Tag Archives: Art

Makin’ Art With The Bava

I have been a huge fan of Jim Groom ever since the great Edupunk debates of 2008. As he so often reminds us, “Nobody blogs like the Bava! Nobody!” And man is he right. The quality of, frequency of, and intensity of his blogging is enough to leave any aspiring blogger’s mouth agape. The man lives and breaths blogging, and he is doing it a few years into the future. Whichever direction this whole thing is going, I am certain that Jim will be at the front of the line steering the ship.

I cannot count how many times following Jim and his band of Edupunks as they push the envelope, practice what they preach style of educating, has literally saved my stagnant network from the Edublogospshere mired in check out the latest tool retweets and false idol worship malaise that can be Edtech.

So when I saw that he is creating an online digital story telling course, my first thought was I have to be a part of this. I quickly started to doubt my digital merits, and thought twice about throwing my weight around with the big boys and girls. It didn’t take me long till I came around. We are here to learn right? All this talk about pushing ourselves and learning new things, and exploring new ideas, and working with new people, it’s all meaningless if we are not doing it ourselves. I could write about social networks, web 2.0, and the connected classroom till the cows come home, but I will not grow or learn until I step out my comfort zone and rub elbows with the Bava!

So let’s create some art damn it!

Nature of War

5 Replies

In year nine history this unit, we have been looking at 20th century warfare and conflict. Rather than focus on people, places, or dates, I have chosen to first examine the very nature of warfare. The standards we have been working on for this unit are as follows:

Select relevant information from a source to group and sequence
Select and combine information from sources on the basis of content

Firstly, I asked the students to find ten images of twentieth-century warfare. I tried to have them find Creative Common images, but finding historical Creative Common images proved difficult, so we decided that we would use any images we could find. Working in groups, the students sorted the images, devising their own criteria for sorting.

We lead a class discussion to clarify the criteria the different groups used in sorting. Students, in groups, then sorted against specific criteria, looking at common threads, eg naval warfare, civilian experiences. They came up with a variety of categories, then narrowed them down to about ten:

Urban
Naval
Air
Bombs
Civilian
Etc…

As a class, we discussed a ‘concept map’, eg ’cause’, ‘nature’, ‘impact’, ‘effect’ of war. We then used a selection of the images from the sorting activity as a basis for an overview of the “Nature” of warfare. Each student picked one photograph from one of the categories and free wrote a piece of sensory writing, which was then crafted into a poem.

Because Windows Movie Makers does not allow multi-track narration, we had to use Audacity to record a three-track soundtrack including sound effects found online, music, and narration. Most students had little to no experience with the sound recording software, but were quickly able to align their audio tracks with the WMM file. This process would have been much more simple on Mac, but it was a good experience for the kids finding ways to use a variety of software.

After our spring break we will begin to look at the Causes and Impacts of the major 20th century conflicts. Moving on to these standards:

Identify similar factors leading to the outbreak of major world conflicts
Describe and make links between relevant reasons for, and results of, events and changes

I hope our video work will help students achieve the following standards:

Explain the reasons why attitudes to events differ
Use knowledge and understanding to analyse and interpret information
Describe characteristic features of twentieth-century conflicts
Research and summarise information for use in group discussion

As the projects are completed, I will post them on our wiki for review and comments. In the meantime, here is the first one:

Any comments, suggestions, or further ideas would be appreciated.

Life as an Open Book

39 Replies

On June 4th, I gave a talk called Life as an Open Book at Qatar Academy for the first ever Tedx event put together by Julie Lindsay.

I spent quite a bit of time planning the talk, but the execution was not exactly what I had in mind. I was plagued by repetition, false starts, and a general sense of incoherence. I have attempted to piece together as much of the original talk as I could.

The main idea is:

How can we encourage teachers to look beyond their fear, follow their passions and begin to create open honest online identities that reflect their true selves in order to better connect with their students for a more authentic learning environment. Eventually creating a system that not only allows for teacher creativity and expression but actively promotes and encourages it, so teachers are not too busy or scared to express themselves online, and actually given time to reflect, create, and share.

Life as an Open Book from Intrepid on Vimeo.

I would appreciate any and all comments.

Melted

4 Replies

Last month, I decided to try out a collaborative poem project using Twitter and Flickr. The process was simple:

Send out a request on Twitter for participants.
Create a Google Document.
Find an image from Flickr (Make sure to pick one from the Creative Commons)
Wait.
Wait some more.
Start to write.
Leave your poem as a comment on the original page.

