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.

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:

 

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.

Resource Wiki

From Picassohead Site

The resource wiki has already been a very useful thing to have under my tool belt. I am not against technology or using the Internet for websites or WebQuests with education, but I was hesitant about their relevancy and the ways in which you could always find them to fit in with your lesson plans. This resource wiki has opened my eyes to a new world of technology and using the web. The websites that I have found, the websites that my peers have found, are all very informative, useful, and provide a completely different atmosphere when it comes to teaching students about a subject. The most interesting part of this process of collecting information is that I found sites my peers did not and vice verse. Also collecting the resources in a common area allowed me to see what they had found, them to see what I had found, and for us to come together to think about how these sites or WebQuests could benefit our students inside or outside the classroom setting.

Digital Imaging

Their is so much out there on the Internet. We now have some of it to refer back to when out in our own classrooms. Students want to be stimulated and motivated to do and try new things. As teacher, we have to have the same mind-set. Just because technology was not as big of a deal when I was in school does not mean that their is no need for it now. These websites have shown me ways in which I can pull my students into a lesson and get them started off on the right foot. Most of the sites that we all found lent themselves to students playing some sort of a game, interacting with art programs, researching artists' works from around the world, etc. Another great thing about using these websites that we have all collaborated on placed into the wiki, is that they provide teachers with information to show students what you want them to know if you cannot do it first hand in the classroom. Especially with art being such a broad topic, I may not always be able to show my students every medium or process, but some of these websites provided wonderful interactive activities and videos that demonstrated what I may not be able to. Overall I truly look forward to pulling sites off of this wiki for my classroom, I have already incorporated one of the sites I found into a unit lesson plan about portraiture and students discovering who they are. Their really is something out on the Internet that can be a good resource to go along with the topic at hand, this wiki process helped me weed through the successful sites that can help make my students successful.

Abstract Web-Art

Links to interactive art websites from the wiki:
Picassohead
smART Kids
MoMA: Museum of Modern Art 

Reviewed Wiki

Ceramic Houses

Of course I wanted to find an art wiki that was fun, creative, and used the wiki to the fullest. Their has been a lot of discussion lately on whether these wikis are really used in the classroom setting. I believe that they are and I believe that their best purpose if for educating our students but also educating our educators. These wikis provide a place for teachers to collaborate and share what they feel is effective, what works, and projects that have been done before and were successful with students. So that is exactly what I found. This wiki is well organized and thought out. Art Education is a wiki about art and for those teaching art. It is made specifically for teachers who need ideas and inspiration. I thought this was so wonderful because sometimes art teachers do not have anyone they can collaborate with in their content area within their own school. I have observed a few schools with more than one art teacher and I have also observed schools where there is only one art teacher. Either is going to be fine because the students still get to learn art in your classroom, but when you have someone in your same content area who knows what you are going through and the lessons you are trying to plan and teach, it is so much better than to be out there on your own without anyone to bounce ideas back and forth with.

Charcoal Drawling

This wiki offers many other links that a teacher can go to if they want to create a project for their students but need some direction in doing so. It is a wiki of practical art lessons for teachers to use in their classroom when they just need a project to do that can also relate to objectives and the standards of the unit they may be in. Sometimes a teacher, of any content area, just needs a break. Sometimes it is just easier to give the students something to do so you can just breathe for a minute. And let us be honest that sometimes teachers and the students are just not in the mood for a big, elaborate project. That is life sometimes and it is okay. We are only human after all and so it is very important to always have small, crafty lessons planned just in case. This wiki provides the opportunity for that. Students still learn about art in a constructive and effective manner but they feel like they have freedom and choice. The wiki also provides some step by step projects for teachers to learn how to do so that they can teach their students how to do it.

Nature Photography

Inquiry Based Activity

The Inquiry Based Activity was so much fun for me to create. I cannot say that my students will find it as fun, but hopefully the activity will do what it is supposed to in aiding my students in learning about a new art medium. I hope that in the end my students will thank me for giving them an assignment that allowed them freedom to just go and do. Instead of me having to go step by step with them, I think these inquiries can be a great motivation for independence, group work and inspiration.

The activity I chose to do covered various techniques of printmaking. Students have to navigate through one site with several links that lead them to answering the questions I have provided on the worksheet.

Masterworks Fine Art website: http://www.masterworksfineart.com/education/?page_id=27
 

These activities provide a different way then the teacher just standing at the front of the classroom talking about a topic. They get students involved before you have them create an actual product piece of art. I like that this is a different form of introduction because objectives and steps to completing projects are so crucial. Once students have gone through the inquiry activity then they are more prepared to look at, for example, printmaking with a more focused and thoughtful manner. Instead of just approaching a topic in the usually sense of asking questions to see what students know, and to find out that they probably do not know much, you can use this inquiry activity as a way to help those students who do know a lot about a topic to breeze through the activity and help their peers, or answer those questions you would have just verbally asked of the students who know nothing about the topic at all. This is a visual way that students can see what you are talking about, get familiarized with what they are expected to know, and help them brainstorm and get inspired by researching about the topic so when it comes time to have them create, a print, they can do it. There is reading, writing, following directions, and critical thinking involved. I keep saying this, but I have always been somewhat afraid of technology. There is so much out there that could be very beneficial to teachers in helping students learn, but the programs are so complex to figure out. These tools and methods for creating educational lessons that we have been using lately are simple, to the point, but allow room for creativity in all teachers. Art teachers are not the only ones who can have all the fun. I love this inquiry because it really give teachers of all content areas a new approach to subject material and allows opportunities for great collaboration among teachers and subject areas.

WebQuest

This was an interesting lesson as I was not very familiar with the WebQuest world and all that these sites could offer teachers and students. The components of the WebQuests are a great way to organize the information and process you want your students to take when teaching the lesson using technology. Beginning with the introduction is key because this will set up the project so your students understand the objectives and reason behind doing it. Next comes the task page that describes what you will be asking them to take part in. After that the process page will divide up the steps the students will take to complete the lesson you are teaching. I really enjoyed looking through different WebQuest sites to see how different teachers used this form of learning to ask their students to fulfill the requirements. The resource page is a good reference for your students to see how you gathered and used outside information, as well for you to go back and refer to the sources you collected. The evaluation page is key. I saw many of the WebQuests use a chart or table to help their students either assess each other’s work, their own work, or see how you will assess them when the lesson is done. Anyway you put it, your students will be fully prepared for what you will grade and expect them to complete. The conclusion page will wrap everything up and reiterate the lessons purpose, as well as give your students a review of what they just learned. Credits and teacher pages are optional but they are also beneficial for completing the whole WebQuest.

One WebQuest that caught my attentions is called Pop Art, it focused on the Pop Art movement and the artists who created this genre of making art.

I also learned that, like websites or wikis, a WebQuest should be readable for you and your students when you present it, should have working links, promote group work, be efficient for what students can get out of the project/lesson you have planned, and have a way set up for your students to practice higher order thinking where they learn how to assess materials and then make appropriate decisions.

After learning about the WebQuest further, I can definitely see myself utilizing them in my classroom. Art really requires you to set up a project before the students even get started using their hands on materials. If I present my projects/lesson plans using the WebQuest method, then I can get my students interacting with me and each other about the project more before we get into working with the materials. I see myself presenting the history and background information of the projects through using the WebQuest method and then adding in questions, outside links to artist websites, galleries or museums, and even videos. The creation of a WebQuest is even an art form in itself as you must make conscious decisions about how you will place text, use colors that enhance the theme of your project, and creating a technology based lesson association within the context of your project theme.