Clay Animation

Photoshop Image Series

>insert "C" inside a cirlcle here<

Copyright.

How is copyright working in the digital realm??

What I think I now, what I want to know...­_­

I have always been aware of citing sources and the rules of plagiarism in the literature world, but coming from the visual world and not being in the digital world there seems to be a lot of grey area and uncertainty when it comes to copyright issues.  I was told by a previous printmaking teacher on collecting images for source material, that once you've changed it 3 times, and then you print it (which changes it a fourth time) it becomes your own and there are no copyright issues.  Since then, I have taken advantage of that rule in both printmaking and ceramics.  I print out my own decals that I've taken from images of fabric and wallpaper patterns, manipulate them in Photoshop, and fire on in a collage type composition on the ceramic surface. And the same with my silkscreen prints, I find patterns online, change them in Photoshop, and them layer them on top of each other to create my prints.  While doing so, in the back of my mind I still feel like I'm doing something wrong.

There are copyright free books and websites that I have used as well, but I still have a problem with using the image directly even though legally it’s okay.

cool site I use:

http://www.reusableart.com/

What I want to know is... is what I've been doing okay??  Ideally, I know I should just be able to draw all of my imagery, but drawing isn't my best forte.   I often wonder about collaging as an art form and what the difference is.  Why is it okay for me to cut up National Geographic magazine and create new compositions, but its not okay for me to take images straight from google and cut, paste, and Photoshop them?  This is where I get confused.

What I now know...

Before looking up the Napster case, I never really thought about it being a big deal.  To me, its just a song and if I can get it for free then why not!  Since I'm not a music artist, but a visual artist it was hard for me to truly understand the issues and the case.  But after thinking about it with a different approach, like, what if somebody takes my art images from my web sites and includes them in their work and using them however they want (what ever that may be) changes my initial option on file sharing.  Recently I have become aware of Creative Commons and I think this is a neat site and a good idea, but I don't think I would put my pictures on it, or get pictures from it.  For photographs, I would like to always use work from my own photo library.  But I would use Creative Commons for old book illustrations or clip art like I do the other free domain sites. 

Interactive Narrative

**The graphic organizer above was created with Inspiration ** 

Interactive Narrative

Non-linear narratives is a unique genre in media art.  This includes hypertext literature, hypermedia literature, interactive narrative, and even forms of gaming. 

I.       What is it?

A.    Hypertext Fiction

Electronic literature organized non-linearly that provides reader interaction with use of hypertext links.  The reader chooses links to move from one to the next and gives the outcome of a potential story more possibillities. 

B.    Make-your-own-adventure

C.    Readers, writing the story

D.    Games

E.    Interactive Fiction

F.    Computer Books

II.      Resources

A.    Electronic Literature Organization

1.    About

The Electronic Literature Organization was founded in 1999 to foster and promote the reading, writing, teaching, and understanding of literature as it develops and persists in a changing digital environment. A 501c(3) non-profit organization, the ELO includes writers, artists, teachers, scholars, and developers.

2.    Collection

B.    Grand Text Auto

C.    HyperText NOW

D.    Eastgate

III.     How to Create

The first hypertext fiction was presented in 1987 before the use of the WWW and was published by Eastgate Systems in 1991.  (Afternoon, a story bye Michael Joyce)

A.    Hypercard

"HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface.   HyperCard was originally released with System Software 6 in 1987 and was finally withdrawn from sale in March 2004, although by then it had not been updated for many years. "

B.    Storyspace

"Storyspace is a hypertext writing environment that is especially well suited to large, complex, and challenging hypertexts. Storyspace focuses on the process of writing, making it easy and pleasant to link, revise, and reorganize."

IV.    Examples

A.    First Interactive Novel : Sunshine 69

1.    Grammatron

B.    hegirascope

C.    Ghost City

D.    These Waves of Girls

E.    My Interactive Narrative

Proposal for Final Project

I have two different ideas that where I would like to illustrate the steps or stages of two different processes/theories.  I plan to create these images in Illustrator to make a graphic/comic style illustrations and would like to add some flash animation effects to make them more fun and exciting.  I really enjoyed the 30 second Bunny Movies, so I wanted to create something with a similar effect.  Covering a lot of information and a quick way that can be comedic and fun.  This can make boring information more more exciting for students and/or can make long or difficult processes more understandable.


A: I  would like to teach Erikson's developmental stages by making a short illustrations/animations much like the 30 second bunny movies.  The clips won't have to be 30 second clips but long enough to get across the idea of the different stages.


There will be 8 clips of the different stages: 
0-8 months (Oral-Sensory)
18 months to 31/2 years (Muscular-Anal)
 31/2 years to 5 years (Locomotor-Gential)
6 years to 12/13 years (Latency)
13 years to 20 years (Adolescence)
Early adulthood
Middle Adulthood
Maturity


These clips will be graphic illustrations with some flash animation as an accent to the drawings that will help explain the different psychosocial crisis with the corresponding developmental stages.  


