Following up from my previous post, I’ve also been trying to set up my units with an overarching task, which guides and pushes students to create their final product and overall guides the course of the unit. However, I and we (meaning the school), view their process work as equally as their finished end product or solution. Investigative and research work are documented and required to show their growth and knowledge. I try to apply it to the real world, but to be honest, I still need to refine and develop some. Here is a taste of a few that I have done so far:

Grade 8 Art Unit on Character Illustration Task: You work for Pixar! Pixar are about to develop an animated feature film based on Typography. You will be assigned a typeface.  Pixar requires you to personify your font into a human character. You will need to think both creatively and critically. You will need to research your font, gather resources for inspiration, develop several thumbnails for your character in a variety of styles and then decide on the final one.

Grade 8 Technology unit on MashUps Task: You will create a remix or mashup of your choice. You should recombine elements from published works in a new, thoughtful way. Your mashup may focus only on the visual, video or audio only, or both. Your product should correctly follow fair use policy and not infringe or plagiarise. You should consider where you will find or gather your source material and the technical tools required to complete the task. What technical skills do you think you will need to learn? You should also evaluate the purpose and character of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used and the effect of the use on the market for the original. Depending on your creation, your video should be no less than 30 seconds and no longer than is appropriate for its type (if you’re making a movie trailer, they generally run 60 seconds. Music videos tend to be the length of the song.)

Grade 7 Technology unit on Minecraft Task: You are a member of an engineering team in a virtual environment! Your team wishes to create a new development for a theme park. Each team is creating a themed street or area of the theme park. Each individual is responsible for creating a structure in that street/area. Your engineering team must negotiate with the rest of the class as to how to organise and unify all the group work together. You will need to work collaboratively and cooperatively. What roles, jobs, duties and responsibilities will this require? You will also need to investigate the Minecraft environment and record findings on how it works and possibly share your research and investigations onto a wiki (time permitting). Your structure will also require investigation into function, appearance and design. You will document your work and progress weekly in your Design Folder with notes and screenshots. Good luck!

It’s been a whirlwind 2 weeks for me. I’ve just returned from a 5 day trip with about 50 grade 7 students from the Kamikochi area (Flickr set) near Nagano. Prior to that, I attended the Learning 2.012 conference in Beijing. Overall, the conference was great and I’ll make another post about that in the near future. Whilst there, I gave a presentation entitled “Deconstructing to Construct: Visual Literacy through Image and Media Analysis.” Daily we are bombarded by visual and media messages with students and teachers increasingly becoming creators of content on the web. Basically, everyone is now a designer.

My presentation focused on the theory of how to analyse media, which in turn can strengthen your own content or message, be it for design or manipulative purposes. The outcomes of my presentation were to:

• Explore criteria to analyse images and media.
• Identify strategies for how this can be introduced to students.
• Identify techniques for planning and implementing this practice in lessons.

The Value of Visualization from Column Five on Vimeo.

My grade 8 tech class are currently on a unit that involves slide design and giving presentations. We’ve looked at different presentation styles such as TED, Ignite, Pecha Kucha and RSA (and RSA Animate). Next week they’ll begin focusing on slide design and to prep them for this, I’ve created the slideshow below, based on the popular book by Garr Reynolds. I’ll also be giving a 5 minute speed geeking session on the topic to staff on Monday. Feel free to use the resource as you see fit. I’ve added my own two cents of information in the second half.

My grade 6s have finished their unit on printing. It was a tight squeeze but we managed to get it done. View the slideshow below or via Flickr here. (More will be uploaded from 2 other classes in the near future.)

If you do anything art related that requires your students to create thumbnail sketches to develop their ideas, check out C.S. Neal’s website illustrating his thumbnails and developmental sketches for a book cover he designed. Well worth a look to show students that 1-3 simple thumbnails are not enough to really explore your ideas.

My grade 6s just had their last art class with me today and they managed to complete the last unit! We looked at shoe designs and were originally going to create them out of papier mache. I decided to slightly revamp the unit as we were running short on time. Instead, they remixed Japanese uwabaki slippers. I’m surprised they finished in the 6 lessons (80 mins. each) that included some research, planning and designing. Have a look at the Flickr set here. I cannot currently embed as I haven’t updated my Edublog account : ( BOO! BOO! Boo! You can also view my week by week lesson plans for the unit here, but they are brief.

Below are some pics of grade 6 student work involving prints. You can also go directly to the Flickr page here. If interested, you can also see what we do in class week by week by going here.

I’ve been busy painting this mural in our school library. The video explains the process a bit. If interested, you can see some photos of designs and the design process via Flickr here. Also see the other smaller mural video here.

(cross posted on my other blog)

This week our grade 12s will be holding their IB Art show at BankART gallery in Yokohama (website-Japanese only). Congrats to the 7 students exhibiting their work, which ranges from painting, ceramics, fashion, graphics and jewelry and more.
View the slideshow of their work (and some set up photos) below or directly through Flickr here.

Here are some lino prints from our grade 7s where they explore patterns, positive & negative space and motifs. You can also view what we did week by week here or visit the Flickr page directly.