Birth Of A Salesman Part 1 - The White Paper Version

To Whom It May Concern:

With your permission, I would like to present an artistic and academic challenge for the students. I would like to do this by heading up a school, online newspaper, developed by a combined effort of the heads of the different curricular departments, complete with the inclusion of digital photography interlaced with articles and puzzles created by the students.

As the head of the art department, I could look after the over-all layout/composition and photographic images. Our photographic skills will relate to the seven cognitive tools of thinking - perception, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, playing and synthesizing – and help the students involved become more creative in their approach to thinking as well as aware of what is happening around them. Participation in an online, school newspaper will help the students become logical thinkers and problem solvers, rather than those that memorize are recite information.

Perception – As leader of a photographic crew, I would teach the students to be more aware of the things that are happening around them. Observations will lead to opinions and those opinions will lead to written articles. An example of how one question may lead to many other questions: WHAT IS FOR LUNCH?

---What are school lunches really made of?

---Where do we get all the food?

---How long does it take to prepare lunch for the whole building?

---Can we take pictures that accurately depict the food that we eat?

---Will those pictures make the food appealing, leading to more students buying a lunch, rather than bringing one in?

---How loud does it really get in the lunchroom?

---Does the smell of lunch make students hungrier?

A simple inquiry about food could lead to many columns and different pictures can be taken to enhance those articles. Pictures of the food itself, students eating lunch, the floor (showing how messy the students get during lunch – this could lead to better awareness and a cleaner lunchroom), etc. Photographs of, and interviews with, the lunch servers would open social skills the students never new they had. Images showing lunchroom procedures would help younger students learn how things are done here in the building, speeding up the serving process. One observation can lead to one question and that question can lead to many different solutions to existing dilemmas, yet portrayed through a child’s viewpoint.

Patterning – As leader of a photographic crew, I would teach the students how to be aware of different patterns that surround them every day. There are patterns on the walls of the school. There are patterns in our classroom assignments. There are even patterns (procedures) of the things we do. By looking for these patterns, the photographer students will be more sensitive to their surroundings. To turn this toward digital photography, I would like to think that taking pictures of existing patterns could become pattern forming. I was in a restaurant the other day and on the wall were a series of artworks that fell in line with a college professor’s “take a picture of a letter, but it cannot BE the letter” assignment (Punya Mishra). There were artworks that said, “Love,” “Faith,” “Sailing,” and “Peace.” The artist even did “Michigan” and “State,” with the first letter being each school’s logo. The rest of the letters were of everyday items, or creatively cropped and manipulated photographs that generated the visual image of the letter. Was this a pattern? Yes. Was it intentional? Yes (http://lialm00.blogspot.com/2010/10/big-picture-9-october-2010.html).

(http://ny-image1.etsy.com/il_fullxfull.86276357.jpg)

Patterns can also be a bad thing, but showing those patterns may help in finding a solution to those negative things. Does one particular student stir up trouble on the playground every day? If so, this is a pattern and an open forum might be the solution in helping that child correct his behavior. Is crossing the road in front of the school a dangerous event every day? If so, this is a negative pattern and a Grass Root, Safety Patrol might be promoted and implemented to help children cross the street safely. Pictures of the “before and after” might even help gather parental volunteers to help support the safety efforts of the children.

Abstracting – Teaching students to see things differently, rather than in plain sight, helps them to think creatively. The students can use digital photography to demonstrate imagination. Our online newspaper could have a “What Am I” portion/competition, where an image is abstracted and guesses submitted. It might look something like this:

Original Image: 

Abstract View:  

http://lialm00.blogspot.com/2010/10/veja-du-4.html

Would you be able to tell what the image was without having the original? Being vague makes a student think, or develop ideas that are outside their normal patterns. This leads to deductive reasoning and thought development.

Embodied Thinking – They say “Practice Makes Perfect.” It takes many repetitions of a body function to develop muscle memory. The same can be said for positive thinking skills too. Just as a baseball player hones his skills, students need to polish their abilities for overall development. Physical Education teaches the students to train their bodies and pictorial stories can keep the children aware of the lessons being taught in Gym. News articles can generate interests in a Theater Club, where the students can put on plays, emulating other people (real, or imaginary) throughout time. This empathizing technique could lead to career interests by teaching the students what it is like to be somebody, or something else. An example of this might appear in the form of emulating an animal, like this:

I chose to be my dog for a day. He lives SUCH a pampered life!!!

