Surprise!!!

as you can see, I'm smiling BIG and having heaps of fun trying out all the gizmos and gadgets on my Canon camera, complements of RESA23Things raffle/drawing... The online class was terrific in and of itself - winning this prize was "icing AND the cherry on top" - THANK YOU!!!!

Thing23

hyped - hyper - higher - and farther - and faster - and full-circle.
This has been quite a journey and I feel like I've become embedded into one of the StarTrek warp-speed scenes. I've advanced lightyears in a matter of hours (sometimes minutes, sometimes DAYS:-)
And I'm so anxious to USE this stuff, to SHARE it with others, to GO FURTHER.

I loved the tutorials, especially those done by CommonCraft's LeeLefever and his flying fingers :-)
The final video by Michael Wesch was eye-opening and inspirational. Great conclusion to this experience.
Thank you, RESA coordinators, for all of your efforts to make this interesting, educational, enlightening, uplifting, rigorous, introspective, and personal!

as you can see from my time-stamp on this posting, I've almost pulled an all-nighter! It's been a few years since that has happened -- but THAT is how 23Things has pulled me in. I am determined to complete it within the time constraints. Next, I'll absorb it and make it truly my own, but in my own time frame... :-)

and again, thank you!!!!

Thing22: getting 'round the YouTube Conundrum

So throughout this entire process of 23Things, I've bemoaned my lack of time. And now, just as I was thinking that things are progressing at a steadier, speedier pace I am now are told about Zamzar, which sounds like a dream-come-true for those of us who have been denied access to YouTube, despite heaps of educationally-sound rationales for why we need that access, but in reality is going to take "almost 45 minutes" to download the forbidden fruit from YouTube so we can embed it into our blog... (yes, that is quite a run-sentence -- but how can I come up for breath when time is of the essence ?? :-)
I guess if I were reallllllly desperate to show something to my students or fellow-teachers from YouTube, Zamzar provides the answer.
[sudden scarey thought: could Zamzar be a distant relative of Zangle perhaps?]

Day2 for Thing22: I've tried out Zamzar and it actually took only ten minutes for the first conversion to reach my email, fifteen minutes for the second, and less than ten for the third. HUZZZAHHHH!!! but I imagine on a busy day, the wait-time would be much much longer as the tutorial in 23Things warned us about.

This was saved as a wvm. I know it opens on my computer but a clip downloaded from Zamzar as a flv version would not open directly from the download while on my computer. So I'll play the scientist and experiment by adding it here to see if it opens while in Blogger:

Thing21: Tubin'

So YouTube really isn't the five-headed monster that it's made out to be by those in places of authority, eh? And TeacherTube and SchoolTube are the fair-haired children, safe to open to classrooms. At least, that's the impression I get from our district's ban on YouTube but open-doors for TeacherTube and SchoolTube.
I've seen numerous YouTube productions over the past few years. My favorite is Women in Art and that's where I've left my comment, the same one that I've had with the same question I've been asking with no answers yet. We'll see if THIS time I get an answer to my query about HOW it was created, now that I'm an official member of YouTube...

This embedded video begs another question: Is it ART?



What do you think?

Thing20: It's all coming together now

So I've spent too many minutes figuring out how to get the feed from the Freep news to settle into my Bloglines reader (but persistence/stubborness and ingenuity/desperation paid off in the end). And I've cleaned out my feeds and added tags and reader tag links from delicious to Bloglines reader. THAT is what I think is going to be a true god-send for my time management and rssing. I need to devote more time to making that more efficient by being more specific with my tagging - and THEN the payoff will be huge for saving me time and energy in keeping up and finding relevant links.

Thing19: del.icio.us is exactly that!

WHY didn't I know about this years ago?????? so now I get to go into the four main computers in my life and export those hours and hours worth of websites that I've garnered over the years so that I can access them from ANYwhere in the future!!!!

