Art of Tek

    If you are teaching remote, or are trying to use less paper, then the Kami Chrome Extension is the app for you! This gem lets your students download a PDF from your LMS and write and edit on the computer.         Students can draw, highlight, type into blank lines, draw shapes, fill in color, and even sign documents. This last feature came in clutch this year for our Visual Arts Program with our Virtual students. A lot of contests let students and parents sign forms electronically this year. However, most students do not have PDF converters. Kami gave us the capabilities to have both parents and students sign and return forms to us electronically.      Kami works for word documents, powerpoints, and PDF's. You can upload a worksheet to your LMS and students can answer it using the Kami Extension. Then export the file and upload the assignment back to LMS. No paper required! I am in love with how much less paper I am using this year. ...

 This week on Dangerously Irrelevant, Mcleod brings up a stellar point about equity and that educators do more than teach their content to students. " Who cares if my students know how to make their subjects and verbs agree if they use language to promulgate hate? ( 2021, Mcleod) Most of my students will not go on to be Artists or even Art Educators. So, a large chunk of what occurs in my class goes beyond my content area and takes them into preparing them to be good human beings. When my students are preparing for a new piece of original artwork, they have to decide whether to make a Personal, Political, or Social piece?  A statement will be made with their work, and they must decide and work through the process to make sure that it is appropriate for all audiences, makes the statement they want without explanation with words, and the right materials. Much like they will have to work through problems when they get an assignment from their boss when they have a job in the real...

 This week I want to start with a powerful quote from the blog that I am following. " There are many things in history that do not have two equal opposing sides: slavery, genocide, imperialism, colonialism, segregation, etc. There is only one side to these events that is fair, just, and equitable" (Mcleod, 2021). In education, we are facing many situations that are not equitable right now. We have been thrust into the digital divide with virtual learning, that haves and have not's of technology in our education system. I know my district is fortunate in that we are 1:1 and are able to give every student that does not have internet a MiFi, however, this is not the case in many urban and a lot of rural school districts.  Also, how students are treated based on their sexual identity or orientation has become a hot button issue in our education system. It seems to depend on the district and even the school on how they help or hinder these students. If we are here to truly hel...

 Loom is a video recording tool that is available in the Chrome Web Extension Store. I have found this tool to be invaluable to both my team and my students.  Unlike Screancastify, there is no time limit, and it is free. Another feature that I like about Loom is that it has your personal library, but also you can make teams. You can think of these teams like setting up shared drives in google where you can share your videos with anyone who has an email account in your organization, including teachers, students, and administrators.   I have come to use to loom over the years as a resource to share videos with my content team. It is great that we can share our demonstration videos with each other since that is what we do a lot of in Art. Another tool I use a lot with the Team feature is set Teams for classes. I set up a team for each class and invite them to the team. Then I can assign them to do digital critiques and share them with the team.  Another way to util...

 Our District has been 1:1 since 2012 for all 5th-12th grade students. The year we began the 1:1 initiative I was at one of the two pilot Intermediate schools in the district. I received extensive training on the learning management system that we would be using, Schoology. Eventually, we would adopt the program for Blended Learning from the Zuckerberg Foundation, the Learning Summit, called Connect. Now all 5th-12th students are enrolled in Connect. I have also had training and taught the Rotation style of Blended learning when I taught Intermediate school.  I am not required to at the High School level. However, I have taken what I was taught and implemented it in my art room. It also made switching to teaching in the pandemic much easier than teachers who did not have the training I had. I love using Loom, having my students take progress photos of their work and storing it in google drive, and turning their work into Schoology. It is like a digital portfolio. I could go on...

I tend not to shy away from politics in my classroom. I know to most this can seem taboo. However, for an art room, this can be a great resource for students to express themselves. I am glad this blog was included on the list because this author feels the same. Education has become a place of compliance, do not rock the boat so to speak. The art world would cringe if it saw how the k-12 curriculum was trying to be stifled right now. Yes, we educators need to leave their biases out of the instruction. But students should be free to express their political views however they please.  I am excited to follow this blog, with history being made daily right now, and my students actively engaged in the conversations and creating work.