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no job? teach abroad!

Teaching English abroad

is a great way to experience the world while acclimating yourself to the global economy. connecting with and understanding cultures facilitates ATI member success while enabling individual progress through teaching and learning. careers teaching abroad educate and challenge individuals through interaction and observation of foreign cultures.

i plan to take an ESL course in the city over summer. this seems like a great way to get teaching experience and experience another part of the world.

my vice

VICE is a NYC based canadian magazine and media conglomerate that focuses on international arts and culture. another helpful source for finding visual material culture while planning lessons. the "travel" section gets very good stories from all over the world. the best  part about vice is that the coverage of news is international, not just centered in the u.s.

kickstarter

Kickstarter:

kickstarter gives artists a chance to share their ideas and hard work with the internet world. they share their plans and set a goal for funding. People can donate money to help artists get on their way to accomplishing goals. artist have to offer some kind of reward. rewards are things like a copy of what’s being made, a limited edition, or a custom experience related to the project.  if the artist do not succeed in reaching their goal in a certain amount of time, the money is returned to donators. credit cards are not charged unless the goal is met.

i think this is pretty amazing. i cannot count how many times i've had big ideas that i've immediately shut down because of financial impossibility. this is also great motivation for artist to continue doing and making and set deadlines. deadlines are something that school has provided for me over the last 5 years, and i'm curious how i'll motivate myself in the future. maybe kickstarter?! we'll see..

stay in touch

fecal face is a content-rich, comprehensive, multidisciplinary art and culture website. 

the best part about this website is the artist interviews and studio visits. i enojy being about to see in to the artists process. this site also includes blogs by prominent artists and personalities, an hourly updated news section and coverage of current art openings. this site also supports a forum board with over 2000 users, a comprehensive creative jobs database and an events calendar offering some of the more obscure attractions in san francisco, los angelos and New York. it has helped launch the careers of many a creative, and catalyzed a community of artists working in various mediums from around the globe. this is a really great resource for finding artist examples for lesson planning, and overall a great way to stay in touch with new contemporary practicing artists.

local opportunity

"Unison Arts Center is a non-profit arts (IN NEW PALTZ!)center offering performance and visual arts programming, personal growth workshops and recreational, arts and educational activities for children and families. Unison has become an important venue for artists, crafts people and educators, and presents more than 30 performances, 50 workshops and 8 gallery exhibitions each year." 

i always seem to discover these things so late.. school and work have dominated my time over the past 2 years of living out here (hudson valley area). I think that it is important as an artist (especially art educators) to investigate local arts. what is available in your community?  where can you show/see work? How can I get involved? i've started looking in to art events for the summer, because i will have more time to get involved when school is not is session.

Here are some helpful sources to find art happenings in my neck of the woods:

click to explore!

what's going on around you??

emphasize and advertise

the activity has been decided. to help 9th and 10th grade students better understand emphasis of design they will first view some examples of emphasis and go over simple techniques that create a focal point. they will look at example in both fine and commercial art and begin to look closer at WHAT is being emphasized. also, why?
an activity to get the students started will be to look at an ad from a magazine. they must determine what is being emphasized and how its being done. they must find at least one technique in creating emphasis that was mentioned in the introduction (contrast, isolation, convergence, the unusual, placement/location), but they mat also mention any other way they notice emphasis being used. shock value is one i've seen in both commercial and fine arts. when the activity is completed students will use the ad they have or find a new to re-create in a collage project. they will have to use some part of the original ad in their design. they must decide on a focal point that emphasized a product or idea. here are some examples of what i'd like the final product to look like:

making emphasis relevant

i've been asked to create a lesson plan that deals with emphasis as a principle of design. this is not the easiest thing to get 9th and 10th grade students excited about, but i think i've found a way to make it relevant. what is emphasized in our society? product, capital and ADVERTISEMENT! ads are everywhere. when you're out, they are around, on buses, buildings, in shopping malls, doctors offices, hair salons, grocery stores, etc. even when you head home you're surrounded by advertisement. the television is the number one source, but it's also on the things we use. our cleansing products and food packages are all carefully designed to make us want more. I believe that getting students to think critically about advertisement by breaking down its design will help them to understand what is being sold. is it really all that important to have? i want students to find emphasis in commercial art and compare it to fine art. both are selling something, or promoting something, but the difference is what they will have to determine.

main idea:

fine art uses the principle of design: emphasis, to draw attention to an idea

ex:

vs

commercial art uses the principle of design: emphasis, to sell a product

ex:

now what to do for an activity..

to be continued...

New Inspiration (to me)

I would like to start using this blog as a record of new and inspiring artist that i stumble upon. I too often lose thoughts and names that may one day be helpful in the classroom.

