Arts (Education) Advocacy and Web 2.0
Working with my fantastic colleague, Sara Wilson McKay, I am thinking of ways to use Web 2.0 for Art (Education) Advocacy. In thinking about how Web 2.0 and [e]merging media might be meaningful to our field, we thought about how teachers could use these technological tools to effectively advocate for the importance of what we do in our classrooms. Below are a few ideas that I'm working from. Please let me know if you have any other ideas or see flaws with these.
Use a blog instead of a newsletter. Keep it update weekly or monthly so parents can know what is going on in your classroom.
Use podcasts at student art shows. Allow students and parents to bring their iPods and download the files so that they can hear the student artists discussing their artworks and the meaning of them. Also, have students discuss what they learned by making the artwork.
Create a social network page on facebook, myspace, or better yet, in the ning Art Ed 2.0 community as your "teacher" personality or perhaps about your artroom. Keep this a place for your professional friends, students, and parents only. Allow them to know what is happening in your room, but keep this separate from your personal social networking site.
Comments
I really like the idea of using podcasts to provide a dynamic student gallery experience. It's similar to how museums are using podcast for tours, but with the added touch of the creator of each piece of artwork giving context to the work. Also, with an enhanced podcast it allows parents or anyone who downloads the podcast to see the show even if they were not able to make it. Podcast could also be a great way to do an artist report. Imagine having a library of student produced podcast as an art history resource.
I recently did a paper toy lesson with 6th graders utilizing a website as a way to share my students creations and to foster community interaction. The students created paper toy templates which we scanned and uploaded to the site. The templates could then be downloaded, printed and built into paper toys. To help generate traffic to the site, we made invitations for students to give to their friends and families. I'm not sure how many people visited the site, but the students loved the toys and commented on their own visits to the site. The URL is listed above. Keep the great ideas coming!
Posted by: Brian Hutcheson | November 30, 2007 9:46 PM
Hello, nice site :)
Posted by: Brin | December 2, 2007 11:46 AM