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.