WebXams

This week at work we are having "review sessions" on the WebXam that our students will be taking at the end of the course. WebXams have been a bit of a struggle since my first year teaching. The exams never seem to align with what we teach or align with the standards we are teaching from. It is interesting to me that myself (the art teacher) gives the same exam that the IT teacher gives. When this has been brought up to our supervisors they agreed that it needed to be changed... when further looking into this change, it was not possible because it all came down to funding. The IT strand of classes receives more funding than the Digital Communications strands of classes and so we are coded as an IT class.

I do understand that everything comes down to funding, but wish that we could do what is best for kids. Because of this ongoing debate my district is having all of the staff look at the exams and see where there are gaps and how we can modify these tests to better align with the curriculum we teach. We will be taking these tests this week and I am curious to see what will really change. If we come back and say they still don't align... what can they do? They will not change our strand because of the funding and we have to give these tests... so there is really nothing they can do. It seems as though the teachers are put in a position where we can not really make a difference but they want us to feel as if we could.

Spreadsheets/ Data

This weeks topic was on data and spreadsheets so I will reflect on how I take grades and use spreadsheets in my class...

As far as grading goes I let ProgressBook do most of the work for me. ProgressBook is an online system that my district uses across the board so that every teacher inputs grades into the same system. It does all of the calculating as far as interim grades and averages etc. Something that I do not deal with is weighted grades. I know some colleges that use weighted grades and I am not sure I even fully understand the math behind it... I work my grades into point values. Each project is worth a different amount of points according to the difficulty and time it takes to complete a project. The points are all added up in ProgressBook and it spits out their grade.

I do use Google Sheets (excel) for my SLO data and various field trip or collection check offs. I like how it keeps everything organized and it is so easily shared with anyone. I can share the list with the secretary and all the teachers and that way instantly they know who is attending the field trip and it is automatically updated with the current list of names. I think Google Docs and Sheets has really helped in this way because I do not have to have multiple copies and send different versions of the same document.

I think I use spreadsheets more for myself and not necessarily in my classroom or for students. They make sense to me but I'm not sure if my students could decipher my thought process sometimes. Spreadsheets are great tools to collect evidence for OTES and for my personal use of organization.

ASL Club

The topic of this weeks blog post is not necessarily classroom related but it is something that has been on my plate recently that I wanted to reflect on. One of my smart goals for the year was to have more leadership roles in my building. I had some students approach me about running a sign language club after school and I loved the idea! I took ASL in high school as my foreign language and have always had a love for sign because I have a deaf aunt that has been in my life forever. I loved this idea and was hoping other students would love to join.

The club has been meeting every other Tuesday and we have had an amazing turn out! I would say on average we have 15-20 students a week. I am so proud of my "presidents" because they have been running everything. I put them in charge and they have new material planned for every week, they have made t-shirts and organized the ordering and the money and we already have them! I feel like the facilitator in the room and the students run the show! I love to see students learning sign and getting passionate about deaf culture.

Right now we are deciding what direction this club is going... is this going to be just for fun to learn some signs or would they like to preform at basketball games and go on local deaf outings. I am not sure how that will end out but we will see... I'm excited that this has taken off. It has fulfilled my smart goal of the year but its also really fun!

Observation

This week I had my second observation from my supervisor. One of my goals for this year is to create more student led projects and have student led discussions. My supervisor and district have been pushing this idea for some time and so I decided to make it one of my smart goals for this school year. I attempted this for my observation...

Overall I think it went really well and the students enjoyed leading the class. I had each student present information they found on an artist that uses Illustrator. This was used as the introduction to the unit the students will have on Illustrator. After the presentations I talked with the students on what their thoughts were on leading the class and if they would like to do this more often...

The students responses were that they are not comfortable talking about something they don't know. (I agree with them) They don't feel like they could lead the class in learning these techniques and the software because they have no prior knowledge on the subject matter or software skills. This is something that I have been trying to explain to my district for some time now. It is hard for me to let the students teach each other when they don't know what they are doing, and if they just guess, then everyone will be learning the wrong thing.

