Thursday, March 28, 2013

Color Wheel, Color Theory Interactive White Board

First impressions of the interactive white board included: there is no way I am going to be able to work this thing and how the heck can I get my lessons to connect to the uses of this technology tool. However, I spent about four hours one Sunday afternoon just messing around with the program and trying different things out. Come to find that I really enjoyed creating the flipchart. My mom has always said, "Never judge a book by its cover." I know this is the oldest saying, but it is very true. Especially in today's world, we are surrounded by new technologies and ways of doing things that we have been doing for decades. The challenge comes when we are not open to the new way of doing things that will further inspire and expand the knowledge and understanding of our young people. This flipchart really gave me a new set of skills that I will be building upon in my own future classroom some day.

Creating my own flipchart for the first time meant trying new things and being open for just as many failures as successes. I am a very hands on person so doing everything once for myself was a must. Once, I got past being able to use the program, rememer when to save, and become comfortable with the property objects I really began to have fun with it. I chose the color wheel and color theory because I thought it would be more beneficial for my students to learn about color and color relationships without actually using any color mediums yet. The final project of the whole lesson has students eventually creating their own abstract color wheel. Before they did that I wanted them to learn about mixing colors, what colors can be mixed, what colors are not relatable, and how colors that are side-by-side can either enhance or detract from each other.

I believe that my art background really lent itself to the neatness and creative aspects of this flipchart lesson. I wanted to create a cohesive look and keep the flow of the flipchart engaging for students. For the subject area of art, I believe that the tools I used really complimented what I wanted students to learn and get out of this interactive way of teaching and learning. On the other hand, creating this flipchart lesson around an art project made it a little more challenging to get my students involved and having fun. I did not want to just have them learn vocabulary or use the tools to see what was missing and filling in blanks. While art vocabulary is essential to creating art, I wanted them to actually engage and participate in discussion about color with real life, and to learn how to think about the use of colors without actually touching the paint medium yet. In all, I believe that I did a good job considering that this was the first time I have worked with this program. We are all in this together as aspiring teachers. We will all learn and grow together, expand from one another, and proceed with our future abilities related to the growing technology as one working teacher preparing for a variety of ways to teach and help our students grow.

Interactive Color Wheel
This website is used as a way for students to learn color relationships and mixing colors prior to actually getting their hands on the paint medium. It is a good chance to allow students the experimentation before allowing them to use real paint. We want to be conservative in our paint usage so we do not waste any. This helps students learn to be sparing and that they can always go back fro more.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Colorful Color Wheels

A color wheel is an abstract illustrative organization of color hues around a circle that shows relationships between primary colors, secondary colors tertiary colors, complementary colors, etc.

Primary colors are red, yellow, and blue arranged at three equally spaced points on the colors wheel. These colors are not able to be created. All other colors come from the primary colors except black and white. When an artists goes to buy tubes of paint they can only worry about buying red, yellow, blue, black, and white if they want to because everything else can be mixed or created from these colors. An artist has a lot of flexibility with the primary colors.
Primary Colors
Secondary colors are purple, organce, and greem and are also arranged at three equally spaced points on the colors wheel placed between the two prinmary colors that make them. They are made by mixing the 2 adjacent colors together on the color wheel.
Secondary Colors
Tertiary colors are red/orange, yellow/orange, yellow/green, blue/green, blue/purple, and red/purple placed between the primary and secondary colors that make them on the color wheel. Their are two tertiary colors on a color wheel per every primary color. When listing them it is important to note that the primary color always comes first then the secondary color second.
Tertiary Colors
Values of the colors are created by adding black or white to any color. You can create shades by adding black to any color and tints by adding white to any color.

Complementary colors are red/green, blue/orange, and yellow/purple. When mixed together they make brown. If used together side by side they create a brighter appearance of each other. You can locate complementary colors on the opposite side of the color wheel.

Warm and Cool colors:

Color wheels have been, and continue today to be an artists tool to understanding color and values. Color wheels help artists to create an understanding of mixing and creating values of colors to use in different mediums of art. Artists need to be able to use the color relationships to their advantage. The color wheel has been used to focus on many aspects of life outside of the art room. People use color wheels and the relationships of colors in decorating their homes, school or work presentation, dressing for the day, etc. People use color wheels in their everyday lives and careers as well. Tattoo artists, interior designers, hair colorists, publishing/advertisements, coating cars, fashion designers, etc.

The interactive white board will be a great way for me to explain the color wheel to my students. At the moment the program scares me a little and I am somewhat intimidated by its many features. However, I know that it is a great way to teach students in a fun, engaging, and collaborative way. I plan to create a lesson that allows students to create their own color wheels in their own style. I first want to give them the background information so they understand the relevance and importance of the color wheel and colors in general in the art room and in the real world. I found a few started websites that have interesting ways of getting students to play with the way a color wheel is set up and why/how the colors came to be created. The Interactive Color Wheel: Fun Color Theory is a great website where student can click on the different colors that make up the color wheel and learn more about how the colors are made and their properties. Another great site is the Free Art Game for Kids: Interactive Color Wheel, which is a site where students can learn how to mix the colors without using real paints just yet. It is like a trial and error. The site also provides other activities that will help student further their abilities once they have learned why color is so important.

By the end of the interactive white board presentation I want my students to be ready to create their own abstract color wheels to resemble the below image:
 

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Digital Images - Lines/Georgia O'Keeffe

With an art background I was aware of the ways in which to use digital images properly. Through this project I have learned quite a bit about copyright issues and laws. As an art student myself, we are allowed to use Google images from the web because they are for educational purposes. Although we are reproducing the image in another form through our artistic medium, we are not reproducing them for public accessibility. Once we are no longer students, and for most of us in the education program, we will have to be aware of the images we use, where we get them from, and the resolution at which we place them on a computer tool. Working with various ways to take, import, edit, and then place images into an album, presentation, or on a website will be things that I continue to use in my future classroom with my students. Visually images are a great way to capture your students attention and to present new information to them in a substantial way without having to verbally discuss everything.

Along with learning how to manage and edit my photos for the best quality on the web, I learned about embedding the slideshows of images from Picasa Web Album and Google presentations to my website. Learning how to work with Google and digital images in this way has been the most beneficial aspect about doing everything through a Google account. I am appreciating the tools that Google offers for me to create a website with many interactive links for my future students and their parents to have access to outside the classroom. Adding in presentations has also been great so that students and parents can see what we will be doing or what we have done in class. It allows them to go back and reference the material from class if they need to.

Overall, the digital images projects have broaden my knowledge about photo editing and sharing in term of usefulness on the web or within the classroom for students learning. I look forward to continuing to build this knowledge and expanding the use of digital images to highlight my lesson plans and projects. 

Below are two slideshows I created in Picasa Web Albums for my students to reference images in relation to learning about lines and the way Georgia O'Keeffe creates beautiful flower compositions.