I've created an account in the name of artsmartone and have started furnishing my space there with 87 links, several of which are public, with more on the way. I need to develop more tags for them to make them more specific and easier to find, but for now, art will have to cover it.

Again, this is something that can make team teaching, collaborative teaching, student accountability, and just plain old daily life so much more well-rounded (because others can fill in the gaps with websites that you haven't yet tripped over) organized and easily accessed (because of the tagging)!!!! I'm thrilled to know about it now and can't wait to share it with my fellow-teachers, friends, and others.

Thing18: Tagging Intro

NOW you tell me!!!! well, better late than never (yet again:-)
I am so glad that I decided to NOT yet do my bookmark-make-over in Trailfire yet!!!!
Delicious is awaiting me instead!!!!
My only concern at this point is how easily will I create tags that a/I remember and b/are "common" enough to be user-friendly not only to myself but "others" in that social community that is being promoted here?

Thing17: Visual and Creative Thinking SlideShow

Visual and Creative Thinking:What We Learned From Peter Pan and Willy Wonka

From: themoleskin, 6 months ago

| View | Upload your own

Presentation on Visual and Creative Thinking. The presentation explores how professional in all fields can apply creative and visual thinking skills to their work as well as why people ignore the talents that made them naturally creative as children. He will discuss the myths that people hold about creativity, why they exist and how you can overcome them.


SlideShare Link

Thing17: Slideshare

Well THAT was an adventure!!! I could spend the rest of the night viewing intriguing slide shows!!!!!! pass the popcorn!!!!
However, I did post one of the most pertinent slideshows that I discovered to my blogsite here and now, begrudgingly (because I really DO want to view more of these slideshows!), I shall continue on with the next Thing.

Thing16: More Toys (aka Online Productivity Tools)

I selected Trailfire since I've been collecting artsy websites forEVER and this promised to be something that I could finally call "home" for my collection. It's going to take some time to get them switched over and I'm running up against the deadline of getting all 23Things completed, so the organizational side of this will be put on hold for a bit.

HOWEVER, Trailfire is installed, alive, and thriving with three new sites that I discovered in exploring its potential and I'm thankful (again) to the 23Things coordinators for placing it in my path.

I think that Trailfire is something that my students, especially my independent study students, can use to document their online searches for their assorted areas of interest - and share their trails with me as they go - and I think that this is a very practical, useful tool that most teachers would find helpful to create for themselves, for their students, and by their students for a zillion educationally-sound reasons. I plan on sharing this concept with my fellow-teachers at the next in-service meeting.

(image: Ikluft)

Thing15 Google Docs Rocks

This opened a new world to me. It might even resolve the labor-intensive/time-consuming issue I have of finding students' documents and images (that they are submitting for credit) on our network server. If that is the case, then I owe the 23Things coordinators my eternal gratitude (or my first-born child?:-) because it will save me hours and hours of time searching through layers and layers of folders and emails!!!!!! I can't wait to test-drive it in September!!!!

Thing14 Final Thoughts on Podcasting

Like most terrific concepts that I encounter along the way, I have filed the sources/tutorials/tips for podcast production in a place easily accessed (my computer) and will have it waiting in case I find a need for it in the future (see, I do not discount most possibilities when I am faced with ideas that have potential for practical use, no matter how remote their actual implementation may seem in the current moment.)
However, I believe that my role in podcasting will be that of consumer and sharer. There is so much I already have to pack into my one semester with each batch of my students and this podcasting is something that I don't think will fit that time frame. HOWEVER, the video production teacher and the drama and speech teacher might be the ones I need to share my new-found podcast motherlode with and that IS something I can fit into my schedule :-)
As for obstacles I anticipate in my district, the only thing that comes to mind is the filter/blocking issue. Other than that, it's a great curriculum strengthener and an awesome PR builder, so I can't imagine finding any folks in the front offices that would be anything but supportive and thrilled if staff and students jumped on board with this.

