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MOMA in just a couple of minutes...

A photo of every painting on display from the painting galleries in the MoMA on April 10, 2010. Pretty cool!

What is painting? Do you sense how all the parts of a good picture are involved with each other…Not just placed side by side? Art is a creation for the eye and can only be hinted at with words. -John Baldessari

Digital Storytelling

Storytelling is an ancient art. When I think of stories, I think of tales - talking, gesturing, and expression between people. The first stories were memorized and then passed on…probably changed a bit here and there depending on the teller. All stories contain some sort of plot, character, and narrative point of view. We use stories to convey events using words, images and sounds, and the best storytellers are those who use improvisation and embellishment. These are the characteristics that add excitement, and that “on the edge of your seat” quality. Storytelling is universal. Cultures all around the world use stories to entertain, preserve, and teach values.

The vehicle for expression of a story evolves as time progresses, but the basic elements remain. Digital stories, for example, are used in relation to and with the help of a computer. In some ways, their digital nature makes them more easily and more widely shared with others. Televised and computerized media have really taken over…....

Digital storytelling is certainly a modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Is it better? I don’t know. I think it just provides a different way. Images, music, voice-over, and sound effects are used to express thoughts and share information instead of relying solely on memory and improvisation. From sharing personal narratives to recounting historical events, digital stories do provide the means to tell a story in a new and exciting way.

I used imovie to share a condensed version of my life to show my students at the beginning of a new year. I think it is important for students to learn information about their teachers. I remember how curious I was about the lives of my teachers when I was in school. I tried to share at least a couple moments from several important points in my life. I believe that opening up my life with students will help them to get to know me better, and also hopefully make them more comfortable to share information about themselves with me. Accessibility, openness, and honesty are important traits to me, and ones that I will aim to keep at the forefront of my teaching.

As for imovie, specifically, I actually think it is a good program. I had some trouble in the beginning with effects, transitions, titles, and timing. Yes, a lot of issues in the beginning! But after deciding to start again and reinsert all of my clips, I had very little trouble. I think there is a learning curve for imovie, but after some frustration I began to figure out some tricks and short-cuts. As with any new thing, the more you practice, the more you figure out little things here and there . That said, my imovie is not showy, but I think it does of good job of showing snapshots of my life. Overall, working with imovie was a positive experience and one more application that I now better understand and will possibly use again in a different setting.

As a final thought, I think that imovie could be a wonderful tool for preserving family histories. I got all of the photos that I used for my imovie from the scrapbooks that my mom has diligently put together. She complied these books for both my brother and me from birth to college (6 albums each). As a family, we have very little information about past generations. I think the albums my mom has constructed will be gems for my own children and grandchildren. But, what if older generations worked with younger generations to preserve their memories and stories for future generations. I remember some stories from my grandmother, but not nearly enough to be able to give justice to her life and pass on her stories. How interesting it would be to use imovie to preserve the stories of the past. Further, as students are gaining knowledge of stories from older generations, they could also use their technological knowledge to teach older generations about digital storytelling - a winning situation for all.

Inspiration Creation

I had a lot of fun making this diagram in Inspiration 8. I had never used this software before, and found it very user-friendly. This particular diagram shows the elements of art (line, shape, form, space, color, value, texture). I can see using this program when brainstorming a topic with students. This would allow an organized product to emerge from an seemingly disorganized classroom brainstorming session. Really, Inspiration would be good for anything that involves planning and organization. Specifically, I can see this being a good teacher tool when planning lessons.


I'm including a helpful link on 50 Uses for Inspiration and Kidspiration Software in the classroom.

The Elements of Art

A cool video explaining the elements of art and showing how they relate and build upon each other...

PBS Teachers. Learning Now.

Learning.now is a weblog that explores how new technology and Internet culture affect how educators teach and children learn. It will offer a continuing look at how new technology such as wikis, blogs, vlogs, RSS, podcasts, social networking sites, and the always-on culture of the Internet are impacting teacher and students' lives both inside and out of the classroom. Learning.now also wants to hear from you, and welcomes your participation on the site and your feedback.

Reflection on Collecting Images

A cake is a form of food, usually a sweet, baked dessert. Simple as that. This Picasa image collection holds a handful of cake images - from childhood memories, to favorites around town.

I have been meaning to move my photos from iphoto on my computer to Picasa for awhile now. After compiling these few images for this assignment, I’m convinced Picasa is a great place to store and share photos with others. Also, organizing photos by album and editing captions are both very user-friendly in this program. I need to move my photos soon!

