Studio Art: Illustrated haiku poems

We learned about the basics of typography and design in class and now it's time to bring a creative approach to what we learned and pair them together as we learn a bit about Japanese culture.  The image above of the Holstee Manifesto is a great example of great type design and the image below is an example of what we are doing, creating an original illustrated haiku poem.

Haiku poems are 3 lines consisting of 5 syllables on the 1st line, 7 syllables on the 2nd line, and 5 syllables on the 3rd and final line.  We will write 5 haiku poems then choose our favorite to illustrate.  We'll also be learning a little more about Japanese culture and schools with examples from my travels and discuss our student exchange program with the Japan Society.  Below is an example of the traditional Japanese haiku illustrated.

In the TED talk below Billy, who was a two-term U.S. Poet Laureate, explains the project and how his poems were animated for the Sundance Channel.

Art Honor Society: No Meeting Today/Japan Society

There will be no Art or Media Art Honor Society meeting today but we are still looking for volunteers to house the Japanese student visitors in March.  The application for the Japan Society program is now up for the summer as well.  We will be meeting next Thursday as scheduled!

AP Art: Welcome to Japan Society Junior Fellow

We want to welcome Saki, a visitor into our AP Art class from the Hiroshima, Japan who will be working on a project with us through the Japan Society Junior Fellow's program.  Saki will be examining the different attitudes student have in the US and Japan while she is here as well as learning about our school culture.

On Wednesday she will practice her presentation with the art honor society afters school so feel free to stop by and learn about her results.  Wednesday will also be her last day here because of the Easter break so it will also serve as her going away party!

We have been participating in this program for the past 3 years and it allows students to learn about the Japan and the US culture and education.  Students may also apply to the Japan Society for the exchange to visit Japan over the summer when schools there are still in session.

Japan Society Junior Fellows Final Projects

Our guests from Japan presented their final projects at the Japan Society on Sunday and had some interesting insights about their experiences and our school.

Aya presented data she collected from Smithtown East students and her Japanese classmates about fear of terrorism and thoughts on Japan and US policies, Kenga showed off his collaborative Japan-US painting, and Imagine presented on what is means to be cosmopolitan and international.  The presentations included many students and teachers from Smithtown East and were really interesting!

Welcome to our Japanese Visitors

This week we have Japanese visitors joining us in class through the Japan Society's exchange program.

Welcome to the 2014-2015 school year!

Welcome to a new school year!  Today in class we'll be going over some of the basic and discuss the expectation for each class and below are links to a few of the contests and opportunities we will be talking about:

National Art & Media Art Honor Societies- the art club is open to all students enrolled and meets Wednesdays after school in room 161.  We do art workshops, alumni talks, volunteer at local events such as the Hampton's Film Festival, go on art related field trips, arrange the annual haunted house, work with outside charity organisations, arrange art shows, and work on student driven extra-curricular projects.

Google for Education- We'll be taking advantage of Google's new classroom technologies to share information and collaborate in the classroom.

The Japan Society's Going Global program- Classes will collaborate on lessons virtually with students from Japan, the US, and Pakistan on projects throughout the year.  There is also a student exchange program which students may enroll in.

Japanese Student Visitors

We recently had two Japanese student visitors, Anna and Hikaru, from Tokyo stay with us in Smithtown for two weeks through the Japan Society's education program.  As part of the program each student had to create a project about American schools  and above is Hikaru's completed projects featuring some of the students from AP Art class.  Hikaru partnered with Gabby from AP Art who was part of the program in Japan this summer and Anna partnered with Allison who will be traveling to Japan this summer.

AP Art: Japan Society's Junior Fellows student guests

 

Today we are welcoming Hikaru and Anna to Smithtown East.  They are both students visiting from Japan and they will be staying with us for 2 weeks through the Japan Society's Junior Fellows program.  they will be working with us in class as well as working on a project they've designed which we'll participate in. I've also arranged a short talk with our guest and all the students in classes and the Art Honor Society who worked on the Going Global program this year.