                  

Amy Singer is a  very powerful artist. She is an animal rights activist who creates very graphic and morbid looking work from taxidermic animals. She would be great to use for a lesson dealing with sculpture, appropriation, juxtaposition, etc. Her work is provocative and  ironic. she does not agree with the use of animals for any purpose other than to keep one company as a pet, though she uses taxidermy animals in almost all of her work. She contradicts herself, but regardless she is a talented and interesting artist.

global art projects

I love finding collaborative art projects that span outside of the classroom. I feel that this can help peak students interest, when they realize that people who are not being assigned to make art are still making art. This is now reminding me of JR's global "inside out" project. I want to use this in the classroom some day. I want my students to work in and out of the classroom. I want them to be active.

education without grades!

for my field work this semester i am in  a ceramics based art room. the school that i'm in seems like a wonderful district and i get along great with my cooperating teacher, but i know absolutely nothing about ceramics. i wonder why we choose a concentration for a major in art education. i feel like we're (prospective art educators) missing out on other possibly important information regarding process in art making with different mediums. Seeing some of the work that students have done in the ceramics class has inspired me to learn more about it. I think it is important to be a well rounded and adaptable. I do not want to take any more classes through SUNY (for money and stems related reasons), but i want to continue my education of art. I was happy to discover an affordable public work space for women artists (strange gender isolation) so close to where i'm living. Getting involved with other artists from your own community gives you insight into what students may want to learn about or create.

with my college career nearing its end i often think about where i'd like to wind up teaching. i really cannot see staying in new york, so i've been looking in to national certification. i was under the impression that there was an exam (or series of exams) that you could take to validate your certification for any state within the united states. if this article is right, then i was wrong.

byt the value of researching beyond the .com is finding information like this...

"Basic Steps for National Board Certification:

National Board Certification consists of two parts:

1. Teaching Portfolio
   Teachers typically videotape their teaching, gather student learning products, and analyze their teaching practices.
2. Assessment.
   Teachers answer questions that relate to content specific to their fields. The assessments focus on breadth of content knowledge.

Blooms (Digital) Taxonomy

we recently discussed blooms taxonomy in class and concluded that scaffolding helps students ease into learning. I agree that it will be easier for most students to know something about anything, before jumping in to a critical analysis. While brainstorming ideas for scaffolding my worksheet I stumbled upon this.

This wiki is geared toward 21st century Teaching and Learning. Blooms Digital Taxonomy in particular attempts to account for the new behaviors and actions emerging as technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous.

Grow A Game

after reading about Grow A Game, discussing it in class and playing it out, i still could not make a comfortable connection between play and lesson planning. i was overwhelmed by the assignment: to design a game that resulted in a lesson.  i was frustrated for the same reason that games are frustrating. obstacles! i considered working backwards the greatest obstacle i'd have to overcome. i was uncomfortable at first in creating restrictions on lesson plans (like rules of a game), until i realized the result of a well-constructed games is fairly unpredictable, unless you're playing with a cheater! my group members and i decided upon on a technique that is easily accessible and extremely open ended. We've decided on titling it The Magic Finger, because that is the tool used in retrieving ideas. Basically we will randomly place our pointer fingers down while flipping through a book, any book. This will be done 4 time, so that we can gather information for all 4 categories: (1) socio-political concerns (2) visual culture studies (3) material exploration (4) meaning making. That's really all there is to it, and the rest is up to the gamer. personal interpretation will guide the remainder of the lesson plan. 

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LESSON OVERVIEW: 

Students use reproductions of the symbolic dollar bill to explore and express their ideas about the value we place on money, individually and as a country.

so far, so good

is this art? tell me, iphone.

The Is This Art? iPhone application is a new tool designed for people who have questions about the artistic integrity of their surroundings. Using your iPhone's camera and a complex, revolutionary algorithm, we now have the ability to instantly provide users with an authoritative declaration of artistic importance.”

I found this application while searching an artist on Google. The first image I looked at in the Iphone archive was accompanied by a declaration that the piece was very expensive and therefore it must be art. The answer was obnoxious, though the image did show an expensive looking item, so this intrigued me; I thought it had potential. The next image I looked at of a self-portrait was deemed art, and the reasoning was: “I can’t find Waldo, therefore THIS IS ART.” This quickly proved to me how ridiculous the application was. However, I think this may be fun to use for an activity in the art room and may help getting students to talk about what society considers art and why. Breaking down the humor in some of the critique responses from the application may spark an interesting discussion with students. You can also submit your own art critique…

Some of the critique responses from the archive:

(1) This piece is very expensive, therefore THIS IS ART.

(2) This piece is not accompanied by enough obtuse wall text, therefore THIS IS NOT ART.

(3) I can’t find Waldo, therefore THIS IS ART.

(4) Minimalistically speaking, this is pretty minimal, therefore THIS IS ART.

(5) My mother would think this is crap, therefore THIS IS ART.

(6) This makes me feel intellectually inferior, therefore THIS IS ART.

(7) I could make this, therefore THIS IS NOT ART.

(8) This work manipulates reality in a realistic but non-manipulative way, therefore THIS IS ART.

(9) I do not understand it, therefore THIS IS NOT ART.

(10)Richard Prince would never appropriate this, therefore THIS IS ART.