Thing13 My search is on for art podcasts

Surprise! First hit! Education Podcast Network http://www.epnweb.org/index.php?openpod=13#16 has heaps and heaps of visual arts podcasts. However, there is a huge red warning that "appropriateness of content" may be an issue. That means that I cannot blithely send my students out into this world of podcasts because of the potential dangers that lurk in cyberspace... but I probably don't have to worry too much since our school network's filter prohibits even the most inoccuous of web searches...

SECOND hit! another treasure is discovered: Academic Aesthetic http://www.epnweb.org/index.php?request_id=34&openpod=13#anchor13 a keeper. I've added it to my Bloglines RSS list.

My trip to Podcast Alley resulted in several potential possibilities. But time time time is not my friend so I'm inserting the link here to visit/explore more later http://www.podcastalley.com/search.php?searchterm=visual+art

Yahoo gave me only three options and the one I clicked on gave me a yahoo warning that it might be trouble, so I didn't continue to check it out.

So the results of my searching for podcasts that I can use in my classroom reveal that I do have many many options and I think that I'm going to turn this into a road-rally-in-cyberspace assignment for my students this coming fall. And I'm finally eager to visit Bloglines! I want to read more from that RSS link to the Academic Aesthetic. I feel there's a kindred spirit there...

Thing12 Podcast Intro

hmmm... listening instead of visualizing art?? podcasts??? I'm not so sure that this is the direction I need to be heading, but I'm open to taking a look-see (or should I say, keep my ears open to what might be out there for me :-)

Background for folks who may be reading my blog and might be as unfamiliar with the term as I was: As explained in 23Things, the word podcast comes from a combination of the words iPod and broadcast. And as this hootenanney [60's-talk] clip, You Don't Need an iPod, explains, it is quite a common and easily accessible method of communication nowadays: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpciLIA0Kn4

Probably more appealing to the current batch of high school students that I teach would be this Ninja version of quickly explaining "podcast": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEmss2lg-ug
Listening to the honors chemistry podcast commercials triggered a thought that I could have my basic design students create infomercials about color harmonies... verbalizing concepts that are typically grasped by visual representation would be challenging but the delivery format would make that challenge fun to implement.

Several podcasts I tried to visit didn't cooperate in downloading/uploading... (I believe it's my quicktime, not their podcast.)

Speaking of what I believe, one site for podcasting, Digital Voices, has a space dedicated to This I Believe. I found that it was well-worth the search to get here and the time to listen as 46 high school students speak clearly and powerfully about what they believe about their life, their country, their society, etc. https://digitalvoices.wikispaces.com/space/filelist

The National Gallery of Art has a variety of podcasts available as well as rss feeds: http://www.nga.gov/podcasts/index.shtm

So my initial skepticism over podcasting having any relevance to what I teach is definitely being pushed aside as possibilities and potential become increasingly more promising...

Thing11 PS

The Wikispaces Support Team is awesome!!! In less than 24 hours they resolved my ad issue on the second space that I opened for my students and gave me a heads-up on how to handle additional spaces that I may want to set up in the future.
So all's well that ends well in All Things Wiki Thing11.
I'm anxious to get my kids started on those wiki topics. Emailing them an invitation to begin it now over summer break might be just the nudge they need to get started on their summer drawing assignments... :-)

Thing11 All Things Wiki

Eureka! I have not just one, but TWO wikispaces!!! The first one went through without a hitch:

http://icandrawstickmenquotesart.wikispaces.com/ -- and I played with font and style and color and even added a couple hyperlinks.

But the second one: http://artsmartone.wikispaces.com/ is giving me a bit of a headache... Ads are appearing despite the fact that I checked in as an educational K-12 space. So now I need to backtrack and untangle it. But in the meantime, I'm putting in a rough draft of what I'm entering here for Thing11's reflections.

Wikis hold the promise of focused discussion/input from a select few or the entire world, depending on how the organizer sets its parameters. Blogging is more like a dear-diary thing (said with all due respect to those whose blogs are places of highly intelligent conceptualization and far-reaching scope.)

