Flipping Art Education

Flipped instruction is something that has been gaining interest in my district for the last couple of years. Flipped instruction is when you use a combination of online and face-to-face interaction to deliver content. There is a variety of methods to this and rather than re-explain, you can see them here.

One question that comes into play when thinking about Art Education, is how can you flip it? Or maybe better: Why would you want to? Art class is so hands-on, what really can flipping instruction do to benefit instruction in an art room. Here are 3 ways to Flip Art Education:

1. Sub plans: Nothing is worse than trying to prepare Art sub plans. More likely than not, the person coming in to take over has little to no experience using Art materials and the students are probably going to have a hard time figuring out what to do without your guidance. A couple of ways to combat this through the Flip model is recording a video of yourself explaining what needs to happen for the Sub to show students (or if the kids have access to computers, they can watch it at their own pace). That way they can see what you want them to do and the expectation is more clear than a sub trying to decipher your notes. I also tell students to email me when I am out if they hit a snag in a project and I try to talk them through it via email. It makes the students feel in control and me at ease when I am not there.

2. Snow Days: Today was the 5th one in my district. I am not complaining, but it does mean that I have lost a week's worth of instructional time with students. Instead of completely giving up on a lesson or presentation that you were planning to give on a Snow Day, you could create a video recording of it and email it to parents/students to view before returning to class the next day. I try to keep videos like this to ten minutes or less. It never takes the place of me being there in class and not all students will take the time to view it, but it does offer students the opportunity to get prepared for when we return to class the next day. Those students who do view can then take the lead in explaining the process and help others get on track with what we are doing.

3. Differentiate Pacing: What do you do with the student who is always ready to move onto the next assignment? What about students who are gone on vacation or sick? One thing you could offer is the resources for the assignment online. I house all of my projects on our Moodle page and students can check out what we are going to to do next when finishing their current projects. Sometimes I will make videos available that showcase an artist or go through a presentation I or other students have prepared. This allows students to move ahead when they are ready or get caught up if they are behind.

Imagine less time lecturing or presenting about Artists in class and more time for making Art. What might happen when students share their learning with parents by watching those presentations at home? Think of the potential this type of model offers the Art classroom when it is employed effectively. There are many tools you can use to create screen castings or videos. Two I frequent are Camtasia Relay by TechSmith and Quicktime on the Mac.

If you are interested in learning more about this type of instructional model and would like a chance to talk technology with other forward-thinking teachers, check out the upcoming PD at the GRAM this Saturday - it is only $5 for MAEA members. If you have used this type of instruction in your classroom, what are some tips or tricks you can offer others? If you have not, do you think you will? What are some potential issues that you see from using this strategy?

Ready to Go!

Today is the start of the annual MAEA Conference and I am so excited! It is a great time to connect with other teachers from around the state and share information on what works best in Art Education. It is a time where I learn so much from my peers and receive the valuable resources that allow my classroom to thrive and grow.

Artists Name: Samantha J.

School: Heritage HS

If you are attending MAEA this weekend, here are some tips that I have found helpful when attending any conference: 

1. Have a plan: Go through the Conference booklet (available online) to help plan out what you want to attend and when they are taking place. Also have a back-up plan in case your first choice fills up too quickly. With the new mobile feature on the MAEA site, you can easily do this through your smartphone or tablet.

2. Ask questions: If you attend a session and you want to know more about something that was said by the presenter, make sure to ask. As a presenter, I want to make sure my presentation is relevant and helpful to the audience. If there is something that you want to know more about, just ask. 

3. Check out the Vendors: I think my favorite part is checking out the booths from the great Vendors that come to MAEA. Not only do you end up with bags full of samples, but there are opportunities to participate in "Make and Takes" and talk with knowledgable spokespeople from the companies represented. If you have questions about purchasing supplies, new equipment, or other resources, this is a great time to connect and research through first hand experience. 

4. Student Work: Make sure to take the time and check out the great student work on display. I am always amazed at the talent and creativity each year during our conference. It is also a great time to get ideas from other teachers by seeing how they taught a lesson so you can adapt it in your own classroom. 

5. Tweet it out: Please use the hashtag #MAEA12 to tweet any important ideas or information you gained from this conference. This allows ideas to be shared from a variety of sessions - it will be like you can experience being in more places at once! When the conference is complete, I will post the resource here so that we can all enjoy the conference over and over again! 

I hope you have the best experience this weekend at the conference. If you are unable to attend, follow #MAEA12 to get updates on the new lessons learned throughout this weekend of learning and sharing in Art Education.

Mattawan Tech Camp 2012

Artists Name: Christine M.