Well, we were at it again. This time we decided to use an Etherpad:

Cut and paste this link to view the photo, and then work together to create a poem inspired by the image. This is live and we can see each other create. Don’t be afraid to type over the work of others. Click “unnamed” on the right, to add your name and choose a color. Open the chat to chat with the group. Here is what it looked like:

We had about eight people show up. I don’t think the final product is what is important, but more so the process. It is interesting to see how attached we become to our own language. The connections through words, ideas, and imagery is what makes this idea powerful.

While it may feel a bit forced at times, the idea that a group of people from around the world are working in real time to try and give expression to a shared reality is fascinating. After all isn’t this connection, this expression the purpose of art, language, are common humanity.

Maybe I am reading too much into this. Anyway come join us next time:

MeltedSearching
They sent me here
Siberia
Nothing
nothing.
I asked for pain
They gave me blue
Nothing but blue

The ceiling is moving
Another evaporated horizon
no moon, no sun
There’s a rhyme somewhere
maybe irony
Would it be a sin to laugh out loud?
I’m thinking of jumping
above and beneath the glass
lifeless.
What is life?
Ice.

her soft voice singing
postcards
songs about postcards
funny
would she even read it?

Or would it be pinned by a butterfly magnet
to her popsicle-stained fridge?
their tiny fingers
long gone

Fridge.
This place is ice, no warmth, no red,
Blue. Nothing but blue
periphery
Frigid blue – frozen loins push forth no new life here.

I stretch out my tongue
Seeking wind
Something to cut, or freeze
To feel
Something
Like the rip of the tongue from the metal flag pole
torn flesh so tender
and the rest gone

The bottle empty. Fire going out.
Does it matter?
Nothing can taste warm here.
Tongue is useless.

but begs to speak, to sing, to be heard
to connect.
frozen flesh forcing meaning
where none should be.

Scream at the sky, lunatic!
Drown your puny voice in this everlasting lake.

But then I feel
I yearn
to drink?
to pee?
ruled by the body
my eyes deceive

her eyes deceive
more failed tissue
how do you expect to experience
with nothing more than
blood, muscle, and bone.
eyes, tongues, useless
out here, in there.
you are everyone, everywhere.
I am in you let me out.

the bottle lies
it always does
I’ll drown in a sentence
in a lake of Curacao
in the land of Vodka, czars,and Lenin’s ghost
his dreams lost too
in this blur

Baikal is not big enough to encompass these lies.
What lies beneath? Lies.
They sent me here.

Full Cup

5 Replies

I am officially full. No more room for blog posts, news articles, or youtube videos. No more funny photos or heart breaking stories. No new bands, new sounds, new anything. I don’t want to contribute to the noise anymore. Not even sure why I am typing these words, perhaps to let out some of the clutter. I want to create some silence, some space.

Image from Jordandouglas

There is so much disorder in the walls of my head that it will take a much more diligent person than I , to clear some space to simply sit and breath. Is this the future we are preparing our students for, a world where we are nothing more than overflowing cups of knowledge and information? Are these the skills we so champion? We have access to more information than any other time in the history of the world, but so what? Once we are full, then we are full. The information then simply spills over the lip and disappears. Why aren’t we teaching our students how to breathe and make room for their souls? Why aren’t we teaching our kids how to disconnect and simply watch the clouds? Why aren’t we teaching our kids life beyond the screens? Why aren’t we teaching them to how to empty their cups?

I know what I need to do, but I find it harder and harder to do so. I understand that there needs to be a balance. But this sense of balance is becoming more and more difficult to find in the enthusiasm of Ed Tech cheerleading. Sometimes it just feels like all of this is too much. I often find myself needing to make time to reconnect with myself, before I can venture back into cyberspace. As an anti-social creature, I have a hard time putting on the happy face deemed necessary for social networking. How do we expect adolescents and children to make sense of so much networking?

I am starting to think that networking with strangers is not necessarily such an important skill to have. Surface level exchanges of information do not seem, to me, to be such a crucial talent. We need to be concentrating more on building communities, teaching our students as well as ourselves how to connect to other people on a more human level. But is this what we are doing? Is that possible on Twitter? Is that possible through this text?

We have all read at length about what it takes to be a networked learner, but what are the skills needed to be a good community member? How do we truly get to know people? I need something more than to be connected to nodes of a network; I am looking to instigate a cultural shift that connects people based on common goals and interests. I want nothing less than a new human paradigm. I want peace and connectivity, not another link to new tool. I am tired of talking about what the 21st century will look like, I want to talk to you, create art with you, and change the world with you. I am tired of reading about what you know, I want to know what you fear, what you dream. I want to become more human with you.

Technology is only useful if it connects our humanity and moves us forward as a community. Anything less is simply data overflowing from a full cup. Come join me, leave a comment, let’s chat on Skype about a topic other than Ed Tech, let’s create an art project together, and let’s build a community.