I know that a lecture style class every day is not ideal, and I try to mix it up and give the students plenty of other opportunities to learn and make it fun... but peer teaching in my classroom is very challenging. When I can I allow the students to "present"... I hope that my supervisor sees it the same way...

Parents

This week the battle was parent/teacher conferences... I was preparing all week the students work and grades so I would be prepared to discuss with the parents how their child was doing in my class. The parents have to sign up online and of course not all do, but I have about 8 conferences scheduled. I have had some difficult parents this year and I was concerned that the conferences would not go well but I was pleasantly surprised.

Each conference starts out with an explanation of their grades and showing them the work that their child has created thus far and if they have any questions of course. I let the parents lead the discussion and ask anything they want. It was surprising this week that almost every conversation turned into guidance on what school their child should attend and what software they should purchase.

I had a lot of discussions about the new Adobe CC monthly subscriptions student discount. I think this is a great deal for students to be able to work at home and the parents were very interested. My classroom just switched this year to CC and I am hoping it will not change soon. It seems that each year the software is updated and there is something new to learn! I don't think this will ever stop but I am hoping CC will stick around for awhile.

I always find it so interesting that the parents are not aware of the technology their children are using. The child is always more tech savvy than the parent. I think this is something that is "known" but is always an interesting conversation.

Technology Everywhere!

Ever since I have started this class it seems that technology is integrated into so many things in my day to day life. Of course technology is a huge part of my curriculum and the class that I teach but it seems that these "extra" activities that keep coming across my plate are technology integrated. My district has just "recruited" myself and three other teachers to demonstrate innovative technology to another district. It seems that my art education degree is getting pushed to the side and technology is taking over...

I try to keep my class as much of an art class as I can, but there is constant pressure of focusing on the software, and how technology is helping the students, that the art is getting lost. I had an advisory committee meeting last week and the industry could not stress to us enough the importance of drawing and that they are looking for students with fine art skills. I would love to teach drawing but unfortunately that is not a part of the standards that align with the curriculum that I must teach. The funding is better in the Technology strand and so my class is coded under "Information Technology". So something that the students need to know is something that I can not "technically" teach them. It feels like such a double standard that I have to carry an art education degree and yet art is not a part of my curriculum.

This is a back and forth internal struggle that I go through very often... that's my rant for the evening!

Group Presentations

I wanted to reflect tonight on group presentations. Group presentations in a classroom setting and most recently a group presentation coordinated all online. The group assignment and class discussion that I participated in last week was such an interesting experience. I have done many group assignments but none that were all online and working with people I have never seen! I was nervous at first as to how the communication would work and if that would cause the group to crumble. I was pleasantly surprised that it was quite easy to communicate and coordinate what we were doing. Everyone expressed their thoughts and ideas and got along great!

As usual, this is reflected right now in my classroom. My students have just started a group assignment and I have already received parent emails and student emails of silly drama and conflicts. I try to explain to my students that they will have to learn how to work with people no matter what they pursue for their future. They think that they can just "work with friends" and that is not always the case and honestly not realistic. I hope to be able to resolve the conflicts and maybe split up the groups and comfort the parent...

Group projects are always something my students dread and I hope to turn their attitudes around. I have had wonderful experiences with group assignments and of course I have had the latter. Managing groups and working in groups seems to be the theme of the week for me.

5 Image Stories

Thoughts on the 5 image story assignment...

This assignment was something I was excited for! I was looking forward to being creative and taking pictures. I have seen this assignment before but I have never attempted it myself. I was torn on what I wanted to do and had some different ideas... My first idea was to take my nieces to a pumpkin patch and show the story of them picking out their first pumpkin. Then I started thinking of other things to photograph with them and I ended up just playing with them and documenting an average day, I was disappointed at first because I didn't get to do my original idea but it ended up being beautiful in its simple kind of way.