2014 Japanese Student Visitors

Next week we will be welcoming two visiting students from Tokyo, Japan for a two week stay through the Japan Society in NY who's Going Global project some of us worked on last semester.  The students will be staying with Gabby and Allison from my AP Art class and they we be participating in a talk that I am putting together with my classes for next week. 

This visit is a great experience for all of us to learn a bit about a new culture and teach them about ours.  The video above is from a terrific TED talk Derek Sivers gave that gives some perspective of how the different cultures view things and opens you mind to how we might view things differently.  I encourage you help welcome the girls next week, to be open to the experience, and most importantly to try not to judge things that you think might be weird, they are just different.

To give you a sense of how different school is in Japan, below is a photo of me and a class of Japanese students from the Nagoya area of Japan in the Aichi district.  The school had some elements like dress codes, student cleaning periods, student led field trips, and grade charts posted on the walls that were different but when class began the learning and students were very similar.

 

 

We'll be doing an art project I designed while in Japan next week based on the Tanabata Festival where you will interpret the myth visualy and use the color palette from Japanese woodblock prints.

AP Art: Japan Society Visit

Today we are welcoming guests from the Japan Society education department into classes in preparation for our upcoming Japanese student visitors in March.  Above is a video from JS's Waku Waku series reminding us how to say 'konnichi wa'!

Studio Art: Going Global

We have finished the introductory project of creating a crane so next log on to the Japan Society's Going Global social network and share their work and begin a conversation.  We will upload photos of the crane's we created and introduce ourselves to the classes in Pakistan and Japan.  The crane above was created by Gabby, a senior who was with the Japan Society this summer for the student trip through Going Global.  She spent 3 weeks touring the country and attending school with her "host sister".

Studio Art: Japan Society’s Going Global Social Networking Project

 
Today in Studio Art we will begin working on the Japan Society’s Going Global Social Networking Project with classes from Tokyo, Japan and Karachi, Pakistan.  I had a chance to meet all the global educators this summer at a conference and above I am pictured with the teacher of the class in Pakistan Iram Sadiq who we'll be interacting with shortly.

Before we begin its important to understand a bit of the different culture and environment of these to give us some context for understanding so I designed and began putting together a short, simple game which asks questions about the countries, states, cities, towns, and schools of the participating classes. 

Above is an image of 6 of the facts that I included now it's your turn to do some research and contribute to the game before we play it.  Each student will go online and research the given locals to find an interesting fact which will be added to the game (try to think of what might be interesting about your hometown, state, or country to someone who has never seen it or been there).  Next week we'll load the questions into the game along with the facts collected from the other classes then play it.

AP Art: Hiroshi Sugimoto at the Japan Society

Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto will be speaking at the Japan Society next week on Tuesday, March 26 at 7 PM.  You may know his work from  U2's album cover for  No Line on the Horizon which was his photograph Boden Sea, Uttwil (1993) and his colorful scarf designs for French fashion label Hermès.  He will be doing a Q&A along with Memories of Origin Japan, 2012

Japan Society: Welcome to my Life

This week we will conclude our Welcome to My Life project on Going Global with the final four images.  Logon and post them by Friday and don't forget to comment on at least one other person from another school!
WEEK ONE – Create a photo collage of the most important places in your community. Comment on other students’ pictures.

WEEK TWO – Create your own photo collage of your personality. Comment on other students’ pictures.

WEEK THREE – Create a photo collage of where you spend your free time. Students will comment on collages.

WEEK FOUR – Students create a collage of their futures using your own photos or internet pictures. Students will comment on collages

Japan Society Talk: Hiroshima survivors speak with President Truman's grandson

We are continuing our work with the Going Global project today and before we begin we are going to learn a little bit about the vocabulary and how the Japanese school system works in the video above.

Today we also have a special opportunity to virtually attend an education event at the Japan Society which features a talk between two survivors of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Ms. Setsuko Thurlow and Mr. Yasuaki Yamashita, who will share their reflections, remembrances and personal testimonies with President Harry Truman’s grandson, Mr. Clifton Truman Daniel on Ustream.