The audience for this project would be and high school and college, only because thats where you would most likely study phycology.  This would be a great tool for a beginning 101 course that helps over view Erkison's theories and explains them in a different way.


B: My other idea is very similar in structure with different clips explaining steps of the clay making process.  Instead of "8" different clips they would be streamed together for a animation on how to create ceramic form from the initial making of the clay to the end firing.  I think this would be a fun project because the different imagery that could be done in flash with the wheels spinning, flames coming out of the kiln, etc.  And can show the transformation of the clay in a unique way.  


Steps:
Make clay
Construct: throw or hand build
Bisque Fire
Apply glaze
Glaze Fire


The audience for this project would be any beginner level ceramics, but could be a great tool for younger kids to get them interested in ceramics and help understand all that needs to be don for a finished piece.  

Adobe in the Classroom: Teachers who use it and student projects examples

Again, it was a little disappointed at first when searching for how Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator are being used in the classroom.  I think this disappointment was brought on from my high expectations so when I was first looking, I wasn't thinking about it with an open mind.  I wanted to find the "perfect" site when the teacher showing how she uses Photoshop as an aid for her teaching plans, and not necessarily this is student work from using Photoshop.  After waiting a few days I took another dive at it with a different mind set and I've found some good links from the Adobe Digital School Collection under teacher resources.  These are lesson plans for using Adobe programs in school projects, not just in the art room but also for all subjects.  This is something that I like, using art to help understand something else, and not just making art to make it.  

Here are some links to a few projects that I liked: 
Visual Pun - In this lesson, students create a visual pun — a play on images where students use two or more images to form a new meaning. Using Photoshop Elements, students combine unrelated images and employ interesting effects to create their visual puns. This lesson helps students use technology to enhance their language arts skills and to improve communication of their ideas.


Visual Dictionary - In this lesson, students define a word visually using Photoshop Elements and add it to their class visual and audio dictionary. Students analyze a word and construct a visual representation of its meaning, thereby building higher order thinking skills.


Digital Dali - In this lesson, students turn every-day digital photographs into surrealist-style artwork by using Adobe Photoshop Elements. This activity helps students enhance their creativity and better understand surrealistic techniques by working with lighting, color, and movement to turn their pictures into surrealistic works of art. 


This website is very helpful for planning projects for students to use, but still wasn't exactly what  was looking for in terms of specific examples of teachers using Photoshop and Illustrator as a teaching tool.    


Other links that were helpful but still not exactly what I was looking for:
http://artsociety.suite101.com/article.cfm/photoshop_teaches_art


http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/high/ReliefSelfPortHS.html

My experience with Photoshop...and my journey with Illustrator

I have a little experience in photoshop.  This image is one of my favorite and most successful pieces and I used photoshop to create it, without using any filters, just modes. It was a collaboration project that my digital media class at Clemson did with UNC Charoltte.  Everybody had to post three pictures creating an image library that anybody from either class could use.  We worked on the project for a week and then we switched images with somebody from the other school for a week, then switched back to make the final edits.  This wasn't my first experiences with Photoshop because I use the program a lot when creating imagery for silkscreen prints and ceramic decals, but this was my first successful digital image  as a final product.

Other examples of Photoshop work:

(This image was done my friend Michelle Warren)     

         

During my class at Clemson we also learned Illustrator, but because I don't use it on a day to day basis like I do with Photoshop, I always feel a little lost when using the program.  Even now, I'm having a problem saving my Illustrator file as a .jpg so I can post some examples on here.  I understand the differences between Photoshop and Illustrator and I'm excited to learn more about Illustrator.  The graphic style that it creates is something that I like and I've only dabbled in.

For this image series I want to work with some photos that I've taken of some of my students from the summer and some street photography that I did at a festival.  I really like the energy and the emotion that I get from kids.  I've started on an image in Photoshop and I've layered in  some patterns.

This is not finished and still in progress.  I've extended the original photograph by using the brush tool and the clone stamp.  I added two different pattern layers and masked them out and lowered the opacity.  The pattern images were taken from some silkscreen prints that I did last semester.  With my second image I want to make some "cartoon" figures in Illustrator, like I have done above, of that will capture these happy faces and for the third image I want to combine work from both Photoshop and Illustrator.

Blogging in the Classroom

Last Friday at the Maryland Art Education Association fall conference I went to a session called "Technology in the Art Room."  I was excited because I wanted to ask other art teachers if they use a blog and if so how effective was it and what age groups did it work for.  Unfortunately this workshop didn't have a lot of group discussion.  The two leaders presented on using a digital camera to create a digital portfolio for the students and at the end of the year write and reflect about there work and the use of graphic organizers.  I thought at some point they have mentioned how using a class blog would be a great avenue for this, but it never came up in the lesson.  


