Edutopia

Seems like an interesting website. The only thing I had an issue with was that there were too many things posted everywhere on the website. It makes it feel really cluttered. The post that people put up about teaching and questions about school from different grade level was interesting and its great that people can comment on post that other educators have put up. It is not just for teachers, parents  can look at the site as well and students. Overall, the website is good, and how can you not be surprised and happy when you see that it is funded by George Lucas? Its good to see the director join in the support for a better teaching and learning space for students of all grade levels.

Chicago Artists Resource

The website is very easy to navigate around. There is not too much being piled into the home page. I like the stories of the artists that they posted on the web site. I love that they have a space where they posted notices for upcoming events that artists can apply and submit their art works in! Very helpful, especially if we want to get noticed more as an artist. I liked that they had a place for space listing for artist's studio and etc. Pretty cool website and I think I will start to use it.

Tygogrphic self portrait

My typographic portrait of myself using the letters in my name. I really stretched out those letters to create this image.

Art:21 Yah!

Art:21 is such a an interesting and helpful website. Where else will you go to watch clips of artists at work and explaining their works and process at same time. You can just roam down the list of artists that they have and watch a clip of them at work or you can also write their name on the "search box" to find a specific artist. I also like that for each artist they give a background of where they come from and a description of the type of work and themes that they focus on. One of the artist that I found and love now is a man name Pepon Osorio. He does a lot of detailed, collage based installations on the idea of identity and culture. He wants people to react to his works and give their own interpretation of what the work means to them. He also did this project where he created for a family he knew a collage doll house that went through fire, with items knocked about the place and the family standing outside of their home in grief. Basically he is trying to portray a narrative piece of this family's life experience. What makes this project so cool is the "home visits" that he does where the art piece would be display within a person's house for a week, and they would have people come over to view the work that is one display at that person's house.  After a week passes, the art work move again to another home and stays there for a week to again allow people to come into that person's home to view the work, and it keeps going on, hence the term "home visit."I just find the idea of home visit to be really cool and would like to try something within that nature in the future.

Mess Hall and Three walls

Well, Mess Hall looked like it was a great place for to create art, talk politics, just an all around cultural creative place! It would have been a great place for me and my best friend to go if only we knew about it before hand. Too bad they are not of existent anymore. The website for Mess Hall is really white, bare and plain. I didn't find it so interesting.

Three Walls website is a little more interesting. I like that they had pictures of the upcoming events in a slide show format once you go to the website. I got a little confused as to where the links were until I clicked on the page and the website with the about, home, and etc links pop up. It was easy to navigate around the site. There was a lot links under some of those tabs on the left side of the site, which kind of overwhelms me a little.

Which is Better? ArtsEdge of PBS teachers?

In looking at both websites, format wise, they both seem fairly easy to navigate aorund. PBS teachers offers lesson plans, discussions, and even professorinal developments for teachers to look at. In the lesson plans for each topic, it gives a full format plan on how to go about teaching it. It also gives lesson for other subject matters as well. It is great that they have a discussion group, but you need an account in order to read it them all. Although the idea that they also encourage teahcers to bring in PBS Kids shows in their classroom is cute, I feel that is still missing a few items. This site is obviously just meant for teachers to look through and not parents or students. In comparsion to ArtsEdge whose website was also easy to navigate around, they also provide lesson plans, they also have how-tos and even show the standards for teaching different grade level for all visual, performance, and musical art. It also give you sections for parents and students to use the website in order to create their own fun art projects at home. So which one is better? They are both good places to look at, but I sort of want to side with the ArtsEdge's website just because it provides more options for teachers to look at. But I admit that the LearningMedia Center that is linked to PBS is pretty good and it offers more lesson plans, standardsand other options for teachers to look at too. It be a tie for me.

Street Level Youth Media and Teaching channel

First off, I am happy that such a site exist! Teaching channel is a blog for teaches where one can talk with a fellow teacher and get advise from for us first time teachers... hint, hint. It also a great place to see how other teachers came up with great lesson plans in teaching different subject for all grade levels. I like how organized the blog or website is too. The Street-level is also a great site for kids to take free art clases in different types of media. Wish I knew about this place before. It sound like it is similar to Marwen with its free art classes, only they have more and different art classes though.

Ingenuity Inc.

The design is has a plain background with a picture of students and links around the site. Seems easy enough. they give you the contact information and a map of where the place is in case you wanted to visit there. Like CAPE they also promote for good quality arts education for their students. They also help by providing themselves as a resource for schools in communicating with the community art organizations and cultural institutions to work with these schools. They also believe he for students, their access to the arts shouldn't be just a few links, but many resources where they can view and learn more about art. It is another good organization for students to learn and gain creativity skills and critical thinking skills in order to develop their own ways of thinking.

