Edcamp Global

I'm excited to be virtually attending Edcamp Global Classrooms which began this morning and runs for a full 24 hours hours until tomorrow morning.  If you are not aware Edcamps are educational 'un-conferences' in which educators and in this case students volunteer and share the'r expertise and experience with free workshops.

This morning I attended a great workshop to start Edcamp Global Classrooms off about using robots for coding in the classroom led by Jenny Lussier with Donna Macdonald and Andy Plemmons on Google Hangout.  I learned a bit about what teachers and students are doing in schools coding with Sphero and Finch robots.

I'll be attending workshops all day but I'm really looking forward to joining my #k12artchallenge pal Arlene Shelton and her class this afternoon on Periscope, Twitter, and Google Hangout for a STEAM studio sharing some of their STEAM artwork with 3D printers, engravers, and robotics.  Any students that have some spare time today after the mid-term exams are encouraged to join a session and learn about some of the classroom work other schools are doing around the world!

Nationa Art Education Association's 2016 AET Outstanding Teaching Award

I was extremely honored this week to learn that I will be the recipient of The National Art Education Association's 2016 AET Outstanding Teaching Award.  This is a tremendous honor made all the more special by my nomination which came from my innovative art education colleague Rebecca Mir of the Guggenheim Museum.  I'm looking forward to traveling to Chicago in March to the NAEA National Conference where I will recieve the award and showcase some of the work we have done here at Smithtown merging art and technology at our developing makerspace in Digital Media class.

Drawing: End of the semester

Today is the final day of drawing class and I must say it has truely been a pleasure!  We will finish our collaborative Walt Whitman portrait in pencil, complete our last mural, and wrap up all the grading.  Before we come to a close I wanted to share the photo above of our two Shanti Peace Calender winners from class- artwork from Illysa and Kyle were both chosen for this year's claendar so congradulations!  I hope all of you enjoyed class, learned, and choose to continue on the creative path in the future-best of luck!

AP Art: James Victore

I had a chance to meet up with artist and designer James Victore in Brooklyn yesterday as he was preparing to move his studio to Texas.  We have used his design work as an inspiration in class for a number of assignments in recent years as well as discussing some of his Burining Questions.



I asked James if he had any advice for art students and he said to share that "the things make you weird as a kid make you great today" and it's especially important to remember it in high school!

Drawing: Walt Whitman

Our last Drawing assignment will be a collaborative portrait of the great poem and former Smithtown teacher Walt Whitman.  Walt Whitman taught in the Smithtown school district in the late 1890s in a one room school house and had 85 students on his roster although at the time attendance wasn't compulsory and the actual attendance was usually much smaller. We will be dividing the image above of Whitman at 50 years old up into a grid and each student will draw a portion of the grid which will combine into a large portrait that will be hung.  

If you are not that aware of Whitman's work, his quintessential book of poetry Leaves of Grass is a great place to start and I'd like to share a piece of his advice with you from it's forward:

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body"

MLKDay

yesterday was MLKDay so this week we will take so time to remember Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and work.  Above is a drawing that I created on MLKday that serves as an example for our challenge this week.  This week we will talk about the message Dr. King spread and look at art that has a social impact.

Studio Art: Artist Trading Card Interpretation

Our final assignment for the semester in Studio Art class is to take the Artist Trading Card's we received from K-6 students around the world via the MiniMatisse ATC exchange and create an artistic interpretation like the example above from Emily.  Some cards have more information than others but we will choose cards blind and your work just needs to have a basis in the ATC.  The response works should be larger than ATC's so use your sketchbook and we will share and collect them on Thursday January 21.

EdcampNYC 2016 Reflection

This weekend I traveled to The Mandell School in Manhattan to attend Edcamp NYC.  If you're not familiar with Edcamps, they are "unconferences" where educators show up and share their expertise volunteering to lead sessions the day of the event by writing their names down on a board.

I was immediately impressed by the facilities and overall feel of the Mandell School.  The classroom design was terrific and it was clearly a great environment for education.  They had rooftop gardens, and terrific visuals created by students with bright, positive classrooms- a space that made inspiration quite a bit easier to get to.  I joined the group of educators for breakfast and started my day with a session on designing makerspaces with Jeremy Sambuca of the Hewitt School.  He shared some great insights on the process of creating a makerspace along with some really valuable lessons he learned for better and for worse.

I also stopped into Lisa Nielsen's session on effective ways to share with social media and Twitter.  Lisa had some great tips about using Twitter statistics and deconstructed what a killer tweet looked like for an educator.  In the second session I joined some of my creative art colleagues for a session on Art Driven Curriculum led by Mandell School teachers Tiffany Della Vedova and James Long who shared some curriculum examples they use and opened up the discussion to the group.  There were some great lessons shared that begin with art and merge into other subjects such as social art projects inspired by the work of Allora & Calzadilla and the Shadow People Project.

"Your digital footprint is your new resume" Love @mssackstein @TonySinanis & @RossCoops31's relaxed #edcampNYC talk! pic.twitter.com/sFC2NdeY38

— Tim Needles (@timneedles) January 9, 2016

I then joined a session on blogging and branding led by Starr Sackstein, Tony Sinanis, and Ross Cooper that was a wonderfully intimate conversation rather than a formal workshop.  I've talked to Starr about the regular blogging  she does at other Edcamps and she always has great insights and didn't disappoint. Tony shared some of his methodology on blogging and branding and Ross shared a great quote which I tweeted above: "Your digital footprint is your new resume".

