Pencil Me In

I read the book Pencil Me In, by John T. Spencer, this week and was intrigued by his approach to writing about digital integration in education. His book is a fiction story following 19^th Century teacher, Tom Johnson, through the integration of such new and innovative technology such as pencil and paper, telegraphs, photographs, cameras, etc., into his curriculum. The entire novel is written in a metaphorical sense in that the integration of these tools then is similar to the integration of technology tools like tablets and netbooks of today. There are the pencils (computers), plogs (blogs), SmartCharts (whiteboards), telephones (cell phones), pen pals (social networks), iTablets (iPads), and other relative comparisons. The book started as a blog, Adventures in Pencil Integration, and evolved from there. I really like that while he “dated” the blog as the 19^th Century, he didn’t date it in the sense that he is talking about specific technology that is used today, but might not be used in a year or two. It is humorous in nature and sends his message in a unique way that was enjoyable to read. Spencer’s overall point of the novel is that integration of new innovative tools is important, but we also need to keep sight of the practices that work with the most basic of tools, such of our voice. There is no right or wrong way to integrate and use new tools, but it is process that each teacher needs to develop in order to best benefit their students and class.

I feel like the book takes the reader through the journey that teachers take when integrating something new and not really knowing the best way to both take advantage of the opportunity for new tools, but also to do what is best for students and the projects at hand. Mr. Johnson has quandaries throughout the novel about the way that pencils are being used in his classroom and whether they are a benefit or a distraction. When they are no longer being used to accentuate a lesson or project, it is time to use another medium. One of the programs that Mr. Johnson has to teach in his class is, “the Career Readiness Achievement Program.” I did laugh as I read this knowing that this was C.R.A.P. It was a program full of worksheets and had much in common with what many teachers are still forcing on their students in class. They wonder why they are not engaged! Mr. Johnson and some of his colleagues come to the conclusion that student guided lessons are the best way to teach for students to be prepared for critically thinking in the real world. He mentions pen pals as a metaphor for social media networks of today and teeters back and forth on the pros and cons of having these as part of the classroom activity. There are some risks involved for the students; however, they also get to collaborate with each other and students around other areas. I feel like the use of social media and collaboration across borders is truly dependant on the project and the group of students. It just isn’t black and white, just like with graphite, there are shades of gray. As mentioned in many of my previous posts, I feel like the use of technology is very important in teaching and education today, however, I also know that hands on creativity cannot be replaced by a technology gadget. As an art teacher, I will ALWAYS feel like there is no replacement for creating with your hands, no matter what technology tools become available. Some methods are just timeless.

I enjoyed reading the book on the surface, although, it was somewhat monotonous for me towards the end. I occasionally had to go back and read sections again because there are a number of pronoun agreement issues or words that did not make sense in the writing. I was quite surprised at the number of mistakes in a published book about teaching. I guess, overall, it does not affect the storyline; it was just frustrating, at times. On the one hand, I would recommend the book for the ideas upon which it is based. I would absolutely have to preface the recommendation by saying that the grammar and writing leaves something to be desired in many instances in the book. Taken as a whole, I enjoyed reading it more than some of the more research based texts that I have read for education because it was a novel. Spencer admits, himself, that there is not really a clear story arc, and it really is more the idea behind the story.  

I really have a benefit of teaching at a school that has already gone through many of the steps that Tom Johnson and his colleagues took in order to integrate technology into their classrooms. Many of the lessons that Mr. Johnson learns in the book are old news to me, as we have gone through the questions and struggles ourselves, at Delaware, and we’ve come out ahead on the other side for the benefit of our students. I think that, more than anything, after reading this book, I just feel overwhelmingly lucky to teach at Delaware Elementary with the staff and students that I get to work with every day. It is evident that not everyone is as lucky.

Appetizing Art Apps

With access to iPods and iPads in the classroom and millions of apps, how do we know which apps are best for our students? When researching, there are many articles detailing the best tested apps for specific needs. This is a good start to finding apps for your students. From there, in my opinion, it is best to test them out yourself. If you know the type of lesson you are wanting to teach your students, you know what type of app will work best! There are many free or very inexpensive apps that are useful in the classroom for all subject areas. As an art teacher, I will be focusing on apps that allow my students to CREATE, with a focus on artistic creation! There are a plethora of apps that are available for this and I will link the title of each app for some of my favorites. I also would like to share some of the best art history and/or interactive apps that are also useful for art lessons.  

Creating and editing iPod/iPad apps:

The Warhol: D.I.Y. Pop

This is a really cool app that lets you create your own pop art. Students can create their own silkscreen just like Andy Warhol did...only digitally! You can upload a picture or take one and go through the whole process of cropping, exposing, under painting, and then sharing. The app also allows students to meet curators from The Andy Warhol Museum who demonstrate silkscreen printing and share inside information on Warhol and his artwork. This is an awesome addition to a pop art or Warhol lesson.  

