EDIM 508

Video Blog: 5 Minds for the Future

Wow, 2 minutes sure does go quickly when you have so much to say. I went over the 2 minutes by about 40 seconds, but I have 5 great ideas for how you can use digital media to foster the 5 minds for the future inside your classroom. These strategies are great ways to engage your students in a more meaningful and relevant way. Please view the video [here] or by clicking above.

It is my hope that using these strategies will help me to lead by example and give my students opportunities to grow in rich and meaningful ways using digital media as a spring board.

Digital Board via Discovery Education Board Builder 

The Discovery Education board builder is a great classroom tool for media infused learning. The boards can be used for large group instruction, independent learning, and flipped classroom assignments. I chose to model my assignment for an independent learning center based on how society influences art, centered on the Civil Rights movement and the artist Romare Bearden.

Developing respectful and ethical minds in our students can be challenging content to fold in to our classroom instruction. Luckily being an art teacher, there are loads of opportunities to show students artists who have responded to world issues with their creativity. This lesson has students observe the work of collage artist Romare Bearden and how his artwork was made in the time of the Civil Rights movement in New York City. His vibrant colors and interesting compositions depict images of African American struggles and their place in the Civil Rights Movement.

This media board is for secondary students, 9^th – 12^th grade who have already had exposure to the Civil Rights movement. This lesson will provide the students an opportunity to see this time in history from a different lens, an artist’s lens.  Having students view a historic event from another person’s perspective is allowing the student to exercise their respective mind as well as challenging their ethical mind at the same time.

Using the media board, students will watch a short video clip of a high school in Atlanta who holds an art contest every year with the theme: Visions of the Civil Rights Movement in America Today. After seeing what other students are doing in another area of the country in response to today’s Civil Rights issues, the students will then watch a short video clip of artist Romare Bearden and his response to the issues of his day. Each video is followed by a reflection question and response box.

Using the videos as engagement and an educational “hook”, students will formulate their own collage, using a digital media, about an issue that they feel passionate about. The website picmonkey.com will be used for the project’s medium and their images can come from a Google search or their own pictures. (this would be a great lesson if I taught high school photo class!) Once their collage has been completed students will use the assessment response box to write an artist statement. They will reflect on the most successful part of their collage and if they would change anything should they make a collage again.

I designed this lesson in hopes that my students will be able to respect what other people struggle with that are unlike them. It is my hope that it sparks within them a desire to speak out (by creating a collage) about social and ethical issues in our own society today. 

Please click [here] to view he board or the image below:

Respectful and Ethical Minds

After viewing the YouTube video on flattening classrooms with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay, I was inspired by their enthusiasm for their classroom and their desire to continually try to make it more engaging for their students. With the year winding down and teachers feeling like it is time for a break it was motivating to hear Vicki Davis’ say “Collaborating gets you unique experiences and then you have to troubleshoot and when you troubleshoot you are engaging in higher order level thinking” (Davis youtube video). Her opinion on collaboration in the classroom really resonated with me, as it perfectly described how I feel my classroom looks when my students are working together to complete an objective. It made me have a creative spark for next year and the way I am going to be more comfortable with having my students work together more often to practice their collaboration skills.

The most simple way in which my students work together to complete an objective is my job chart. With seeing just about 1,000 students in a five day rotation with an average of 33 kids in a class it can get very disorganized very fast. I came up with this job chart. Each child’s chair has a shape and the shape corresponds with a job. This job is something helpful, like going to get the pencil cup, picking up the art supply bin, or having to wipe the table at the end of class. It is visually based and the students shape never changes, but the jobs do rotate (because in elementary school some jobs are more desired than others!).

This simple chart has my students set up in three minutes and cleaned up in three minutes. The set up and clean up move so swiftly and in such an organized way it helps us maximize our instructional and art creating time. My younger students take a bit to catch on to the job chart, because some of them want to be over helpful. We talk about how if everyone has one job and they do it well, the classroom becomes an amazing environment that works and gets along. This simple job chart is a strong example of the respectful mind, one of the 5 Minds for the Future that Howard Gardner believes we need to nurture in our students in order to grow well-rounded citizens (Gardner 2007).

The Ethical mind is another one of the Five Minds for the Future that I try to introduce my students to with a more global approach. In the fall we celebrate Pinwheels for Peace, a movement to bring awareness of peace to students. It is not political, but more of a “a state of calm and serenity, with no anxiety, the absence of violence, freedom from conflict or disagreement among people or groups of people (Whirled Peace). In the art room we talk about how to bring peace to our room, our school, our home, our neighborhood, and out world through our thoughts and actions. Students then create pinwheels that stand as a visual reminder of how to carry ourselves peacefully. It is a wonderful opportunity to have my students experience how to find their ethical placement in the world, serving a greater good in the world.

Imagine…Whirled Peace. (n.d.) Retrieved June 5^th 2015, from http://www.pinwheelsforpeace.com/pinwheelsforpeace/the_project.html

Juliani, A.J. {A.J. Juliani] (2013, Feb 28) Education is my Life Interview with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vwq1RhFso8

Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.