Art History/Reflections/Mr. Bishop

Mr. Bishop's Reflections

I truly appreciate my inclusion as an instructional partner in this class, a class that allows students to conduct research in a process that includes collaboration and open communication. I believe harnessing the power of web 2.0 tools such as wikis and podcasting expands learning to include new forms of expression for everyone involved in the learning process.

Students at Westminster are certainly driven and motivated in a way that is often missing from other college preperatory schools, yet this success sometimes leads to a lack of instructional technology integration as tried and true methods continues to produce very much above average students. Success should never hinder a critical evaluation of instructional and learning practices. The class instructor, Maggie Davis, has taken a hard look at how students learn and wishes to integrate new technology, an initiative I much admire.

We are coming to the end of the second week of school and I feel a great amount of enthusiasm for the class. A number of items still need to be worked on and finalized, especially pre-planning and evaluation of student work. As we progress I will begin to reflect on individual assignments and how they work within the greater goals of the class.

9/7 - Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Barker, and I met on Tuesday to discuss the class and plans for the next few weeks. I really enjoyed the collaboration and ideas expressed by each of us, communication that resulted in some tremendous plans including a podcast with a visiting artist to begin teaching skills needed for the final project. The idea started with an assignment involving the viewing of the artist's work, and grew to include a much more introspective, creative, and involving project. This is why I enjoy collaborating with other teachers so much, the ability to present a topic, followed by discussion culminating in something more substantial. So often educators work in a vacuum that does not allow ideas to germinate. The greatest part of this class for me is being invited into a collaborative process from start to finish.

My only critique involves some students reluctance to fully take ownership of the class and make more suggestions. I really want the students to stear the class by taking a lead role, however, this is a new way of learning for many of them so I understand the timidness. Hopefully the reluctance to take the lead will fade as we move on to new projects.

9/21 - Our preparations for Mr. Anderson's visit including the podcast and videotaping seem to be going pretty well. Ms. Davis began the process by showing photographs from Mr. Anderson's exhibit along with questions to be asked including the various ways we see art. Student observations were a little limited at first, but critical thinking skills began to take hold as the dialogue lengthened. A student bias based on an economically and socially affluent background did seem apparent as some of the observations and questions disclosed an ignorance of the power of racism and poverty in American society. Exposing students to powerful images of disenfranchisement with accompanying context will hopefully dispel many of the myths (i.e. laziness, lack of will, et cetera) so many in our society have blindly accepted concerning racial and economic dynamics. The questions students ask Mr. Anderson on Wednesday should be very revealing regarding the process leading up to the artist interview and podcast.

I do feel some students are failing to adequately update their respective reflection and homework portions of the wiki. Perhaps a sheet with due dates and assignments needs to be more clearly instituted to insure work is done.

I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks as we work through the podcast and see the results.

9/25 - Mr. Anderson spoke to the class yesterday, providing context for images that many of the students were unable to fully understand without the reflections of the art's creator. Mr. Anderson's humble demeanor provided a rural sensibility reflective of the work's subjects, people who live(d)in circumstances quite removed from the popular conscience. His connection between humanitarian acts by his parents and his ability to capture the living conditions of those around him was quite illuminating and powerful. Hearing someone who has seen and experienced so much in their life is one of the most powerful teaching tools available to any educator. Our follow up discussion on Wednesday should be just as powerful and informative, for both the students and anyone who hears Mr. Anderson's explanation and reflections on the subjects of his work.

10/9 - The students have finished recording their portions of the podcast. I'm going to edit and combine the audio with images from the exhibit being discussed to create the finished product. I feel the podcast process has been beneficial but I would of preferred the students have a little more involvement in the editing process to combine their commentary with more specific snippets of Mr. Anderson's interview. As always, lessons learned from this inaugural class will be quite helpful for forthcoming classes.