School: Northview HS

From Video Game Design, to management tools like Class Dojo, and an endless amount of Free resources for consuming and creating content - the Mattawan Tech Camp offered a little bit of everything for the teacher looking to add digital tools to their curriculum.

The event kicked off with a lively and thought-provoking Keynote from Rushton Hurley, whose presentation title included the words "Kicking Posterior." As an advocate for the power of digital tools in the classroom, Rushton shared his passion with the crowd and offered the impact we can have in our classroom if we allow students the chance to create and share content through the video production. 

He continued this discussion in his sessions by offering us a load of free resources as well as things to think about. One thing I learned involved the search function in Google. Maybe you already knew this, but I hadn't ever seen the advanced search option in Google - did you know you can search for specific file types? He had us search for PowerPoint presentations using this method. If we can do this, so can our students. This got a lot of us re-thinking the presentation tool and how we can use it as a way for students to see what other students have created and synthesize it into something of their own, like a video or even use what they find to write a critique or summary of the presentations.

 I also appreciated the resources page filled with tools that I was seeing for the first time. One such tool is called Psykopaint. In this cloud-based program, you can upload pictures and then select artist styles ranging from Seurat to Van Gogh (and more) to paint your picture. You really have to check it out to see what I mean.

I had the opportunity to present at this conference, too. I discussed how I have used Video Game Design in the classroom. Sometimes as an Art teacher, I get a little narrow in my definition in what I should be teaching; Art History, drawing, painting, sculpture, and ceramics are key, but I have opened up to the idea that animation, video, digital arts, and video game design are also important aspects in Visual Arts education. You can check out the Video Game Design page I created for the conference filled with links to important sites about how this skill can effect student achievement as well as how students can make them and various competitions students can enter. The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards will begin to accept games starting in September, so consider this as you start planning your curriculum. And if you don't know how to program or design a game, it is okay - you can still create a space that facilitates that learning for your students. I know that is the case in my classroom, at least.

Have you learned something at a Edu Camp this summer? Please share any new skills, tips or tricks below.

Gearing up for Another Year

Artists Name: Samantha V.

School: Lakeview HS

In about a month, our classrooms will be filled with kids ready to dive into projects and materials. If you are anything like me, then you have been thinking about that for quite a bit of the summer and maybe have already had a few of those pre-school nightmares (you know the one where you end up with a class full of students revolting against your lesson or you run out of a needed material and no back-up plan).

Here are a few things that ease my stress when thinking about the new year:

1. Seating Charts - It is a simple thing that always does the trick for me when it comes to easing my stress over the start a new year. If you haven't checked out The Art of Education yet, you really should. In a recent post about seating charts, there are a list of great ideas for creating and organizing them. To add to their ideas, I would also include using sticky notes for student names on the charts (as shown here). This allows you to only have to write it once and simply pull it off the paper and re-stick it to a new location when changing seats. I always have my seating charts done before the first day and greet students at my door to introduce myself and tell them where their seats are located. If there is an issue with a seating arrangement, I can quickly pull the sticky note with the student's name and easily place it on a new spot on the chart.

2. Artsonia - I have been using this free online resource since 2007. I always try to get my classes organized before the new year with their rosters function and the fact that they allow kids to "graduate" into the next grade, makes that super simple. In addition to serving as a way for my students to share their work with the world, Artsonia does so much for helping raise funds for my classroom, supply ideas and tools for lesson planning, and documenting student growth. With the expectation of documenting student growth as a link to teacher evaluations, there's a lot of questions about how to do that in an art classroom. With Artsonia, documentation of growth is more manageable through the evidence of student artwork and accompanying artist statements. Artsonia has also added a lot of new features this year, as explained by Suzanne Tiedemann here.

3. Twitter - So, this is a new one that I am adding to my back-to-school regimen this year. I have been using this resource since Tricia Fuglestad urged me into it and I am so glad she did. I have been able to connect to teachers and artists from around the world that have enhanced my growth as a teacher. If you are on the fence about it, just check it out and see for yourself. Here is a post about how twitter is revolutionizing the concept of Professional Development and one specifically about how it works in #artsed.

What are some key things that help you get prepared for school and out of the pre-school jitters? What is a tool or trick that you cannot live without? Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

May Flowers

May is a time where not only flowers are blooming (although with this crazy weather some have been out since March); it is the time where students really are at their prime to show off what they have learned throughout the year and apply it to culminating projects and exhibitions.

If your district is anything like mine, you get to show off the year's worth of work through various shows in your building and at a district wide show in a central location. This is a great time for students, parents, and teachers to connect and really remark on the growths students have made throughout the year.

