tech 1:1 week 6

Well, this won't be a very long blog positing because I have used very few online resources. I have checked with some sites that Jennie sent and have put ones I liked with my "Favorites".
Or I get to them by typing key words into Google search and then sifting through site after site. I learned in the meeting on Monday that people had ways of assuring that their site comes up first on the list. I have also learned, through experience, to look always at the provider of the site and not just at the opening blurb that is provided.
I often am looking for biographical material on artists or the principles and elements of design or Google images.
Now I am using Google shortcuts particularly "Directory" and beginning to sort things out with Delicious social bookmarking....developing a system of tagging is most important to me. I imagine that I will stay primarily academic in this system. As I get more efficient at using this bookmarking, I will be more comfortable venturing out to see what other art teachers do.

Henry Moore reclining figure

Here is a Henry Moore figure with more elements of realism. Note

• realistic pose
• folds of fabric in dress
• facial features
• hands
  

Henry Moore2 figure drawing

Here is a Google image of a drawing by Moore.
Note

• shading
  
• organic forms
• presentation of arms and legs of figure
• shadows
  

Henry Moore sculpture Mother and child

Notice the abstract organic forms in this sculpture yet it is clear to the viewer that the subject of the sculpture is a mother and child.

tech 1:1 week 5

My Computer as a Communicator in the Past
Our kids played PacMan on my Apple IIC as teenagers and typed their high school senior theses. The first year our son was in the university in the US, I had no email. Communication was by letter and phone calls every two weeks. Email took over then and has carried our family, friends, and legal business ever since. Last summer digital photography was added to my repertoire. My desktops have been my tools of professional communication through such courses as Advanced English Grammar with the University of Tennessee, Expository Writing with the University of Washington, and Writing Children's Literature with the Institute in Connecticut.
Up until now my computer has been my telephone, my mail service and my typewriter.

My Computer as a Tool for the Future
Ahhh, now..... Now, in 1:1 I am learning all its other capabilities. In 2010-2011 I will have a "teaching assistant" in my classroom. For me in art classes, the computer's ability to bring examples of artists' lives and their work and students' work on screen for the whole class to discuss or write commentaries will be wonderful . A blog seems at this point the most user- friendly means to accomplish this.
By 2013 I see hard copies of books becoming obsolete. I see the necessity of courses on internet research techniques taught vertically throughout schools. However, in art I hope that I don't see a lessening of hands-on activities. In fact, hands-on will become even more important since the fine motor skills of writing will be taken over by keyboarding and page layout will become automatic.
I know that access to information will be multiplied again and again. I fear the students' ability to synthesize and evaluate this flood of information. Their backgrounds of reading and life experiences will be narrowing in many ways as the virtual supplants the real in their lives. Let us remember to teach respect for what has gone before us, being cautious about hurriedly pushing away the past 555 years since Gutenberg's moveable type, in our attempts to grasp at the future.

practice blog uploading pictures

upload of a public photo already on this computer

learning to post pictures of mine

photo from my Cannon downloaded on my home computer and then emailed to ISB and uploaded onto this blog.