diverse artists. Each round participants fill out a Google form with the simple question of "Which is better?" in a series of head to head matchups until we get down to just one winner. You can check out the brackets and vote at my google site here.
The second resource I am happy to share with everyone is my Google Slide doc that gives different challenges kids can try at home. The beauty of the slides format is kids simply make a copy of the original, rename it and share it with me. They get a document with different options for them to explore, links to supportive resources like demonstration videos and a digital badge board to track their progress. As kids complete projects, they upload a picture of their work onto the appropriate slide, so I have a digital portfolio making it easier for me to see everything they have done and see trends in their work. I made this template for anyone to take, modify and use with their own students. Enjoy!

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Using Google Slides to Gamify Art

This is a video I made demonstrating how I use the Google Slides app to gasify my classroom. This is a sort of modified TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behaviors) setup. Most of the video demonstrates some of the things I have learned through trial and error as far as what makes for a good design, how to handle digital badges etc. One of the primary benefits of using this system, is students choose their challenges, and they are rewarded with digital badges as a recognition of their accomplishments. The whole system focuses on advancement and celebration of achievement fostering a more positive atmosphere in the classroom. Also, when students choose what they are doing, they are more engaged, and they are excited to share their work with peers. I prefer not to have stations for different media, but rather stations where students gather materials. Having all different media out on each table as students work makes for a bit more mess, but a lot more collaboration and students sparking each...

Who ARTed - New Podcast Coming!

Since the new(ish) National Core Arts Standards were adopted, I have been giving a lot of thought to how I can get kids engaged in connecting and responding to art. While I love art history, it can be difficult to carry on a sustained conversation with the class. A number of students find history interesting, but a much more significant number of my students will join in a class discussion by asking "can we make art now?" Since I switched to format of my class to what I refer to as a "Gamified TAB" classroom, students have been happy and engaged in creating all sorts of different projects. Students pick their projects and earn their marker badge, clay badge, printmaking badge etc. The problem is in my initial rollout, almost everything was centered on the creation aspect of art. Now I am creating new badges for investigation, presentation etc. I created a comfy corner in my classroom where students can read and relax because exploring art history is a perfectly...

Amazing Stop Motion

I have taught kids stop motion animation for a good ten years now. It is a wonderful way for students to understand how video and animation work by breaking it all down to set one frame at a time. For those who dont know, a typical video camera will record and playback 30 frames per second. The idea is that is too many pictures for the eye and brain to process every second so it stops looking like a series of pictures and starts looking like one picture that is constantly moving. The point where the eye is overwhelmed and it stops looking like a series of pictures is at about 10 frames per second. I always tell my students to use 10 frames per second for planning because the math is easy (if they want a 1 minute animation, they need 600 frames) and that is a speed that will look good. Kids inevitably end up lowering the frame rate to make their animations longer but by setting 10 as my benchmark, I tend not to have anyone give me anything less than 5 or 6 frames per second, which ...

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