Edscape Conference 2012

 

Edscape Conference 2012- How to Go Global: Connecting and Motivating American, Japanese, & Pakistani Students Online Tim Needles October 13, 2012- New Milford High School

 

Since Fall 2011, my students and I have been participating in the Going Global Social Network run by the Japan Society which has connected my students to classrooms throughout the United States, Japan, and Pakistan. It has been particularly successful in creating connections across disciplines, sparking interest in world affairs, and engaging all students.

 

Going Global Projects:

 

What's My Sentence: An idea taken from Dan Pink's terrific book Drive modified for the classroom which asks students to write in one sentence what they accomplished 30 years from now.

 

 

It works both as a motivational tool and as an icebreaker in the Going Global project plus it's interesting to see the similarities and differences in students goals across cultures.

Favorite Foods: An icebreaker which asks students to share their favorite foods, recipes for those dishes, and expands to ask their favorite foods around holidays.

Everyone loves food so it's an easy introduction that can be approached from different angles depending on the class subject. I did it with my photography class as you can see above (most delicious project ever), the cultural differences are evident immediately as you can see in the comparison with the photo below.

 

 

What is Beauty: A project that asks students to think about what beauty means to them and create an image in any media then share it explaining what makes it beautiful.

The project was a success in that the work the class did was strong and they had a virtual audience to share and discuss it with which helped them understand what they were doing a bit better.  It also gave a glimpse into some of the different values of the cultures as a whole as well as the individual students as you can see from the comparison with the photo below from a Japanese student.
 

 

Technology In The Classroom:

Instagram and Statigram

SKYPE in the Classroom

 

You Tube



Smartboard

Wikipedia

Twitter

Best Practices:

The art of the hashtag-
#NeedlesClass

Creative ideas that spread outside the classroom-
Inside Out
Inspiration! 
PSA's
Senbazuru

Freeware-
Photoshop.com
Go Animate
Blogger
Visual.ly

Merge your outside activities with the classroom-
Short & Sweet NYC
Chewy Donuts
Publications
 

Going Global Week

Throughout this abbreviated 3 day week we will be focusing on our first Going Global project and today we will begin by looking at the culture and environment of our cooperative classes in Tokyo, Japan.  This video above from ANA airlines gives a good look at some of the major sights in the city but when I was there I also really loved the Roppongi Art Triangle and the Shibuya area (especially the Starbucks overlooking the crossing). In your interested in more information National Geographic also has a terrific website on Japan.

AP Art: What's Your Sentence?

 This week we started our first Going Global project with the Dan Pink "What's Your Sentence?" assignment in which students are asked to imagine what goals they would like to achive in their lifetime then write it in the future as if they've completed it.  Here are two examples from Clay (above) and Brianne (below).

Going Global 2012

This year Mr. Needles classes will be participating in a global project with students from Japan, Pakistan, and the U.S. in which we will simultaneously work on a collaborative lesson.  The project is sponsored by the Japan Society and is entitled Going Global.  Before we begin the project we will learn a little bit about the culture of the students that we will be working with including how to say hello and introduce yourself so above is a simple video that teaches us how to say hello in Japanese and below are the phrases we will use:

Good Afternoon - Konnichiwa
How do you do (nice to meet you) - Hajimemashite, dozo yoroshiku

Thank You - Arigatou (casual) gozaimasu (formal)
Excuse me, I'm sorry - Sumimasen
Goodbye - Sayounara

Additionally, below is a short piece on the popular Japanese inspired company Tokidoki ("sometimes" in Japanese) which is very popular both in New York and in Japan as well as Europe that well speak about in class as part of one of our projects.

Japan Society: Japanese Art Deco

I stopped by The Japan Society to check out their show on Japanese Art Deco before it closed and found the work pretty fascinating! There was a variety of media ranging from textiles to posters to housewares to cigarette packages which merged the deco design with Japanese style making for some pretty interesting results. After studying both Art Deco and Japanese culture in AP Art & Painting it's definitely something worth checking out, at least on the web!