I wish wikis had come into my life SOOOO much sooner to facilitate a wide variety of event-planning and lesson-enrichment. But better late than never, eh?

Thing10

I love the possibilities of this site: Main Page - wikiHow
I'm promising myself to revisit this summer so I can explore and linger awhile. In the meantime, I'm dreaming about what topics I'm not only going to read from others but what I can contribute to the mix.
And then there's this prize: a large collection of wikis organized in (what would you expect?) a wiki! http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/Examples+of+educational+wikis
Which I WILL look over in more depth over those precious summer months that are just around the corner...
In the meantime, hindsight is 20/20 and all that but if only I'd known about wikis when doing group work in grad school and planning all those bridal showers and wedding showers and and and... makes me almost look forward to doing it again soon. :-)

Thing9

ImageGenerator was frustrating (as evidenced by my entries for Thing8)but once I got to Big Huge Labs, it was smoooooth sailing.
I can see the Big Huge Labs site used for introductory image transferring work with my students as well as creating fundraiser products and school spirit items for clubs.
This Thing was fun fun fun!!!

The REAL Thing8 (I hope)

8

I'm determined to get this figured out, so here I go again. Let's see if it "takes" this time... THAT was the challenge of this particular venture: determining exactly how to get it to show up in my posting. I'm still not thrilled with it - it's too large for space, but I don't know how to format it to fit properly.
In trying out the various Flickr fun, I can see the charm of the various activities. But they are a bit too basic for the effects that my kids who use the graphics lab for their artwork expect to accomplish. Also complicating the situation is that Flickr can't be accessed on our school computers.
An alternative to the Flickr Mosaic is something called AndreaMosaic which uses one's own photos at several levels of sophistication. I use it as a digital photography project to get my students to use the digital camera in concert with their original drawings and paintings.

Thing8 again

8
I think I jinxed myself with the first entry about thing 8:
It's supposed to be my FlickrPlay-time but it's more like FlickrBlackHole-time! Help!!!

Oh WOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!! The preview button worked magic!!!
I SEE Thing8!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SUCCESS!!!!

Thing8

Inserting images is a breeze, from whatever source... here's some I found on our department's digital camera, leftover from student portfolio preparation... it's good to know that inserting visuals to a blog is perhaps the simplest operation of all!

Thing7

Photos are loaded. Tough finding some school photos that don't include students' shining smiling faces. Had an interesting dramatic moment with Flickr when it decided to spontaneously change my user name to something I most definitely did NOT type into the registration window. So now I'm paranoid about cyberintruders accessing my space (I know, I know - I have a very vivid imagination!)

Tagging went smoothly. And it's fun to see all the other photos there with resa23 tags. Can you imagine the HUGE collection for us to peruse, by the time we all get through this?

I am still skeptical of keeping photos, whether for family or for school, open to public viewing when the images are of people...

Thing6

Interesting search at Flickr. I am amazed at how many folks open their private lives so freely to the public - and I share the concern expressed by other 23Thing folks about kids being open to potential exploitation from internet stalkers.

I selected this photo for many personal reasons as well as the immediate impression it made on me with its high contrast of life unfolding, both as ancient and new life forms.

I currently use Picasa and formerly, YahooPhotos, so uploading and downloading images is old news for me. Flickr is similar in concept. So I'm grateful that this Thing6 is a task easily accomplished today.

Thing5

it's good feeling / finding that I'm a tad bit ahead of the game: When working my way through Thing4, I managed to figure out how to get a couple links to pertinent blogs set up - but of course, I'd done it the hard way. No matter - at least I did it.

The clips in these Things are very helpful and give just enough chunk of information that I can process without feeling overwhelmed. The three methods of getting feeds to my RSS worked out very well. A challenge I'm having is finding sites that I want to use that are RSS-able.