After EdcampNYC I attended the after party at the Dazzling Discoveries Makerspace a few blocks away and I experimented designing with their DazzLinks shown in the photo above.  I also had a chance to do some 3D printing using Tinkercad and their Makerbots and printed one of our class architectural designs from last month's 3D #k12artchallenge.



EdcampNYC was a great experience overall. It was a day full of learning, sharing, and connecting and well worth the drive in on a Saturday morning!

Drawing: Mini-Comics

This week we are drawing and designing Mini-Comics in Studio Art and Drawing class.  We learned early in the week about the basic elements of a story, the folding techniques, and the variations in the media.  Today we begin drawing and designing our own.

You can base you comic on the character you created in our warm-up cartooning activities or start create new characters but the final comic should include 8 pages including a cover with your name and a title and a back with Smithtown High School East and Mr. Needles written.

After you comic is shaded, toned, and/or colored you should open it back up to one piece of paper and scan it.  We will be scanning these comics after they are completed to show and trade them.

AP Art: Heckscher Art Museum Long Island's Best

This week we will be working on creating pieces for the Heckscher Art Museum's Long Island's Best contest which we enter in February.  Students should choose an inspiration piece that was shown in the museum in the past year and use it as a basis for a response work.  The response should be original and not done in a different artist's style but a reaction that has a relationship with the original work of art in some way.  Above is a image form the exhibit Street Life: Private Moments/Public Record from photographer Berenice Abbott entitled "Fulton Street Fish Market" that is currently showing in the museum and below is an image of Rosalie and I with her photograph from last year that was chosen for the exhibition in the museum.  In addition to the museum show the contest awards a number of financial scholarships.

Drawing: Artist Trading Cards

This week we received our MiniMatisse exchange Artist Trading Cards back from classes around the world including: Los Angeles, Kentucky, Vermont, Minnesota, New Jersey, Illinois, and Croatia.  I've been handing out the ATCs to all the students that sent theirs out.  We are beginning a project in which advanced art students will use ATCs from young artists in elementary school as an inspiration for a new piece which interprets their vision.  Below is an example from Luke in Drawing Class to give you an idea of how it works but you don't need to work in the same size, you interpretation can be bigger and use any media.  The final pieces will be due after Martin Luther King day, the last week of the semester.

Digital Media: Redesigning the School Courtyard

In Digital Media we will be working with the School Improvement Team to re-design the school's courtyard and we will focus on 3 parts: landscaping, sculpture, and space usage.  We will start by working on ideas for interactive sculptures which can add an art element and can also be used as seating.  Below are a few good inspirational examples of the types of interactive sculptural seating that would work for our space.  We will design our seating using 3D Printing in Tinkercad.

Drawing: #OneWord

My Smithtown East HS #art & #drawing students chose #oneword for #2016 inspired by alumni @JonGordon11's @getoneword https://t.co/v3t6owzCQr

— Tim Needles (@timneedles) January 6, 2016

When we returned to school after the winter break Monday we began on a positive, hopeful note with the #oneword resolution project for 2016 based on alumni Jon Gordon'e book.  I showcased some of the designs from Studio Art, AP Art, and Drawing into a short Vine that I shared via social media yesterday which you can see above.

Drawing Class: Artist Trading Cards

The Artist Trading Cards we made earlier in the year in AP, Drawing, and Studio Art Class are now beginning to reach their destinations around the word and our cards should arrive shortly.  I received the tweet below from Abby Schukei, an art teacher colleague in Ralston,Nebraska who received some of our cards.  I'll post any other cards that are spotted out in the world here and to my twitter account, I'm curious where they all end up!

.@timneedles looks like I received some of your students' ATC! #K12ArtChat pic.twitter.com/vDiLB4g2BR

— Abby Schukei (@ARTschukei) January 5, 2016

Happy New Year: One Word

Happy New Year everyone! Today we are going to work one creating a #OneWord resolution for 2016 and making it a graphic image we can use for inspiration.  This concept comes from author and speaker Jon Gordon who came from Smithtown along with Jimmy Page (not the Led Zeppelin guitarist) and Dan Britton who wrote the book One Word that Will Change Your Life.  Jon Gordon returned to Smithtown speak here a few years ago and was inspirational, below is a look at his Football highlight reel from the late 1980's which appears to be taken here at Smithtown East at points.



The idea behind choosing one word is that it's simple, memorable, and more realistic as a driving force for you but it's important to be authentic and think about what you really need in your life before choosing a word.  Here's a clip of Jon on the Today Show talking about the process and the questions to ask yourself when considering your word.  I chose my word. CREATE, early this year and painted it on the classroom wall as a daily reminder which has made an impact.

We are going to talk about how to choose your one word then you will create an 8"x10" design incorporating the word to use for inspiration.  Tomorrow we'll finish our designs and then Wednesday we'll share our work and talk about our goals and why we choose the words we did. Remember to keep it positive and focused, we are starting out on a blank slate in 2016!