Theresa McGee showed off her annual exhibition in this great Animoto video, complete with movies and pictures of the event.



What made this show for me was the effective use of QR codes to link to the artists being studied in each project. This is a great way to create an interactive show, involving the viewer to take part in the show by learning even more. Here is how she explains the process of using QR codes in her classroom.

In a time where students are probably looking ahead to the summer break, take a moment and pull them back in to enjoy the hard work and lessons learned that has lead them to May. This last full month of school should be the time when students say "This is my best project," or "I never thought I could do something like this..." instead of checking out, already tuned in to whatever summer plans might bring. In the best case scenario, you will even have some saying, "I can't wait to come back next year, already!" 

Show and Tell

Show and Tell is a concept that we all know; usually it is done with lower elementary students and they get to bring in an item and share it with their peers by showing it off and talking about it. The Show and Tell concept is not only for kids, it also happens for educators through conferences. Do you have a lesson, concept, or technique that has always worked for you and you want to share it? Consider presenting at the MAEA Conference in Traverse City, October 25-28th or the NAEA 2013 conference in Texas!

Being able to share information with my peers has been a highlight for me both professionally and personally. It is nice to connect with other teachers and show what works for you in the classroom; it is even more fun to hear back from those who have attended your sessions on how they have been able to use the information in their own classrooms. When presenting, or putting together a presentation, it is important to think about your time allotment, who your audience is, and what you want your audience to get out of what you are presenting.


The aRTs Roundable, a podcast hosted by Carol Broos, dedicated an episode to the topic of presenting at Art conferences. One tip I found very helpful was having your resources online instead of making copies for handouts; even when making it online, be sure to have a backup in case the internet is down. If you make a Prezi (which is my go-to presentation tool right now), you can download it and then show easily either online or right from your desktop. Instead of wasting papers on copies, consider creating a business card with your website or contact information on it so that participants can go to there to review the presentation again or ask follow up questions later. The biggest take-away from this podcast on presenting was making sure to focus on the kids and how whatever you are presenting on will help teachers reach their kids in new and interesting ways.

Great conferences are made possible because educators like you are willing to share your time, showing and telling the tips and tricks that make your classroom work. If you have any sure-fire presentation tips to share or are planning to present at an upcoming conference, please comment below.

No post about presentations is complete without Don McMillan's video on how not to use PowerPoint:

MACUL 2012

Educational Techies flocked the streets of Grand Rapids this past week for the annual MACUL Conference. From flipped classrooms, 1:1 computing, website building, movie making, and 22nd Century Learning, MACUL always offers teachers a space to exchange ideas and innovate for the future of education.

Some of the highlights I was able to take away included a presentation by Chresta Wright on making your Moodle class pages more organized for student learning. She challenged the audience to rethink how to build pages, making it easier for students to process information and more efficient for teaching concepts.

The use of iPads was also a popular topic in many sessions and I learned about all kinds of apps to help deliver instruction to students and involve students in creating videos and other presentation materials with this device. The student showcase offered a preview of what iPads might look like in an Art classroom.

Examples from Shashabaw Middle School's use of iPads in the Art classroom.

 If you are looking to add iPads to your curriculum, Tricia Fuglestad and Suzanne Tiedemann expand on that idea with their website they created as a part of their NAEA 2012 Conference presentation on the topic. Theresa Gillespie also has a great site about using iPads to make Art. If you currently do not have an iPad, consider creating a Donors Choose project to get one for your classroom. They are going to be starting a matching donations campaign for this month, which can help you get your project funded even faster!

Steve Dembo gave a spectacular presentation on the future of education as he challenged the audience to ponder what it will look like in 100 years. He proposes that creating is not enough for our students; instead of just creating, they must also share, collaborate, and connect using the physical and digital realm. After sharing valuable sites like Kickstarter and ScholarMatch, Steve challenged us to rethink how our students are going to function in the future with a world that is growing ever smaller and becoming a place where "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen people." 

I also had the opportunity to present at MACUL this year. My presentation was about the MACUL funded grant so I could enact a project for student created videos. It was really fun to share experiences in my classroom with others and learn more resources from them, too.

If you are not currently a member of MACUL, sign up because not only is it a great community to be a part of, it is also free! As a member, you can apply for one of their grants to purchase technology for the classroom. View more details here: http://www.macul.org/grantsawards/

Did you go to MACUL? What are some highlights and take away tips we should know about from the sessions you attended?

You've got to have BOLS

Technology in Art Education on Prezi

Molly Marshall did a great presentation on using various technology tools in the Art classroom at the MAEA conference. This presentation spurred the opportunity for both of us to present how to use these tools in the classroom for Art Education students at Kendall College of Art and Design.