CAPE

The website design of CAPE is good, it has its moving images to give the viewer an idea what is it that they do with children in schools. They have links to exhibitions and class projects that they did with students from different schools in Chicago. The mission of the site is to improve a child's critical thinking skills, creativity, and have them gain academic success through a research basic and arts driven education. It is because of this organization that some of the Chicago Public schools that they taught at were able to increase the academics of students and it help the students to perform better in standardized testing as well. It sounds like a great organization that cares a lot about the achievements of children in schools. This is proof that the arts can make a big different in the education of the students and yet there are still people who think all that their students is going to learn is painting and making art. Sure that is what they will be doing, but the benefits of this is so that they gain the skills to think critically and creatively in order to develop ideas and research that can possibly change the way people look at the world.

AREA, Stockyard, and Museum 2.0

In looking at these websites, I thought the format for AREA was very simple with just the three colors. It make the website pop, which makes since because it is an activist website. But the only contact information that is given to the place is through email and a P.O. Box. I don't think it mentions where it is located in Chicago. They also have issues of publication on the website and list projects that they are working on as well. The Stockyard website was kind of busy. It was interesting that they had all those announcements for events that happened in the past, but why couldn't they upload for events that will be happening now or in the future? This format just seem a little cluttered to me. The Museum 2.0 blog was also interestesing, I liked the recent post about the "Oh Snap" project that is currently goign on what a museum allows people to take pictures and give them to the musem so that they can post them for the public to see. These pictures are suppose to relate to people's reaction to this event.

MDR lunch talk

Today I went to talk given by Darren O'Donnell who is the Artistic and Research Director of MDR (Mammalian Diving Reflex). It was a very interesting talk in which he gave examples of performance works and projects he did with children, specifically most of the projects were done in Toronto, Canada. One of the projects he mentioned was the "Haircuts by Kids" in which the children who were participating in the project literally hosted a hair salon where adults would come in and allow children to cut their hairs and fashion them in different and fun hair styles. How fun is that! The children also were in charge of setting up appointments and in charge of the pay for the haircuts throughout the whole project. To think, that these adults gave their time to go and have their hair cut by children, knowing that there may be a possibly that the haircut can go wrong was amazing. O'Donnell produced other projects involving children, some where the kids had to create a monster and they had to teach it how to be evil, and another where children hosted their own Children's Choice Awards. His projects were not just with children, he also worked with adults and senior citizens as well. One of the projects he worked on was called "Slow dance with a teacher" in which he hired and paid professor from a university to come and slow dance with strangers at a certain place through out the whole event. I really did find this talk to be interesting and it sounded like to me that Mr. O'Donnell had also enjoyed doing all of these projects with the people he had met as well. 

Art class for 4 and 5 year olds

Today, I was given the opportunity to help assist an art class for 4 to 5 year old students in one of the buliding that belongs to the School of the Art Institute on Columbus Drive. These children turned out to be a very smart and creative group of students. They drew in their sketchbooks first, then they had storytime, and later, they had snacktime. Afterwards, the students were given a small lecture about a certain artist and then they painted color wheels and each drew on a big sheet of paper until it was time to go home. It was interesting viewing these little children doing their art works in this class. I have to admit that I did underestimated them a little in how much attention would they give in actually doing any art pieces in a classroom setting. However, these kids changed my mind. They like to draw alot and just let their imaginations flows. I enjoyed my day helping out the teacher and the other T.A.s with taking care and teaching these young students for the day. I might want to go back another Saturday again, some time in the future to get more experience and to continue to see how art is portrayed in the eyes of a 4-5 year old.

MCA and Art Junction

I thought the format for both of the websites were very contemporary and modern. For the MCA website, it made it easy for someone to find out the times of the museum, the addmission for the museum, the location, and it provide a calender for the events that are occuring on that day on along the left hand side of the screen. They also offer information on education where teacher can come to the museum to learn how they can input art into their curriculum and they have a teen counsel at the museum as well wqhere teen can explore the world of art. In the blog from Art Junction, it provide mostly stories of art that is occuring around. It also provides reseouces and teaching option for peopel if they want to lok for new ideas to use in the classroom.

Bad at Sports reaction

When I looked at the website, I didn't know that it was a station for interviewing and art talks. The format of the site is very contemporary with its white and black design. The description of what the people do in this website is a little vague, but mostly it is a palce where the staff does interviews with artists from around the USA and outside of the USA, talking about their art practice and about themselves. It sound s strange that they named a webiste this way, is it because the staff really are not good at sports or that they were good and had to give it up for some reason? It is a interesting site, they provide a list of all the interviews in a podcast format that they had done since 2005. They put up pictures of the works of these artists that they had interviewed as well.

