A classroom wiki? Yes I can!

The word wiki, just like blog, tag, and tweet, has entered into the vernacular of just about every individual under the age of 30.  However, these words and their corresponding actions or locations have not necessarily been integrating into the classroom.  Many colleges have embraced the notion of professional learning communities through the use of wikis, but in many K-12 educational settings, you have not seem the same type of love given to what can be an amazing tool!

The site TeachersFirst.com has an excellent, interactive article "Wiki Walk-Through" that lays out clearly what a wiki is and how it is applicable in the educational realm.  I wanted to include a few excellent points that this article made about the benefits of wikis:



For some of us who have used wikis before, and to an extent blogs, we understand how these benefits can definitely be true.  However, so many educators have not yet merged these sites into the classroom.  I know that has been the case so far in my classroom, I am ashamed to admit.  I believe the reasons for not integrating fall under the following categories: lack of knowledge, lack of resources, and lack of time.  Personally, my reasons for not integrating wikis into my classrooms yet fall under all three of these categories.  However, two of the reasons have recently been remedied: lack of knowledge and lack of resources.

Lack of knowledge: This class has helped to answer a number of my questions about wikis, especially the how to create, share, and limit editors.  While I have always understood the principle of a wiki, I had not put it into personal practice prior to this class. This is something I will definitely be changing, and soon (of course after consulting with our school's technology master and getting administrative approval).

Lack of resources: The high school that I teach at does not have a 1 to 1 initiative in regards to students and technological devices (whether that is an iPad, laptop, or desktop).  However, through grants, we recently acquired 4 iPad carts and 2 laptop carts that can be checked out for a day or more to a teacher's classroom.  I am hoping that the laptop carts will be something that we can use in my classroom on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to work on a classroom wiki.  My initial thoughts are that the wiki will include an editable vocabulary list, art history information, and artist information that the students (and I) can add to and edit throughout the semester.  I will try to start small this fall and go from there!  You can't learn to swim until you get your feet wet.

Website Evaluation: It's more than just a cool site

For class today, we were asked to find a website pertaining to our subject areas from a suggested list of websites.  Of course, I did not pick one from the suggested list; one of them I already use in my classroom and have explored extensively.  I really wanted to go through another site in depth, and this website evaluation process really allowed for a full exploration of a great site!  I selected the Metropolitan Museum of Art, aka The MET, one of the more recognizable of museum acronyms.

Evaluating a website based on the rubric provided was a lot more challenging than I had anticipated.  Essentially, the website evaluation forces you to select websites that are clearly educational and functional in the classroom, not just something that has cool graphics.  This is a process that I have not formally done before, however, all websites that I use in my classroom I do review extensively for acceptable content, usability, interactive features, and more.  Now, my informal review process was put through the rigorous reliability and usability form.  By following the format of the form, it actually made me explore the website more in-depth in searching for the required information.  For example, I came across this great little sing-along activity for children ages 4-7 when figuring out how this site would best apply for K-12 students.  There were a few questions that I found challenging to answer, or find the answer for, such as an author for the site.  I think my prior knowledge of museum organizations overshadowed the answering of some of these questions.  I feel that if I had no prior knowledge of this site, the museum, and museum structure would have made this easier (maybe) because I wouldn't be fighting with my own knowledge base.

This activity was really helpful in learning how and what to evaluate when considering websites for student use in the classroom.  Do I think that I will use an extensive form for each website that I consider in the future? No.  However, I will definitely be taking into consideration a number of the questions, such as application for K-12 learning, accessibility, and accuracy, whenever I am looking at websites in the future.  This was a very helpful exercise.

An Informative Blog on Art Education: A Critique

I am sad to say that while I have read a couple of blogs, and never religiously, they are generally related to my extracurricular interests and not my classroom. I know, I know, there are so many amazing educational blogs out there, however I will cling to my excuses that my free time is greatly limited due to other obligations and the last thing
on my mind (or agenda) while at school is to leisurely peruse blogs on art education.  So therefore this assignment to find and critique a blog in my subject area is a welcome opportunity to learn about some great tools and resources for art educators.  The blog that I found to be the most informative and relevant is The Teaching Palette authored by Theresa McGhee and Hillary Andrlik, but contributed to by hundreds of art educators from around the country (and maybe around the world, but I'm not positive on that).

In starting to sort through the massive collection on the blog, I cannot help but be a little overwhelmed and a lot thrilled by all the information that is available to art educators.  Somethings that I found particularly relevant were the links to lesson plans for middle school and high school art
educators.  For high school, there were a number of excellent plans ranging in complexity from beginning Art I lessons on the Principles of Design and Elements of Art, to the advanced and complex lessons for Advanced Placement (AP) Studio Art.  This is particularly relevant to me since I will be completing AP Studio Art training this summer so that I can start this new class at my high school in 2015.  One AP lesson that I particularly enjoyed was submitted by Lauren Niedergang called "Art Endurance."  It asked students to create a work of art over the span of a month with full dedication to craftsmanship and concept.  She gave a great list of contemporary artists who religiously and methodically promote a similar practice, including two of my favorites, Julia Mehretu and Trenton Doyle Hancock.  I will be interested to see how my future AP students respond to this level of dedication in reference to their own work.

I also found a number of recent posts that also relate to my classroom and school, especially the post titled "16 Ways to add Steam to STEM."  My high school is the only one in the county that has a STEM academy. (Granted we only have two high schools.)  I have personally been very interested in the sciences for years, for artistic and just cool facts reasons, and my dad and grandfather were both engineers (that was my career choice before I feel in love with art), so finding ways to integrate them (science, technology, engineering, and math) into my classroom will be a great opportunity to merge what the general public often view as complete polar opposites and further integrate some great technology options.  I particularly enjoyed the Georgia O'Keeffe inspired car invention, and I hope you do to.  I am very excited to continue to visit this blog in my free time to try to glean a few new gems from this vast resource.

A big hello and class expectations

I am an artist, teacher, mother, wife, gardener, outdoors woman, and in general, a very busy lady!  I have been teaching art at Morristown-Hamblen High School East since 2012, and prior to that taught college regionally for six years, most recently as an Assistant Professor of Art at Lander University in Greenwood, SC.  I am finishing the last two classes I need to complete my transitional licensure at UT and will be thrilled to be "official" as of August.  My husband and I have a little daughter who turned one in April of 2014 and we will be welcoming little bit number two in November.  We live on a little over 50 acres in Jefferson County where we grow and harvest as much as we can to support ourselves.  My surroundings are very influential in my artwork as well.  You can learn more about my creations by viewing my website, so please support your local starving artist!

Integrating Technology into the Classroom (TPTE 486) is a class that I feel confident with.  I have used technology extensively in my own work, both personal and professional, for a number of years.   In the classroom, I strive to include technology with projects, whether it be using iPads and applications such Prezi and HikuDeck, or having students create sharable/editable presentations and handouts through our school's Gaggle site, which is essentially a Google that can be monitored.  Technology, both understanding and application, have in general come easily to me and I am very quick with picking up new tricks.  I am looking forward to learning new tricks this semester that I will be able to bring back into my classroom in the fall.