He eats:

He drinks:

He stares longingly at his momma:

He lays in the living room (these two terrorize him):

This is what a big, spoiled baby looks like:

Ah! To be a dog!!!!

http://lialm00.blogspot.com/2010/10/veja-du-5.html

Modeling – As an art teacher, I could have lessons that have the students making small models of existing things, using different mediums. We could take digital photographs of those models and use them to advertise upcoming school events. The Christmas Concert is just around the corner, why couldn’t we make up mock sets for the show and have a student body election, to see which stage set we should establish? If the students are making Dioramas in Social Studies, we could run an article about each box and describe what the students were learning.

Playing –As a kinesthetic learner myself, I fully believe in the power of playing to learn. All of the examples I have given include playing to some extent. Taking digital pictures is not exactly a structured lesson, where the students have to sit in rows and listen to what the teacher has to say. The students get to go out and find things that interest them, take some pictures of that interest and try to think of a unique way of portraying that interest to fellow students. What one-person finds interesting, another person may find boring. The digital photographs might also be of play itself. We have a basketball team that is starting to play other schools in the next few weeks. Articles can be developed about the team itself and interviews with the players can be held.

Synthesizing – If an online, school newspaper were developed, it would generate new ways of approaching the students involved. They would be forced to blend all the different areas of learning necessary to succeed without even knowing they were doing so. It would take coordination of the senses to observe the different things that happen during a normal school day. All the different sights, sounds and smells that present themselves could be potential stories. If the art class is going to do ceramic projects, a story about how the clay feels, or smells would be a great lead in to the “playing” form of learning; we do play with the clay after all.

An online, school newspaper is an antique process (news reporting) brought in to the 21^st Century. An online newspaper is very cost efficient and the energy/time used to develop, or run the articles can all be justified through the different curriculums. It takes a good English Department to watch over the articles written by the students. Proof reading each and every word can be performed by the “Editor” and this post can rotate through the children for each “press.” All the different topics will lead into some form of English assignments and our school needs all the reading time that we can provide for our students. Even math equations can be made into puzzles, like Sudoku puzzles in the Sunday Press. There are also many opportunities to include artistic values in an online, school newspaper. Page layouts develop greater compositional awareness. Photography has always been seen as an art form, but even this can be brought into the 21^st Century through digital manipulation. It takes artistic talent to “see” things that other people do not, but like when they do see it.

As you can see, there are many reasons for the development of an online, school newspaper. The benefits certainly outweigh the drawbacks. Curriculums would be bolstered. Talents would be polished. There would be no real cost to the project and the plug can be pulled at any time. As head of the Art Department, I would be happy to head up the overall progress of this venture and I already have the support of the other department heads, but we would need official approval in order to proceed. Please consider allowing our students to develop their creative thinking in an old/new exciting way. Thank you.

Birth Of A Salesman Part 2 - The Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-fyiFddyj0&feature=youtube_gdata

Birth Of A Salesman Part 3 - The Tweet

Xtra 3X read all bout it Skool gets 2 publsh online nwsppr Dtails at http://lialm00.blogspot.com/ Kids now smarter than evr b4 AYP earned

How Do I Love Thee - Embodied Thinking

I am very disappointed with myself. I came up with a lesson idea or my own group's turn at the "How Do I Love Thee" assignments, yet I have not been able to perform my own assignment. The lesson was to play with the sun or moon in proportioning photography. I get up well before the sun, and get home well after it sets, leaving me only the moon, but that has been barely visible since we posted the assignment and when it was, my subjects (my family) have not been able to participate due to busy schedules.

After trying (and failing) to get the assignment fulfilled, I have no choice left but to include a picture of an old piece of artwork that explains a lot about two things I enjoy: Art and Music. I drew a picture that clearly states that, "Music Is Art." Music and Art both take years of practice to get good at, in order to produce a quality work. They require "Body Thinking," or the training of the human figure to perform a highly skilled task.

If you look at the musical notes, you will see that they spell out the title: "Music Is Art." It took me seconds to come up with the idea, but a long time to draw the artwork.

How Do I Love Thee 6 - Playing With Lines

I know it has nothing to do with digital photography, but lines are a huge fundamental of art. We use lines in our photography all the time. I give a lesson where we act and sound out different types of lines. It is the playing around that makes a boring lesson come alive. It looks like this:

There is only one real meaning behind "lines," but it is very important. Lines are a major part of artistic composition and the students need to be able to express knowledge of different types of line. Since we are discussing them, we also broaden our horizons and talk about the sounds of each line. What does a zig-zag line sound like? Where can we apply a zig-zag line? The possibilities are endless & the students have very unique ways of showing their imaginations for each line. This demonstrative exercise clearly demonstrates the students understanding of the lesson. There is not very much interdisciplinary application involved with the lesson, unless you include the physical portion in the realm of gym class.

