Ceramic Phone or Tablet Stands

I always love finding ways to play with traditional materials in new ways. To be honest, clay was never my forte. My first years teaching every clay project was basically a pinch pot, or a pinch vase, pinch bowl etc. A few years ago, I started to look more critically at my weakest areas and take steps to improve.

Placing your cell phone in a bowl or cup will act as DIY speaker/amplifier. Rather than putting my phone in a bowl, I now put my phone or tablet into a ceramic speaker I made. I simply put a pinch pot on its side then cut a slot in the back and decorate.

My recommendation is to build monsters, but I give students options on how they want to decorate the form. My preference for monsters is because, with fictive creatures, there is no right or wrong allowing students to focus more on principles of design at play - using rounded or pointed features to create a mood etc.

Kids have a lot of fun making these and I think it is always nice to have art that is functional (particularly in a classroom with one to one iPads). Part of the challenge of this project is making sure that the stand is functional. A device must be able to balance and to help with that, I recommend making a tale or something else in the back that can serve as a sort of kickstand. Additionally, it is important to remember that clay shrinks by about 10% as it dries out so the hole for the device should be bigger than one might expect.

Comments

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...

Big Change for 2019

For quite a while, I have read about TAB and choice based art ed. There is a lot that appeals to me with the theory but I have never seen a structure that I felt would work for me in my classroom. In the weeks leading up to winter break, I started thinking more and more about gamifying the classroom. I decided to take the plunge and so now my 1st-5th grade students will have a range of choices but with clear structures and support to make it manageable. I decided to utilize Google slides as a means of managing the game. It is free and a slide deck can provide secure, personalized communication between me and the students. I started by setting up a template. My slide deck has the rules of the game, a slide to track badges they earn and then numerous slides of challenges students can complete in order to earn a badge. The beauty is that since slides can have links, my challenge slides can have the learning targets then a picture of a sample project that would hit the targets. I make the...

Arts Madness Round 2

I am about half way through the second round of voting in my Arts Madness tournament. It has been a tremendous success so far. I am seeing students come in asking about who is still in it and who has been eliminated, I hear students talking about who they think will win and discussing why they pick one work over another. I was really surprised by some of the giants of art history who were eliminated in the first round. Picasso, Warhol, Rembrandt and Pollock were all knocked out. Students were delighted when I shared that Pollock was actually eliminated by his wife, Lee Krasner. I didn't think of this when I first started the tournament, but it has provided a hook to get students more interested when I can share tidbits and connections among artists. My entry routine for a few years has been for students to come in and there would be a 5 minute student-led discussion about a work of art on the board. From now until the end of the school year, students come in and scan a QR co...

Wood Art Ed

Search This Blog