On March 1 the Art Club and National Art Honor Society offered a journaling workshop to the staff. In art, all classes keep visual journals. It is a place to ponder, experiment, plan, express, reflect, document..the list is as varied and unique as the artists keeping them. Students often share that journaling is something that they either continue doing after leaving MRHS or the thing that they miss. In an effort to gain support for Visual Art in our school and offer an opportunity for staff to play and de-stress, NAHS and Art Club provided them with the space, materials and support to explore the possibilities. Five staff members from a variety of content areas joined us. Science, vocal music, theater, technology education and world language were represented.
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Finding a current article on eportfoilios that was relevant to my content and level was challenging. There were many on college applications and theoretical articles but high school visual art or arts integration was not available. It was also challenging to find current articles. I selected one by an educator in New Zealand, Lyn Lewis. She is a college professor working with preservice teachers. Lewis 's article chronicles her research in developing and reflecting on eportfolio assignments and the student investment and benefit from progressively more student centered problems.
Eportfolios can be used as both formative and summative assessment tools. I envision students using an eportfolo much like a physical portfolio in some ways, as a tool to gather and organize their work. In addition, the eportfolio offers the ability to share in progress works with classmates and perhaps students in a larger community. Formative assessment can take place in the form of peer comments on work as well as sharing of proposed concepts and the gathering of mentor artist examples and content ideas gleaned from research. Student engage in the artistic practice of documenting and reflecting on their own work while searching for inspiration from mentor artists and the world around them. They are required to maintain, organize and edit the portfolio to show their process and growth. As a summative assessment tool, the eportfolio will show the students final collection of work at any given time. It will be purposefully organized to give the viewer a clear idea of the path taken and the resulting finished work. It will combine the finished work and artists statement about the individual works, the inspiration for the work and the body of work as a whole. This product, while changeable, should have parts that are “complete” at any given time. A good example of how I envision this working can be found here
In looking for eportfolio examples to collect, I tried to find a wide variety of styles and purposes. I selected a community college student portfolio site, a college professor's site and a high school student's site. My goal was to collect sites that were diverse in both purpose and style. i feel that these three sites fit that criteria. The community college site contained many eportfolios and expressed that all students created and maintained eportfolios through out their time there. The portfolios were very uniform with little personal variety. The college professor's portfolio was a vehicle for communicating her research and sharing links with a small amount of personal information. The high school student's portfolio was unique in her use of prezi which made it visually interesting and more personal. These three different approaches offer a broad picture of what an eportfolio can look like.
Adding to this range of possibilities through my classmates selections I have been able to expand this picture. The first portfolio that I would add is in Stephanie's collection. This one is relevant to me because it is an art teacher's portfolio. From her site, one can see her passion for her students and teaching. She adds a little bit of personal information. In addition she shares her practice openly with colleagues and parents. She also celebrates her students' work through the ArtSonia site, which makes it accessible to parents and the community.
http://mrsjacksonartbd.weebly.com/
The second site that I selected is from Sam's collection. This site is clearly a celebration site - celebrating art making and teaching. The style of the site is clean and easily navigated. It is also personal and playful, including a page dedicated to what she wore. The language is playful and casual. I am curious who she sees as her audience. It appears that perhaps she is targeting other teachers, as she includes lessons and demos of techniques.
https://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/search/label/diy
The last site that I selected was also from Stephanie's collection. This site is an example of a more professional teaching portfolio. It is clean, easily navigated and focused on sharing the author's teaching achievements and art work. I like how her portfolio is organized. I also appreciate that for some of her student work she included a description of the problem, I would like to see this throughout the work.
https://naea.digication.com/jhardy/Welcome/published
GoAnimate is a web based animation tool that can be used to create animated videos by students and teachers. Teachers can use it to share information with students and students can use it to synthesize research, reflect on learning or share information. A subscription to the site is not inexpensive, $124 for a school subscription that only allows 49 students access, however they do offer a free 15 day trial that has fair functionality. Some issues that I found while working with this include limitations on usage per day or per session - I never figured out which, and the inability to export videos when finished. The site offers tutorials and help menus to assist in the learning curve.