As expressed in a comment on Thing5 by someone who uses his RSS to get to links not directly accessible from the school browser, I am hoping that I'll find my way to links otherwise "forbidden" by our school filters because of the word "art" or "image" being such a no-no all too frequently when searching online from my classroom. (and looking back at that statement makes me feel like one of my students trying to sneak onto a game site while knowing I'm expecting them to be researching some important art technique :-)

And I still don't understand why my Thing4 posting is written in invisible ink - I've edited it to change its text color but I still can't see it. It will be interesting to see if THIS posting does the same thing or not. I have my fingers crossed now as I his that orange Publish Post button!

Thing4

WHEWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

I have finallllly made it through that jungle of Bloglines RSSing.
It's like one of the video games that my sons play - only it's reality. Almost too much reality to take in this week. Despite near-death-homecomputer-crashes, accidentally closing windows that I still needed open and having to start all over again from square one, redundant subscriptions and sign-ups and screw-ups and other assorted nonsense, I've conquered!!!! My four folders exist and I can move on to Thing5.
I'll reserve judgment on how frequently I'm actually going to visit/read those things in my Feed list... can't imagine how I'll find any time to look at them much, but I'll confess: some of them sure look tempting!

Thing 3

I've spent soooo much time on this Thing!!! I have to learn to control my curiosity, I guess, because I got way too lost by following links and reading while looking at others' blogs. It's just so INTERESTING!!!!! and I learned ALOT!!!!
I guess that's the moral of this story on Thing3: by blogging with/for the students, everyone will travel to all kinds of unknown as well as planned-for subjectmatter... and horizons will be broadened in ways not imagined at the beginning.

Thing 1 and 2

...when I first heard the term "blog" I conjured images of facing off teethgnashing monsters and finding myself being swallowed in quicksand... two experiences I hope to get through life without. Then a few months ago my daughter, now living too far from "home" in Scotland, decided to keep up with family correspondence by starting a blog of her own - and I suddenly found myself avidly reading her blogs (from Blogger! talk about small world even in cyberspace, eh?) And now here I am, actually writing my own!!! Life does have a way of coming full circle. And I'm grateful that thus far, there's not been any quicksand - but I'm not sure yet about the teeth-gnashing.

I didn't hesitate when I read about the 23Things opportunity (thank you, WayneCounty RESA!) I jumped on it immediately. I want to keep up with my kids - my students. I want to keep pace with the world in which I live. What a thrill for me "back in the day" to walk down the street with my transistor radio jammed up to my ear - and now the kids beg to have the opportunity to listen to their Ipod while creating their artwork. Dimes for payphones and long tangled telephone cords to trip over from the kitchen wall phone have given way to cell phones on which kids today can text fifteen of their friends in the same amount of time it takes me to realize their cell phone is on in class and that I must enforce the school's policy that bans them. And the beat goes on...

When I, as art student, made an error in my drawing and tore a hole in the paper erasing for the fourth time, I had to begin all over again. Today I encourage students to scan their battered sketch into the graphics lab computer and use the waicom tablet to work it out on the screen, printing it when done. When I need them to understand concepts like visualization and cropping their subject while familiarizing themselves with photoshop and a digital camera, I send them out to learn their ABCs from a new perspective - a project that used to be done with old magazines, scissors and too much glue.

Do I still believe in mastering shading values into a portrait with charcoal or Ebony pencil? You betcha. Do I continue to teach painting techniques and do my kids take penned notes on paper and keep up with on-going sketchbook assignments? Most definitely. But I am partnering the hands-on hand-crafting with the hands-on computer work that I believe can make original art become even more relevant to the life and style of today's student. And the more I understand that cyber life and style, the more I can make a difference to my kids.

I think it was Gertrude Stein who said, "Art isn't everything, it's just about everything..." and that means I have to know where to go for everything -- and these days, that means a daily trip to cyberspace. So here I am. Thanks again for the invitation, WCRESA.