I appreciated the assigned theme for this project. It allowed me to focus on a single topic that I enjoy instead of being overwhelmed. A theme still allowed for freedom of choice, but also provided enough guidance to know which direction to head. I chose CAKE as my theme because it is a fun topic. Who doesn’t love cake? Also, I will use my collection in the future with my students. In the art classroom, I think drawing or painting a favorite food is an interesting project for students. I also would plan to present the work of Wayne Thiebaud – especially his beautiful images of desserts.

First Week's Reflection

It has been said that democracy is the art of thinking independently together. I think this is a good way to look at our instructional technology class. We come from different places. We bring different skills and attributes to the table. We’ve had different experiences, and have different comfort levels with technology. We think differently. But at the same time, we are all here together for the same purpose – to become successful teachers able to utilize technology in an effective way with our students. There are many different paths to take when using the Internet and all that is has to offer. There are many different ways to get to the same place. I find that I sometimes take longer, more circuitous routes than others, but I generally get there all the same. Being in a class setting is a great way to learn tricks from others and then use these to one’s own advantage, in one’s own independent way. While the first week of class has mostly consisted of setting up new accounts and increasing our personal web presence, it has also underscored the fact that technology can't be properly utilized in a bubble. It’s meant to be shared. We are meant to think independently but together.

The IRIS: Views from the Getty

The IRIS is a blog created by the Getty. This is a great resource for getting a current behind-the-scenes look at the resources available at this museum. In addition, it is a great example of a website that is user-friendly and reliable.

How do you define art?

Artists, critics, curators, composers, and thinkers share their own definitions of art. How do you define art?


THOMAS McEVILLEY (art history professor): “What’s hard for people to accept is that issues of art are just as difficult as issues
of molecular biology; you cannot expect to open up a page on molecular biology and understand it. This is the hard news about
art that irritates the public.”

RICHARD PRINCE (artist): “I’ve always said art is a revolution that makes people feel good. I don’t think art has a consensus. I
don’t think 10 people in a room talking about art could agree about whether something is good or bad art.”

WILLIAM RUBIN (curator): “There’s a consensus as to what is art in most periods […] formed by those deeply concerned with
the substance of art. This is not elitist, because anyone may participate. Basically, the larger public makes a subjective
determination: I know art when I see it.”

PABLO PICASSO (artist): “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

ARTHUR DANTO (art critic): “You have to project a hypothesis: Suppose it is a work of art? Then certain questions come into
play — what’s it about, what does it mean, why was it made, when was it made and with respect to what social and artistic
conversations does it make a contribution? If you get good answers to those questions, it’s art. Otherwise it turned out just to
be a hole in the ground.”

BARBARA KRUGER (artist): “I think that art is the ability to show and tell what it means to be alive. […] I do know just the idea
that because something’s in a gallery, instantly it’s art, whereas something somewhere else is not art, is silly and narrow. I'm
not interested in narrowing definitions.”

GIORGIO MORANDI (artist): “A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him,
but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.”

LOUISE BOURGEOIS (artist): “Something is a work of art when it has filled its role as therapy for the artist. I don't care about
the audience. I'm not working for the audience. The audience is welcome to take what they can.”

ROBERT STORR (curator): “What’s interesting is when art changes people’s minds. […] Good art makes you give something up.
For years what the general public had to give up was Impressionism and the idea that painting should make you feel some
human warmth. […] Inside the art world a lot of these issues aren’t dealt with because people don't want to be embarrassed.
Lay people who react strongly may be better indicators, and the fact that they say it’s not art probably means it has touched a
nerve.”

ROBERTA SMITH (art critic): “Art is always trying to […] speak to people directly about pleasure and beauty, about personal
capacity and freedom, about how individuals acting on their own can find themselves, express those findings and make a
difference.”

BANKSY (artist): “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only
interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.”

THOMAS MERTON (monk): “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

ALBERT CAMUS (writer): “A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”

LEO TOLSTOY (writer): “If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.”

CLIVE BELL (critic): “What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? […] Lines and colours
combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations and
combinations of lines and colours, these aesthetically moving forms, I call ‘Significant Form’; and ‘Significant Form’ is the one
quality common to all works of visual art.”

ARISTOTLE (thinker): “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

OSVALDO GOLIJOV (composer): “Transcendence is the most important thing. […] That’s what art is about. It’s at least the hope
of hope. For ‘no hope,’ we have reality.”

What is Art? Considering and Creating Artistic Works

Interesting info from the New York Times.

Dewey

John Dewey wrote about being cognizant of the past in order to fully utilize and take advantage of learning in the present. Here's an interesting site on the history of Art Education.