AP Art: SKYPE in the classroom with Jen Yu

Yesterday we had a chance to SKYPE with artist Jen Yu from Hamburg, Germany who is currently an artist in residence there Künstler zu Gast.  Jen is a Smithtown East AP alumni and went on to graduate from MICA.  She works in a variety of different media, take a look at some of here recent work on her website: cargocollective.com/jenyu.  She talked to the class about here work, her method, what she has learned from living in Germany, and gave the soon to be graduates some advice!

Media Arts: Screenwriting

We are beginning our screenwriting unit in media arts class and here's a short interview with Oscar winner Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash, Letters from Iwo Jima) that gives some perspective on the process and the realities of screenwriting.  We are also going to take a look at the SKYPE in the Classroom talk that our media arts students had with screenwriter and Smithtown East alumni Kevin Bisch earlier this year, below is a short clip from the talk.

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
 

See Mr.Needles class on MSG Varsity tonight

Tonight our AP Art class will be featured on MSG Varsity's High School Experience series at 6:58 PM. on channel 14 (and later be available on MSGVarsity.com and on demand channel 614). The class was filmed as they spoke to a student from Tokyo via SKYPE in the classroom and the project was part of The Japan Society's Going Global program which has been ongoing since September.

Here's a link to the video: www.msgvarsity.com

SKYPE in the classroom: Guest speakers

Now that we have SKYPE in the classroom we are looking for guest speakers in the film industry (actors, screenwriters, directors, or even grips) to speak to my Advanced film class about the profession and how to get into it. Is Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, or Judd Apatow available?