Social Media In Education From Edutopia

This guest blog article from Edutopia has some great points to make about the role of educators in teaching students about the responsible uses of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The guest blogger, Steve Johnson, made several key points.

1. It is quickly becoming our duty as educators in the 21st century to guide our students towards responsible use of social media.
2. Social Media use is becoming our new first impression.
3. Connected, community based learning is important. By blocking social media use, we are depriving our students of a huge opportunity to allow them to learn in connected ways.
4. In five years, the filters will be gone whether you like it or not.

Check out the fullpost at Edutopia.

Edutopia Project Based Learning Info

I know that several of my followers from Pewaukee will be piloting a project-based learning model next year at the middle school. Thought you might be interested in this post.

http://www.edutopia.org/maine-project-learning-free-resources-and-tools

More from Issuu

I have spent the week sifting through Issuu. It is like this giant library of publications from professionals and just ordinary people. You can browse by subject and bookmark some favorites to use in your own library. Here is one on Color Theory from Eye Magazine, which has always been one of my favorite design magazines.

Open publication - Free publishing - More supplement

The information contained in the publication is great and the design of the images and text is beautiful. For art students this is a great intro to color theory that goes beyond just the color wheel. You have to check out Issuu. Next week I hope to develop my own publication using some of my photos. It should be interesting.

Issuu: Wow What a Cool Tool

I have been messing around on the web lately now that school is over.  I was on the Art Ed 2.0 ning that I am a member of and was reading Matt Cauthron's posts.  He is just one of the talented teachers who inspires me on the ning network.  Matt had a link to a site I'd not been to or heard of before.  It is called Issuu and is a place to publish your documents and a place to share documents.  Now you might say well that sounds like Google docs, but this is nothing like Google docs.  You could say well drop.io let's you share docs and publish them, but this is different.  Here is the short video that explains the possiblities. 

I am especially impressed with the high quality design of the publications. There are so many possibilities for using this. As an art teacher this could be the free option I've been searching for, for students to create digital portfolios. I will explore further and keep you posted. Check it out yourself and let me know what you think.

Death of the Free Web?

I read an interesting article about the death of the free web.  Gone are the days of the wild, wild west so to speak.  The article from the New York Times magazine on Sunday  
was intriguing not only because of the subject, but also for the metaphor that the author Virginia Heffernan used comparing the current Internet to blighted, decaying cities such as Detroit and equating the shiny new apps of the iPhone and iPad as suburbia, where everything is cleaner, but the same.  I'm curious what others think about this. 

In the beginning the web was all about freedom and there was very much an almost anything goes mentality.  Some people responded with creativity while others freaked out with all that freedom, sounds kind of like a classroom full of high school students.  Some can handle freedom while others can't.  The web has become corrupt as those who are going to take advantage of people have found many avenues to do just that.  But censorship and controls aren't necessarily the answer.  Perhaps purchased apps and paid sites give some "safe" havens to people who don't want to be out in the great wide open web.

Apple certainly has taken a lead in the web-based world we live in.  Their design is strong and clean.  I think the "apple-designed look" of all those apps and the way the iPad and iPod look has not only influenced the web, but also graphic design.  There is a certain look and feel to the 2000s that is different from the 1990s.  Grunge and retro designs led by Emigre and David Carson were the rage back then.  This included surf culture, California styles and retro colors of brown, blues and beige and even orange.  Now we're seeing a similar look to everything based on the new web, which Apple has certainly led, but so has Twitter.  The colors, fonts and look of things are all coming not from print design, but web stuff.  I don't know if this is good or bad, but it's certainly happening. 

Going back to the metaphor in the article:  Are the new web based apps making design into this generic "suburbanized" look and feel?  Curious what you think.

AP ART Next Year: I Think We Will Blog Our Journey

I am thinking that I should have my students develop a blog here to track their own artistic development through the AP Art process.  I would love to be able to have students writing regularly and avoid all the endless piles of paper that I have to look at.  I am on the computer all the time and it would be easy for me to read their updates.  I also like the possibility that they could upload images and videos of their work.  I think using the blog in connection with Flickr for doing image slideshows would be sweet!  I may not use it for the entire school year, but I'm really likin' the idea to have them set up blogspot blogs to track their summer progress. 

I meet with my students on Monday and I know they'll be excited for their AP journey to begin.  My classes up to this point have been somewhat computer resistant, but I think with the students I have for next year they have all had some sort of computer course.  I already have a NING network for them and could use the blog feature there, but I sort of like the personalized approach of individual blogs.  I will have to be very clear about the parameters of what gets posted.  It is a journal of course but not about everything in their life.  I think weekly updates would be good.  It will also help me track their progress throughout summer.  I would have to do more grading and time in to read the posts, but AP already requires a lot of my time during the off season.

Final Unit Plan

The following link will take you to the wiki of my final unit plan.  ENJOY!!
http://digitalsojourns.wikispaces.com/