Aesthetics?

It may be simply because of the long history that has been conditioned into part of my conception of art, but I feel that aesthetics are relevant. If beauty, even going against it, is part of the conversation at all traditional aesthetics still have a role. They cannot be taken out, and I am for progressing the model, but wary or curious of where the new relevance stems from. Which in turn may be due to the uncertainty that comes with paradigm shifts. The conversation in class was very stimulating though, and I think important to us as artist and art educators. Aesthetics is a term thrown around without definition. We have the task of putting words to the visual.

Post Mod

              The readings from Barret were nice reviews, but I think more appropriate for introducing high school students to post modern ideas and analyses. At this level of education and this far into the program, I felt almost insulted reading something so simplified. I admit, I scanned, because nothing new caught my eye. I don't know how many times I've seen the same things reiterated now throughout my coursework. Of course, it's probably a good thing everything remains so connected and that I feel this comfortable with the information, but I didn't feel stimulated. 

            And that guy, Bloom. Him and his taxonomy, that thing is everywhere. I'm aware of few other approaches, and they seem very similar. Is Bloom's just the more concise/modern one?

I found a presentation for the taxonomy that may be useful:
 http://prezi.com/5i9erqvyfbue/teaching-taxonomies/

And here, Anderson and Krathwohl have an updated version (2000)
 http://www4.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/curric/newtaxonomy.htm

Gaming

         Reading about morally and thematically conscious gaming was interesting, and I recognized a number of the games that were being mentioned as examples. I talked about this element of gaming later on with my boyfriend, and he felt that this kind of consideration in games, video and otherwise, was always an added richness for the game. Not necessarily because it was ethically responsible, but such considerations add a sense of complete atmosphere for a game, allowing the player to be more fully immersed in a world that includes even these subtle nuances of real-life issues.

I came across this blog, related in that it seems to compile ethical benefits of gaming. The background of the author is interesting, read the brief about page.
Something I found on the blog:

Gude Digication

After looking at the lessons from the Spiral Workshop, I also found Olivia Gude's digication account. It has lessons from Spiral as well as other resources. Digication is also a resource that we can all use, assuming you have an NAEA membership. It's an online portfolio more or less, but very customizable and you can chose to frame it in whatever way suits you. This is Gude's.