Type Drawing
This is one of my all time favorite creating apps! It is literally painting with words! Type Drawing allows you to type in a sentence, name, word, or anything you would like and then drawing with the letters you typed in. You can change the font, size, and color or the words in your picture. The pictures can then be shared. This is so fun and creative, I can't imagine anyone not having fun playing around and creating with it. Type Drawing has a Flickr Gallery that is downright AMAZING! I highly suggest you check it out! 

Flip It!

Flip It! allows you to make a flip book with drawing, but on a mobile device! A student can do a simple drawing and then when you add the next page, the previous is faded but still visible so that you can have the movement work to the best advantage for the book. This is a great introduction to animation for students and just fun, overall.

Animoto
Just like the Animoto website online, the Animoto app allows photos to be uploaded and set to music to make interesting movies. I really love that students could use the same device to take pictures and videos, edit, and create a final product without having to transfer to another device. Fantastic app.

123D sculpt

This app allows students to practice the idea of sculpting without having to get so dirty. I do not have a kiln, therefore, it is not as easy for my students to experience sculpting. We use model magic, but it is just not the same as using clay. While this app is also not the same as using clay, students can push, pull, smooth, pinch, grab, flatten, bulge, and paint their creation with the app. They can also take pictures of their work and share them.

Lego photo

Lego photo is just a neat editing tool that turns a photo or picture into one made out of Legos. It is really neat to see the transformation. I really picked this because it is a great connection between our Lego engineering class and art class for our students.

Faces iMake

This app allows students to create a collage type artwork using different objects as opposed to painting or drawing. This is a very important type of art can creation and this app allows for the students to really see how art can be made out of anything. This can be a great addition to any collage lesson in class.

Art History and Interactive iPod touch/iPad apps:

MoMA

The MoMA app has a plethora of information about the artwork housed at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. This app has visual tours, audio tours, kids tours, you can add music to your MoMA tour, take pictures and share them, listen to MoMA podcasts, watch MoMA videos on iTunes, and so much more. This is a fantastic opportunity for students to guide themselves to what is most interesting to them. I love this app for myself and even more for my students!

Love Art: National Gallery, London 

The National Gallery in London app gives students access to artwork that is halfway around the world. The app includes more than 250 works of art that are from the gallery. There are video and audio experiences to accompany the artwork. A really neat aspect of this app is that the images are zoomable are are high resolution. Again, this app is great for letting students be their own tour guide and relate to artwork. 

Louvre

The Louvre app allows students to visit the Louvre museum while at school. The app has over 100 of the artworks that are at the Louvre in Paris available and close up views of the details in the artwork. There are also videos in the app about the Louvre itself and on the artwork it houses. A great accent to a lesson in art history and an exploration that can be guided by students.

PixPop Art

This app is a game that students could play as a way to focus on the skill of observation in relation to art. A student has match a small close up of part of a famous artwork with the part of the larger work of art. They truly have to look at the details in the art in order to match the tokens to the full artwork. This is a great app for the early finishers in class and it incorporates art history and observation.

Whiteboard Collaborative Drawing

This app is a painting/drawing app, but the neatest aspect is that two people can use devices and draw on the "whiteboard" simultaneously! Peer to peer interaction and teamwork at it's finest. Students can also use the app to write as opposed to drawing, if desired. The link is to the free version, but there is a paid version with more options available. My students are always wanting to work together and giving each other pointers on how to improve their artwork and with this they can work together through the magic of Wi-Fi!  

21st Century Learning: Delaware Elementary Style

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The pictures in the video below show the students at Delaware Elementary at their finest! They are working with technology, doing hands-on projects, and collaborating with others. 21st century skills are so widespread that students have to be using multiple skills during every lesson and all of the projects on which they are working. I believe that classes today still need to have a balance of human interaction and group learning, hands on production, and technology use. Our students need to know the technology that they will have to use when they have jobs in the future and we need to prepare them for this, but they will also need to know how to work with people and that should be part of our teaching, as well. 21st Century learning is truly a comprehensive process that requires numerous types of teaching and collaboration such as those shown in this video. Enjoy!

Literacy...How Is It All Connected?

What is literacy? Wikipedia states that it is "the ability to read for knowledge and write coherently and think critically about the written word." There are so many new forms of literacy today that go way beyond reading and writing! We are so lucky to have the technology and information readily available in society today. There are many ways that these types of literacy are interconnected. Below is a graphic that shows the ways that I see the forms of literacy connecting in an almost circular infinite manner. Everyone would likely have a different viewpoint of the connections, this is just what I see!