Reaction to Storycorps

After looking through the website, I have to say that i really loved it! This is such a great way to learn about the history or stories of normal people who lived ordinary lives. I have never heard of this organization before coming to this website. I find it interesting that they developed a organization where people can bring their loved ones to and have a menaingful conversation with them about their lives. I found the website very straight forward, it tells you where you can contact them to record your own stories, what you should know about the process of recording your stories, you also get to leave with your own copy of the recorded story that you just made, and they ask if they have your consent to keep another copy of your story in the library of Congress. They also had a link for education where teacher can even make a lesson plan about interviewing and storytelling for their students. This website would be a good example for students on how an interviewing process works. They also have short animations of people's stories as well for the public to watch. The main purpose of this website is to present the stories of people from different backgrounds, beliefs, and thoughts the opporunity to share their stories abotu their lives. The website also gives you links read and listen to other people's stories at any time that you want. It is really a great site and I am glad to have been introduced to something that is so meaningful, especially as it is a way for these people to open their heart to the world and have the world lend their ears to hearing this person's story.

Digital Interactives at the Art Institute

In our class on Thursday night, we were able to go to the Art Institute of Chicago to try out their new digital interactive ipads that they had installed in one of the gallery. It was really cool that the museum was able to install these devices within a gallery space. You had your choice of picking a piece of art, pushing any of the numberd labels that were on the piece in order to find out more information about that part of the art work. It also gives you a detail summary of the name of the piece, what time period it is from, and where it came from. There was another button that gives you related stories or information about the time period, country, or something else that relates with the art work. For works that were three dimensional, you are given the option to press the "360 degrees" key to rotate the 3D piece all the way around. The only flaws I would have to say about these devices is that the ones that were attached to extended wires to the benchs in that gallery space were not padded with something that can protect it from breaking if it falls. People usually come to the museum with their families, and if they are with little children, they might want to play with the ipads on the bench and they might damage them if they start banging them on the bench or accidently dropping them to the ground. Plus they might try to pull the ipad away from the bench and break the wire. The other negative about this is that there are not too many of these devices around, it is only installed in a few places. Some of the ipads had a holding stand to keep the ipads in place, but I feel like by doing that it can also be in the way of people's spaces, people who bump into anything. So if they came up with a better idea of how they can use and install the digital interactive device in a place or way in which it will not be in the pathway of the people walking around. Another negative about the ipad is that you are not really looking at the real art work that is front of you, instead you are staring continuously at a picture of that same piece and reading the information that is already in there, so it kind of takes you away from paying attention to the actual work. 
    However, it would have be great if they had put a zoom button as one of the choices so that if a person wanted to take a closer look at a piece of work, they can zoom in on it. The only ipad that I saw that can do that was in the Picasso and Chicago exhibit that I went to see with my classmate aftetrwards. The ipad was next to a display case where a book was locked in. On the ipad, it gives you the opportunity to flip through the book, to rotate the book, move the book around, and a zoom button if a person wanted a closer look at a piece of art in the book. Overall it was a good attempt.

Trying to find contemporary artist

So I'm trying to find out where is the best place to find contemporary artists of today. I know in Thesis 1 yesterday Karyn mentioned going to the New York Times or Chicago Times to look for artists, someone else mentioned the magazines or some other stuff. I only ask because I tried looking in google and being that the internet is so big with information about artists I still had trouble finding one, I'm still trying to look for a good one that I can use for reference for my thesis. I will try the magazines I guess...

Action Research in education

I never heard of action research before reading the articles that we had to read in our Thesis 1 class. It is an intereting way of researching, you are actually going out into the world and researching the community, schools, students, or teachers of that place by talking with them and asking questions. You do alot of observation in action research and there are many other ways of doing this sort of research than just observing. I'm still not sure how I'm going to go about doing action research or what methods would I use yet, I'm sure I will know when we do start doing the action research process itself.

Art Institute and CPS website

In reading the Art Institute's website, I found it interesting and great that they provide workshops and programs for teachers from all grade levels and subject matters to come in order to learn how to incorporate better teaching methods of teaching art. They also teach teachers how to incorporate art into their curriculum. From the CPS website, it is helpful that they provide links to teachers and parents that can help guide and show them ways in which their student or child can have a succesful pathway in education. These links are useful in which the goal is to provide better ways of teaching students in order for them to go on and success in school.

Artist that I like

This artist's works are really interesting. I love tha fantasy and details that he put into his works. His name is Tomek Setowski. Here is his website http://www.setowski.art.pl/main.php. It's so cool.

Scenarios USA

Went to the Scenarios USA meeting yesterday. It was very interesting the talks that the presenters gave. Its cool that they are doing lesson involving often times hard questions for these teens in order to have them ponder about and give their own interpretations and thoughts to subjects on identity, gender, power, and so on. Glad that I went!

Website that I visit most...

I saw www.yahoo.com, check emails, weather, and celebrity news