As I was reworking the handout Molly created into this Prezi, I couldn't help but think about how the educational system has changed as a result the accessibility of informational technology. This change can be a little scary and overwhelming to think about when considering all of the tools that are out there to help deliver and develop content with students. 

Sometimes when I talk about technology with other Art teachers, they are very hesitant to incorporate these methods into their instruction. They look at technology as taking away from traditional methods of creating and learning about art. It is always good to question and evaluate practices before implementing them into your classroom, but at some point there needs to be the realization that using technology does not take the place of traditional methods of instruction - it enhances it. 

To come to this conclusion, you've gotta have BOLS - blended online learning systems - and understand that incorporating technology is not a rejection of traditional methods of making art nor is it an abandonment of the need of teachers in the classroom. Technology allows students to create and leave legacies, connect with others from around the world, and teach the 4C's of 21st Century learning (critical thinking, creating, collaboration, communication). In order for this to be successful with students, good teachers who are open and flexible to new ways of teaching are needed more than ever. 

Blending your classroom with the use of various online systems is not an overnight transformation. Take a look at the presentation for various ideas and methods both Molly and I employ in our classrooms. If you have a sure-fire tip or tool that helps you create a Blended Online Learning System, please share.

New Year's Goals and Resolutions

Artists Name: Blake A.         School: Fancher Elementary

As 2011 comes to a close, it is easy to get swept up in the promise a fresh start of the new year can offer. This can also become a time where those good intentioned goals get thrown out there without the follow through or support to get it done.

I know I have started many statements with, "This is the year (fill in the blank with any type of goal) will happen," only to end up later in the year feeling bummed that it did not get done.Whether it was my own procrastination or not knowing how to get whatever the goal was accomplished, my hope is that with this post and our online community of support on Facebook and Twitter, we can work together to get our goals accomplished during 2012.

So, here is to the year it DOES happen and here are a few potential Arts Education goals with suggestions on how to stay on track to fulfilling your resolutions.

• Get Hired! It is no secret that the tough economy has resulted in teacher lay-offs, pink-slips, as well as reassignments. When I originally posted this idea of resolutions our Facebook group, one member responded that their goal was to get a job this year. Although it has been a tough couple of years, there have been opportunities for Arts Ed professionals to get involved and help get their foot in the door. If you are looking for a job, consider ways to help promote your skills and expand your network by volunteering and participating in online forums. There have been various posts on our Facebook group about long term subbing positions; although this may not initially lead to a full time position, the experience and networking could.
• Get Published! Is there a great lesson plan you have that your fellow Art colleagues have oohhhed and ahhhed over and works consistently with each group of students you have taught? Then share it! We all have used resources from SchoolArts Magazine and Arts&Activities Magazine at one point or another to help gain insight and ideas to deliver and develop classroom curriculum. Make 2012 your chance to contribute. Both publications offer how-to tips with writing for their magazines. If you have ever explained a project to a friend then you will be able to write and get your work published highlighting your classroom. Nancy Walkup, the Editor for SchoolArts is also very helpful with any questions you might have about an article idea. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on Art Education 2.0, or follow her blog.
• Try New Tech! Whether it is flipping your classroom, creating a Twitter account, or even subscribing to some of your favorite blogs, using technology can help you connect with others in your profession and grow to help serve your students. I have only recently joined Twitter (@campbellartsoup) and have made some great strides in how I use tech in my classroom as well as connect with other teachers from across the globe. Art teacher and co-founder of The Teaching Palette, Theresa McGee, shared some great Web 2.0 tools to use, engaging students and delivering content. This takes time, but know you are not alone. There is a powerful educational community out there waiting and ready to support you through any questions you may have.
• Make Art for Yourself! Art teachers face the rare expectation compared to other content areas. You rarely hear a parent or community member ask a Math teacher what equations they are working on, but you often hear community members ask Art teachers what they have made lately. I am proud that we have a different kind of expectation, but it is often difficult to find the time to make anything when you are planning lessons, preparing materials, and displaying art for a school full of children. I became an Art teacher because I love Art and care for kids. I am definitely not the most productive artist, but I try and create work to help keep my skills honed and up to date. I am recently creating work for a group show and found that if it was not for that show, I probably would not have found the joy I have over break in making the work I have so far. Consider putting yourself into a show to force yourself to make something, or sign up for one of the Summer PD workshops the MAEA organizes. 

Those are only four goals to help you start to think about what it is you want to focus on this new year.  What are some of your Art Education goals and resolutions for 2012?