Popplet- Interview mapping

Pew research article

The article was a report of statistics in relation to generational internet usage. It looked over things like broadband household use, email use, gaming, social networking, online banking and shopping, all in relation to percentage of generational use. Younger generations, teens and generation Y, dominated in some areas, like entertainment and social networking, while older generations held the majority in activities such as emailing or using the web for health research and online banking. All generations showed in increase in internet use and home broadband. The G.I. generation was the least likely in almost every activity involving the internet. It was interesting to see how the generations compared in their online activity.

Show and tell

 I came across two educationally focused social networks. Classroom 2.0 is non-subject specific, while art education 2.0 is specific for art education. Both sites offer connection with teacher's all over the world, combining the power of social networking with other tools like blogs and media resources. Classroom 2.0 seems a bit more extensive. Both sites are intertwined with other digital extensions, such as twitter and facebook. They offer useful resources for teachers, as far as a space for exchanging ideas and seeing what others do in their lesson plans.


http://www.classroom20.com/
http://arted20.ning.com/

Kellner and Share

   The article focuses on the critical media literacy and how to address it in the classroom. Critical media literacies can be described as lenses for thinking critically through or about media. If I introduce an image of a celebrity, the critical literacy is not simply learning about the celebrity or how to draw the celebrity, but about either how the image reads, why celebrity has importance in our society, what impressions these images imprint on society, etc. The article points out that media and contemporary popular culture is apart of the lives of students. The questions are  how do media enter the class room and what do we do with that aspect of student life? Media undoubtedly enters the classroom. Students bring it in with them, knowingly or not. If the assignment is to create a portrait, what do you do when your student chooses to draw a celebrity, as they often will? There is the choice to ignore it, treat it as any other image and face. But it isn't just any face. It;s a face of celebrity that the student deliberately brought in, after filtering out dozens of other contenders for the assignment. Why this person? Why this pose? This is where the critical literacy can be introduced. The material media is there to work with, the critical literacy is in what you do with that media. And then who does what with the media that students track in on their feet? A separate teacher? Someone in the English or social studies department? Surely every subject area teacher has enough on their hands to pack into lessons, but critical literacies aren't a new subject area separate from all the rest. Because of their critical nature, they can work with any lesson already structured into the class. It asks for a re-framing of information, which can be done by any subject area, albeit more easily in certain some . In visual arts education, critical media literacy is all too easily incorporated into the class. Acknowledge student choices and popular culture instead of ignoring their role in the classroom and the lens of education if re-framed.

art image conversation

I'm not certain who or what to use for this discussion if it's to tie into the larger lesson we do. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing for the larger lesson.

I thought, though, about connecting the book I used to the art discussion. The illustrator is Jon J Muth, who's work is widely published in children's literature. I'm not sure his illustrations would produce much conversation though.

The other interesting thing that using an artist like Muth provides is the potential for dicussing comic books as art works. Muth is also a comic book illustrator.
As is Dave Mckean, another artist I had in mind who also has some experience in children's illustration.

Because some of his work often involved collage, maybe it would provide a greater possibility for connection with the media exploration lesson?
In either case, a predetermined formal discussion of the images would work, and possibly an interpretive thematic discussion.

A more interesting direction might be to go with Jason Hackenwerth, newly discovered for me, who works with large balloon sculptures. I was thinking of maybe working with balloons for the materials exploration, so this could be a good preemptive tie-in.

Blogger is not letting my add any more pictures at this point.

We Make Money Not Art- Jurema Action Plant

 

The Jurema Action Plant uses sensors attatched to the plan to amplify the electrical impulses made by the plant. These amplified signals are then translated into movement that is enacted by the robotic component. When people come close to the plans and try to touch it, the plant moves away from them. The project explores relationships between plant and animal or human connections with technology. How are plans like us? How can they use technology? What does this experiment do to our understanding of sensory in other living organisms?

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2011/10/jurema-action-plant.php

Jenkins

This article was pretty thorough in discussing more or less what the course is based on. It talked about the phenomenon of participatory cultures, focusing on the ones that are created by the internet and digital media. In these participatory cultures, the participants hold a great deal of choice and power in not only how they choose to interact but in how they shape the culture itself. Youth tend to be the largest group in participatory cultures, more than half of the younger generations being apart of participatory cultures in some way. Yet, even though the majority of youth are involved in these circles and learn and interact within them, they are not addressed in an educational setting. As educators it is part of our job to be attentive to what impacts the lives of our students, not only to relate to them but in order to be more informed on what they are doing. learning, and how. Participatory cultures are there, and youth are heavily apart of them. The question, then, is how do educators address this aspect of life? If our job is to prepare students for the world, participatory cultures are certainly a growing part of that world, in what ways do we prepare them in regards to these growing communities? To start, it may help to be more familiar with them ourselves. Jenkins provides also a set of skills that youth can learn from these modes. These and other skills, though, might not be cognitively acknowledged by youth without the proper guidance and context to provide a lens through which to see the skills and their value. That is where education comes in. By working with participatory cultures and their various interfaces, educators will enhance the likelihood of students taking away world-skills from these experiences while also being more engaged by an interface that they use daily outside of school.

One thing I questioned int he article was the lack of awareness that was put upon the youth, or students. An example was given or a teacher trying to use the historically based game Civilization to teach a concept tied to history. Instead the students took from the experience the understanding that what took place in the game was factual history, which is not the case. The point is that students do not usually abstract for themselves the concepts that can be taken from participatory cultures. I disagree to some extent. I think more youth than are given credit for are able to realize that a game is not the same as fact or reality, that a person online is not the same as a person in the real world, that theatrical violence is not the same as real violence, even if they are unable to articulate as to why this is. That why is where attention should be focused, but I think youth can usually discern reality differences without help.