Ms. Davis, Ms. Barker, and I also met to discuss and assign grades for each student. Most student work certainly shows a level of improvement, with a number of students grasping the idea of the reflections section more clearly than others. Everyone understands the descriptive aspect, however, the reflective portion concentrating on thoughtful critiques of the process for finding needed information seems to escape some students. I believe this eminates from the often rote learning many students encounter, a process that can hinder deeper questions and interpretive meaning.

10/24 - Each group gave a progress report including their final theme for the project and four or five images best representing the theme. Students have a grasp on the concept of their themes but still chose images which seemed somewhat random within the greater idea. Here are my observations of each group.

Alison and Alek will need to refine their theme of religion given the broadness of the concept. Finding a narrower theme within the greater topic of religion is a must before they can produce a cohesive project with connections between images. Further discussion and suggestions are needed.

Connor and Rawson seemed to have a better grasp on their topic of power and authority. As a class we made some connections to seemingly divergent images that fit the theme.

Sona and Anna have some questions concerning their topic of race, class, and gender which Ms. Davis is best qualified to answer. Should each image they choose encompass race, class, and gender as a whole, or can they create a section for each concept?

Kristen and Elizabeth have a very good start with mortality and immortality. They made some very interesting connections across cultures and mediums that should create a very interesting final project.

Yeshwanth and Emma were cut a little short today so we only received part of their progress report on power, politics, and glory. The images they chose today represented tributes to power including a portrait of Henry VIII and the pyramids. I think they are well on their way to a great final project too.

Certainly more discussion and critical analysis is needed as the project moves forward, however, the beginning steps seem quite promising. My enjoyment of the class and the lessons learned for web 2.0 projects in the future has been invaluable.

11/14 - The students are moving in to the final stretch and seem to have a lot of great ideas coupled with some trepidation concerning the overall effectiveness of their images when compared to the themes they are utilizing. An open dialogue between student and teacher seems to remedy many of the questions, but an emphasis on defining themes and student understanding of them in the future will be needed to alleviate some of the hesitancy students have when locating images. Some of the structure and brainstorming necessary for increased student confidence just wasn't there in the beginning due to the newness of the class. I guess we'll chalk it up to lessons learned and build for the future while trying to provide as much structure as possible in the present.

Tomorrow we'll introduce more print resources and check for contextual information that informs those viewing the student collected images. Hopefully, the contextualization will give students a better understanding of the image and provide the basis for an accompanying podcast. This is my chance to provide additional resources for background information that students may not be aware of.

I also have an idea for using Audio Thread or Flicker to post the finished student products on the web. By using one of these applications we can circumvent the school website hosting issues.

11/15 Ideas for next time:

1. Begin the research process for images with an annotated bibliography based on assigned themes to give students a better idea of resources available in the library. Also, stucture an assignment around library databases that highlights their content.

2. Construct the wiki as a class to provide students with a better understanding of how they work and the value of their input.

3. Assign dates when reflections should be posted to the wiki along with expectations for content.

4. Provide more oppotunities for podcasting throughout the semester.

5. Take time to respond to wiki reflection entires from students in the wiki, not just in class.

6. Create a virtual museum in addition to the print collection compiled in a book.

7. Have students interview individual artists and podcast their results.

12/6 - We're coming in to the home stretch with a definite time crunch in effect. The combination of creating a podcasts for the final project, making the book, and finishing last minute entires for the images is taking more time than I had envisioned. Everything will be fine in the end, but lessons have definitely been learned for the next installment of the class.

The first student I worked with while creating her podcast seemed to catch on very quickly regarding editing and re-recording sections of audio. As I show each student how to record a track, they should be able to show their partners with little difficulty. The audio program Audacity is such a great tool for simple recording. It really demystifies the whole process.

1/5 - As I think more about the final project I wish we would of created a more problem based assignment with a set of needs necesitating various solutions such as the inclusion of funding, location, procurement of art, et cetera. Our project was more linear and lacked some of the problem based solutions necessary to garner a deeper understanding. Overall, the class was a positive start that will require dissection and retooling for the next school year to bring about the best problem based class we can create.