I developed a short animation to share with my Art II class. They have just completed a series of figure drawings and I wanted them to asses their progress prior to moving forward with the final composition. They have experimented with a variety of drawing media as well as gesture drawing. These 90 minute exercises allow them to gain skills and confidence in drawing the human form. I had assumed that students would be able to complete this activity using their own device, as I had tested it successfully on my phone. In reality only one or two of them could, so we ended up crammed into the art computer lab using 10 computers for 25 students. As teachers, we are used to rolling with these types of issues, so I grouped them and instructed them to turn their animation into an interview or conversation about their work, using a different character for each group member. This was an excellent example of a happy accident - this format was much more effective because the students had to discuss the work and cooperate to design their animation rather than work individually with no feedback. There was lively conversation about both their work and the layout of their animation. One student did discover how to upload their own images, so I asked that they try to add at least one image to the animation. The groupings also offered students who were less technically adept to have a built in support system in their partners. I gave them 1 class period to work together, then gave them a few days outside of class to to work. The group shared a user name and password to facilitate access outside of class. Some groups discussed times that they could come to the lab or meet at the Miller Library to work and work together. Using new technology is always an adventure into the unknown - will the internet go down it the middle of the lesson, will the presentation work properly, will the experience be relevant or too glitchy to be effective - all of these concerns went through my mind when planning to use this tool for the first time. Yes, I had tested the function on my phone and had already made changes based on that experience but I was uncertain how it would work with a whole class. To reduce the possibility of a disaster, I elected to use my Art III class as the test subjects for this project. They are a small group of smart, tech savvy artists who I have taught for three years. They are always up for something new and comfortable enough to give an honest assessment of the experience.
For this group, this information was partly review, partly reflection. The proportion and movement portions were both review, looking at old information in a new way. Over all the function was ok. There was a group learning curve. We discovered that it is much better to take pictures with your phone, crop the picture in the phone, then upload it to the slide rather than taking the picture in the program where it only allows 1 image and it resizes the image to fit the slide without maintaining the aspect ratio - problematic if you are working with proportion! We also discovered that in some phones, the images are oriented correctly on the student side but are rotated when viewed on the teacher side. The activities took much longer than I expected, partly as a result of figuring out the best approach to the tech and partly because they were typing written responses on their phone. The activities themselves worked well, particularly the pair activities. Students were active and engaged and were able to recall the information that was being reviewed from last year. The individual written responses were more cumbersome. In the future, I would rework the questions to generate shorter more focused answers. Perhaps having them make lists or breaking the questions into smaller parts. Students agreed that working on their phones was ok but it would have been better on an iPad with a larger screen and possibly a keyboard. The drawing feature would be easier to control with a stylus. I could see using this as a review tool or use the self paced feature for individual student reflection. When using student devices such as phones, which is the most easily accessible device, there are limitations based on screen size. For immediate release
LaVerne Miers-Bond is a visual arts teacher at Marriotts Ridge High School in Howard county, MD. In the spring of 2016, I began a journey that would dramatically change the focus of my teaching and interactions with my colleagues. Arts Integration is something that I believe that I have intuitively done all my life. As an artist I naturally see the world through the lens of art, it is how I learn and understand everything. Finding arts integration is like finding my native language. In order to share this with journey with others, I have developed an eportfolio. I view this site as a work in progress that will be a resource for others interested in exploring arts integration and a living document meant to grow as I do. I also see this functioning as a professional portfolio including my personal artwork and examples of student work. The eportfolio format is a flexible structure that can act as a tool to communicate a variety of things to a specific audience. My students currently use this tool to track and organize their own work. Students document the evolution of pieces, collect mentor artists, evaluate specific groups of pieces in relationship to each other, compose artists statements, comment on each other’s pieces, offer mentor artist suggestions, and share urls with college representatives. Parents are able to see their student’s work, the artistic processes they are engaging in, what the student is writing about the work and how their peers are responding to it. Students establish a habit of documentation and self reflection that they can carry forward in their life past high school. As a professional development tool, the eportfolio acts as a one stop shop for gathering and sharing aspects of the user’s professional life. Mine allows me to share ideas, pedagogy, student examples and ideas with peers. It gives a broad picture of who I am as an artist and teacher and reinforces the connection between my creative and professional life. I can use it to communicate with students, parents and administration what is happening in my department and in my classes. Creating a window into the processes and products of art teaching, learning and making and the value of integrating the arts in in core content areas is, in my opinion, the most important function of this site. |
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March 2018
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