Veja Du - 7

I grew up in the Thumb of Michigan. My Uncle has a farm that has been in his family for over 150 years. I spent a lot of summers out there, helping as free labor, bailing hay, chasing cattle & just being a boy. A few years ago, my Uncle had a fire in his barn and lost everything, including three horses, 5 head of cattle, some cats and even decades old horse tack. My Uncle was devastated.

My Aunt came up with an idea that would help rectify the family farm’s plight: hold an old-fashioned, Amish-style, barn raising. She secretly called extended family and even posted an ad in the local newspaper. Word of mouth spread the news and soon she had commitments from a lot of people with different backgrounds. If you could swing a hammer, or even lift a board, you were welcomed to participate.

The weekend of the barn raising, the farm started to look like a shanty town. Everybody came out to the middle of nowhere and pitched a tent, got out their tools and pitched in where they could. It was amazing. We had done the prep work the work before, making sure the foundation was secure to build upon and supplies were plenty. Once we started to build, it took off like a wild fire. It only took two days for us to build a whole barn. The only thing we did not finish was to hang the overhead, sliding doors and siding.

You might not associate this kind of labor with “play,” but to me it was something better. As I said, I half grew up on this farm and was very happy to be a part of the re-transforming a heartbreaking situation back into something positive. My Uncle is a very strong, Bible believing, country boy and does not show much emotion. It was very touching to hear his voice crack as he gave thanks to everybody during the first night’s blessing over dinner. It may have been work, but we all played in our own special way. Nobody was forced to be there and it was a beautiful thing to experience.

It has long since been completed and the new barn is full of horses, hay and tools. It may not have the same old ambiance of the old-style barn, but this one has made a lot of memories already.

The Big Picture - 25 November 2010

I have always said that I have the best possible teaching position available: art teacher. I get to have the students “play artist” with me, in a semi-controlled setting. I come up with a creative activity and present it to the children. If they mimic my project the best that they can, they succeed. I do not expect everybody’s lesson to be perfect, or look alike; I just want them to try hard, have fun and produce something that looks similar to the proposed project.

I have access to 30 Kodak EZ Share, digital cameras. These cameras will only hold 30 still photographs, or 12 seconds of video; that is it. After the memory is full, the information needs to be downloaded into a computer and deleted from the camera before you can take any more images. I developed a middle school lesson where my students had to doodle up a storyboard, presenting a commercial for an existing product. They had to write a script, have rough sketches of the location (on school grounds) and clearly state the product being sold. The kids tore into this lesson because it was a welcomed break from normal draw/color and cut/paste assignments.

The students quickly grouped up into pairs, or trios, and started discussing what product they wanted to sales pitch. They doodled up all sorts of places they could shoot their commercials, even trying to get into places they knew they should not be: behind the stage, in the principal’s chair, or in the boiler room (via Freddy Krueger fame). The students chose their products and wrote their scripts. Some were written to be funny, some serious and some were just informational, but they all were relatively decent. I issued cameras (one per group) and they ran off all over the campus (I had asked for parental volunteers before starting) and did many, many takes of the same commercial. They found out that 12 seconds fly by when you are not paying attention to it. The long scripts were pared down and locations changed, one group even had to swap the lead rolls because student “A” would not quit laughing.

When it was all finished, we uploaded all the commercials into my computer and I burned them into a CD. We watched all the commercials and they had a critique sheet (prepared by me) that they used to grade the other commercials, looking for certain criteria: Did all members appear/speak on camera? Was location chosen well? Was script clear? What product were they selling? Etc. In the end, the students figured out that making a commercial was not as easy as they had thought. They were learning, but did not know it; it was play.

Most of my lessons are developed in the same fashion. I present an idea, something (or some idea) that has been implemented in the past and I show how the artist performed his work. After that, I let the students learn on their own. It is my way of letting natural transformation occur. Like many of the examples given in “Sparks Of Genius,” the lesson itself is only the tip of the project. There is always work to be done. Just like finding the hominid footprints, the discovery was only the beginning. Art (digital photography included) starts in one place and can lead to many, many other directions. One step may inspire one hundred more. The learning involved is just part of the process.