In addition to the graphic, I have a link to the explanation of why my mind sees the literacy connections this way. I also have a definition of each literacy and an example of how it might be used in a classroom utilizing digital tools. I hope that this opens your world to all the literacy that surrounds us every day! Please click on the"New Literacies...Explained" link below and check it out!

New Literacies...Explained

How to Bridge the Digital Divide

The digital divide has shifted from being having access to technology and the web versus those who do not, to how people are connecting to the internet. While many people used to have no access to the internet in any form, many people now have access through smart phones. This is better than nothing, but it is absolutely not the same as having access through a broadband Wi-Fi connection.  Job applications, submitting resumes, and other necessary tasks can usually only be accessed through computer access. Students that do not have access at home to technology and the internet, for fun or practical purposes, will likely not have the technological literacy that is necessary to function in the digital world. It is our job, as teachers in today’s society, to teach them how to utilize the resources available at the moment. While many schools are still lacking in the technology that would enable the teachers to instruct on the many uses, slowly but surely, we are getting there. Unfortunately, the new digital divide is still leaving some schools behind as new technological resources are developed daily. It seems as though there may always be some sort of digital divide as products and software evolves. My hope is that it will become more common in ALL schools and that the children in schools now will learn how to make the most of the amazing resources available.

As teachers, we need to keep in mind that students need to use technology for more than just a reward. We need them to see the internet and technology as a resource that can be used to learn, not just to play. We also need to ensure that the students are taught how to use netbooks or iPads so that the navigation does not slow them down on researching topics and working on projects. At Delaware, we do not have textbooks. We use netbooks, iPod touches, and iPads as our textbooks. It is imperative that our students know the basic commands of each technology so that they are not bogged down with how to save their work and tasks such as that. As a staff, we have been committed to creating meaningful and practical lessons that are standards based and employ real life situations. We have grade level PLC (professional learning community) meetings to plan and discuss what is needed for grade levels. We also do vertical alignment so that our students know that the expectations of them in class are not going to change year after year. We have seen much success with the programs and reform we are implementing at our school. Not only does having the technology available make planning our lessons fun, it makes them engaging lessons for our students. Using technology at our school is not an infrequent occurrence, but a daily requirement. Our students can make a Prezi (prezi.com) in an instant, as well as many other web applications, and can teach me tons in just one class period when it comes to the digital world. We allow the students to create and contribute to the digital world and they LOVE it. When you think of the jobs that our students are likely to be doing when they graduate both high school and college, technology knowledge is an absolute MUST! The best way to learn and to have it become second nature is to dive right in.

Our collaborative VoiceThread on "Bridging the Digital Divide"

Reaching the 21st Century Learner

Reflecting on “Reaching the 21^st Century Learner,” I definitely think that technology has had a profound effect on the processes that we all take to learn in this digital age. Our world is one of instant gratification and information is, most literally, at our fingertips. So many adults, and even kids, have smart phones that if a question is raised, many instantly go to the internet and find an answer quickly and efficiently. We have a certain amount of reliance on the ease of access to so many resources for information that is sometimes good and others not so great. We should not become so dependent on technology that we lose our creativity and innate knowledge.

I would like to believe that most educational environments are becoming more in tune with the way a 21^st Century learner works. At my school alone, we now have class sets of netbooks, iPads, iPod touches, and Promethean Boards in all rooms. Our students have come to expect that they have the latest and greatest to learn from and they are sometimes the best teachers in the digital worlds.  If students are so interested in the technology of tomorrow, we need to have it accessible for them in order to motivate their learning.  Many people believe that in order to learn the lessons necessary, you must take notes, you must have textbooks, and you must take tests. I am seeing a completely different learning environment at the school where I teach and it is so exciting, for both students and teachers, every day.

I really feel like the terms digital native and digital immigrant are really not as opposite as some would like to believe.  It is truly all about having an open mind and a positive attitude. The majority of my students do not have computers at home and technology in every moment of their lives because their families cannot afford it. However, they are so open to learning about it, they are instantly successful. You will never hear them say, “I can’t,” when working with the technology at our school. They are so persistent and I feel like the adults that are “scared” of technology and would be considered a digital immigrant should take a page from my students’ books. 

I really enjoyed the video interviews, in total, on the PBS: Digital Nation-Life on the Virtual Frontier website. These were very informational and gave great insight into where our students are coming from in the digital world of today. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/

Additionally, I think my best, favorite, and most informative resources on the subject are the students that I work with daily.  They are ever changing and are so open minded about the world we live in.  I learn as much from them every day as I teach them. They are a great motivation and inspiration for learning much about the digital nation.

Digital Natives
by: rldoty