Day One of students using their google doc to write about their favorite artist. About two thirds of them did not email me from their gmail address, so most of my time each period will be sending them the invitation to edit the document I created for them last week. It is clear now that they don’t know how to send email messages! Unthinkable! I am SOOoooo excited/terrified about this unit! I can take ignorance the first time it pokes its beak into my world, but the second – seventieth time gets me on the ‘Good Grief! How can you not know this by now!” nerve. I still believe the unit will be valuable. I hope I have the patience.
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Peggie B. Hensley
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Peggie B. Hensley
Finally finished creating a document for each of my students and putting them into color coded folders at google docs. Now, I’ll start to share them with students who have emailed me from their gmail addy. Monday we will begin to use their shared documents. They will write an introductory paragraph about their favorite artist, in any medium, with the goal to ‘hook me’… make me want to read the rest of their essay when it is written.
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Peggie B. Hensley
Day After Declaring Artist Manifesto… Gave students homework: Register a gmail account and send me an empty message from that account. Setting up folders for each class and creating a temp word document for each student. They will login to their account, find the document that I will have shared with them, and begin editing it. Goal: Give them a reason to be tech literate in a professional way.
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Peggie B. Hensley
So I have a few minutes while students are drawing…How will I use my new plan (google tools write/rewrite/share/etc.) for teaching social responsibility and accountability? What do i want students to know when they finish?
- Be able to
- Distinguish authentic communication from BS.
- Trouble shoot
- Work through frustrations
- Think Critically
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Peggie B. Hensley
Today I’m cleaning up my smArt sPace google group, getting it ready for a new idea. I have never really done anything with revision of writing with my students, but have wanted to recreate the eAnthology SI experience with them. I’ve also finally had an aha: I need to stop trying to reshape myself into a teacher-mold unsuited to me. I’m going to just let it all fall out and be the art teacher! You know that person– quirky, out there, not expected to conform. Today, I stop stifling myself. I begin with the way I’ve been teaching communication. Lord, bless this plan if it be Thy will….
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Peggie B. Hensley
Presentation Day – Students are presenting their projects: games, bookmarks, wallwishers, digital stories, poems, etc. A very good day!
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Peggie B. Hensley
Very good working day today. Students, for the most part, are really into all the creative ways they are assimilating their research
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Peggie B. Hensley
Note-card grades are improving, with one…
Note-card grades are improving, with three students so far getting maximum points. Do I expect too much?
- Resources listed from .edu, .org, or previously approved site
- Information from all five topics
- Accurate information (grrrrh!)
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Peggie B. Hensley
A few students are insisting they are finished with the research portion of the project. Their directions were to find relevant information in five categories. Of course they asked how many note-cards they had to have and I answered, “As many as you need to get the job done (record the necessary information.)”
So today, the ones who rush through are getting their note-card grades. Abysmal! This is where I start second-guessing myself.
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Peggie B. Hensley
Today, 1st – 3rd periods will complete their research. All others will begin creating their presentations, chosen from a presentation menu with six choices. I’m telling them that they won’t get a rubric for this product. RATIONALE: When I bid on jobs, I usually know what the client wants (the product), but little else. It is up to me to creatively conceive and create something that meets their needs/wants better than any other artist vying for the job, and then present it to the client so that they recognize that I have the better product AND that my services are worth what I’m asking.
So I’m telling the students that they are in competition with each other. Creativity is most important followed by depth of information presented. We’re discussing what english, science, or history teachers give them when they assign research projects. I want them to recognize that artists must ratchet up the creative thinking, while maintaining scholarly acumen. We’ll see.
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Peggie B. Hensley
Network was down for three periods today, so the online art research didn’t happen until 4th period. Plan B – I told studnets, “Begin the presentation you chose and use what you have, fill in tomorrow when the network is back if you have holes in your information.” In fourth period, one student was ready to begin work on her presentation, a fact spinner game, so I don’t think the earlier classes were shortchanged at all. So far I’m loving this project!
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eltee
or maybe it needs approved and peggie and eliminate my other dumb ones for me!
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eltee
i typed for 10 minutes and lost my first post here — AAARRGGH
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eltee
So I’m thinking about a new project for my students — or an old project, tweaked. For several years we’ve read “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” a pretty cool book with a lot to offer. It’s long though, and I don’t like spending immesearuable time on it. So last year i decided to use the jigsaw technique and students, working in pairs divided the chapters and then became responsible for creating a presentation to ‘teach’ their section to the rest of the class. Good idea. Poor execution. I had a group of students who i learned by the 3rd quarter of the year had as their central goal the aspiration to out do each other on all levels. I didn’t know that at the beginning of the year. What i did know was that the presentations went ON and ON and ON and On and ON. It wasn’t about quality, it was about quantity for them. Eventually I stopped the entire process and told them we’d ridden that dead horse too long. i summed up the chapters we hadn’t gotten to, and quit. It was such a miserable experience that i dropped the entire book this year. Just ignored it like it didn’t exist.
Then, a few weeks ago, peggie got me working on Voice thread, and i started to wonder what would happen if, during the next couple weeks of senior project time when we’re practicing and then delivering presentations, my EN102 dual credit students did the jigsaw using voice thread? So as of right now i have a voice thread set up, that has an image for each of the book’s chapters. Tomorrow I’m going to meet with peggie 2nd period to help think through voice thread issues, and maybe when she lends me her expertise I can more easily finalize assignment plans. So i think i want to watch this assignment as it might unfold and see how it goes, and compare it to the miserable failure of last year’s jigsaw plan.
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Peggie B. Hensley
Art History Project Week got off to a sl…
Art History Project : 1. Cooperatively compile a list of artists, teacher approved, then choose one. 2. Three days to find information in 5 broad categories: biography, contemporaries, concurrent world events, leaders, and philosophies and governments. 3. Five days to dreate a multimodal presentation.