Then I was thinking about throwing clay on a pottery wheel and documenting the cycles that the clay takes to go from clay to finished piece. Ceramics is a personal hobby of mine and I thought it would be nice to show something personal and also a different art form.

I ended up using the glass blowing because it was such an amazing opportunity and something so unique. I love the process and it is also something that looks really sweet in photographs!

So I was kind of all over the place with this assignment but really enjoyed it! I found it so interesting to see other classmates and how they approached this project. Some students told a sports story, others were more serious topics such as smoking and their pregnancy stories... It is always fascinating to see how people approach a project. I would have never thought of those ideas and it was really nice to see all the different solutions.  

OER

Open Educational Resources really has my interest... I had heard of this term briefly before taking this class but not really known all of the definitions. The video that we watched explaining how Open Education would affect so many students made me wonder why anyone would not support this movement. If you have the students best interest at heart, this seems like a "no-brainer" situation to me. If schools all over the world can be giving all the students the same information and have a unified curriculum, I think that would be great. I can see textbook companies having a problem with this and all of the small curriculum corporations... but that shouldn't be a reason for not doing what is best for the students.

Right now a problem that my school is facing is that the curriculum between buildings and teachers is so different that the students are graduating with such different levels of education. We are also having students favor one teacher over another that teach the same content... how can this be if they are teaching the same class? Come to find out the teachers are making up the curriculum as they see fit and there is no uniform way of instruction or what is given to the students.

This gets tricky for my class because there is no curriculum at the state level for my class. My colleagues and I have made our entire curriculum based on what we think meets our content standards. If there was a resource for my class that was free and aligned with all other districts, I think that would be great. I can see how this could be difficult with pleasing so many teachers and people wanting to do it there own way, but it would at least give us somewhere to start. It is so hard making up a class from nothing.

This has not been brought up in our district yet but it wouldn't surprise me if this was something that was discussed.

Software Used

For this first Blog assignment we were asked to investigate a software application and explain why or why not we can use it in our classrooms. This discussion has perfect timing because my district has been battling with these issues for the past two years. I want to bring in some of my personal experiences with the licensing and distribution of Adobe software products, and also Adobe Certified testing.

In my classroom my students use the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. (I teach Digital Media Arts) This is the first year we are using CC (Creative Cloud) and there have been a lot of discussions and confusion regarding our licensing to use this product between 3 satellite locations. In the past my district has had to purchase the software and the software was only able to be used on the machines in my lab by students that were registered in my class. When Adobe came out with "the cloud" I was really excited! Does this mean my students will have access to Photoshop at home? All you need is a computer and the password right? We were told this would be possible... but it is not.

When my district purchased the CC Suite Adobe put restrictions on the machines and the amount of students that were able to access the software. Because of the package that was purchased my students are still not able to access these programs at home. I find it really frustrating that these software applications are becoming more reasonable ($30 a month for the entire suite!) and my students are still not getting the benefits of the switch. Other teachers and myself included were given this false hope that if we started using CC that our students would be able to access this from home and when it came down to it, they are not. This was something that was purchased out of my control and of course I wish there was more discussion with the teachers before this package was purchased.

Another form of licensing that I am dealing with this year is having my students sit for an Adobe Certification Test. My district is pushing for all of our students to be certified before graduation in one application from their program. We spoke to Certiport Testing and asked that our classrooms be considered testing sites... Again with the package that was purchased for our district there is much confusion on what we can and can not do. One school can have unlimited testing of practice tests and real tests, while another school only has so many pre-purchased tickets and when they use them up, they're gone. Again this was done out of my control, but the content of the class this week really has me thinking about this more and I want to do some investigation of my own...

A final comment on the copy-write laws is that this comes up in my class with using other artists work as your own. My students must take all original photographs and images because of these restrictions we learned about this week. I am sure that there are ways we could use images offline but I feel like that would not be teaching my students the valuable lesson of making your own work. This topic this week was really interesting to me and I'm glad I got to learn more about the details of what is appropriate and what is not appropriate.

Adobe Creative Cloud
Certiport Testing
 

Welcome!

My first personal blog!