With five minutes left we finally had question and answer time and I was the first one with my hand up.  I was pretty excited because I was going to be asking a question that could lead to a great discussion and I could get a lot of information out of.  I asked my question: "Do any art teachers have a class blog or have students blog about their artwork?  Is this effective?  What are the advantages and disadvantages?  What age groups would work best for this?"  The some then had an awkward moment of silence.  In a room full of 15 art teachers, nobody had any experience with blogging.  Then somebody spoke up and said that she has a friend who teaches high school and uses flickr for a similar purpose.  She makes it part of their homework assignment to post up their work and comment on each others art.  Then, another person spoke up and said that she would be reluctant to use a blog with her students because of how nasty the comments could get and that if she did it, she would only do it for high school but it would be too much to monitor it.  Just as the group started opening up and a potentially good discussion was about to happen it was time to move on to the next session.  I was a bit let down.  


When searching online for good class blogs I found a little bit of the same disappointment.  I found a lot of blogs that teachers used to share lesson plans and good resources, but I didn't really find anything where the students were taking part in the blog.  The search led me to some really cool sites, they just weren't what I was wanting to find.  Some teachers are taking advantage using this blogging technology but not to it's full capacity.  I know the ideal classroom blog is out there, but I couldn't find the one that was ideal to me.  When I say "ideal classroom blog" I mean a student centered blog thats not all about the teacher, or all about the assignments, but another tool to help the students not only understand the material and art medium, but themselves.  


Here are some of the sites that I did find as useful blogs and tools for educators to use:


Mrs. Fuglestad's Art Class Blog at Dryden Elementary
Incredible Art Blogs and Podcasts
The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet
The Teaching Palette
DIGI[cation] ePortfolio
Art Education 2.0
Collaborative mind mapping

Weblogs...

This article is in response to an article published in On the Horizon by Jill Walker from the University of Bergen  in Norway called Weblogs: Learning in Public.

In this new technology-based era, I believe it is important to teach digital media in schools.  Not just your typical computer science or keyboarding class, but really getting into what out there on the web for us to learn from and how we can learn from each other.  Walker's class at the University of Bergen is a great start for teaching digital media in the classroom.  Her weblog class uncovered hidden talents for the students, taught how easily we can be linked to others, and showed practice of a great mental exercise that students can do with to get their ideas in order and really understand more about ourselves. 

It's important to teach this because there still is a lot of learning about the Internet that needs to happen.  Writing online is different because it’s more than just words to consider. Understanding how to use a blog, linking other sites and using HTML is something that has often been self-taught and therefore students that aren't really interested in it may not grasp all the concepts behind blogging or keeping an electronic portfolio and may not have a positive reaction to it.   

As a freshman at Clemson University we were told that we had to keep an ePortfolio documenting our work through out all our classes at Clemson, showing that we have completed the General Education requirements and that we understand the values and concepts being taught at the school.  Unfortunately, there weren't any guide lines or any instruction on how to do so except for one tutorial form BlackBoard that just left us confused.  For two years we (the entire class of 3,000+ students) got emails from the University reminding us that we had a to do this ePortfolio or we could not graduate, but the professors weren't relaying this message and we were left in the clouds and wondering what do we need to include, how do we organize it, and how do we even do this!  Finally the spring semester of my junior year, the Clemson admitted that there was a lack of communication between the professors, students and the University and that we were not required to complete the ePortfolio before graduation.  However, the freshman for the upcoming year were going to be required to make one but there were going to have a BlackBoard 101 session at orientation and a class that they could take for 1 credit teaching BlackBoard, ePortfolio, html and other topics about forming a website and learning about the internet.  This real life experience shows the gap between technology in the real world application and the lack of knowledge to use it effectively.

Other point that I thought was of importance to teach was that blogging is not a game.  Anyone can read the information you put out there, just like you can read about anything from anyone. It's importance to know and understand this before you take part either writing a blog or leaving a comment.  Also, I feel that bloggers have a hard time taking criticism. They tend to get overly upset by good criticism by writing back arrogantly or delete the post completely.  On the other hand, some comments can be tedious and irrelevant to the blog and can cause a completely different conversation at the bottom of an important blog.  However annoying commenter’s can be for blog authors, its all in response to the original blog so I believe that whether its a good or bad comment it's all about the conversation and sharing or ideas over the web. 

Technology is continually changing and that is why it is sometimes difficult to teach this subject in schools because next year it might be out of date, but never the less it is important and should be taught.  The weblog community is a great avenue for teachers to get their students writing and sharing their knowledge with others and I believe it is our job as educators to teach how to use this information technology to our advantage as we move toward the future.

Digital Media and Learning

This article is in response to a paper funded by the MacArthur Foundation called "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.  The paper discussed our new digital generation and the current participatory culture that has come out of it, along with the new skills needed in this environment. Although I agree with the intent of the paper and agree with most everything it says, I disagree with a few points it makes.  This is from my own bias on the importance gaming, but I felt there were too many references and examples of gaming, or at least not enough of other forms of digital media that in my mind would have done a better job of making the argument for the paper.  The argument as I understood it, or the most important issue that stood out to me -- 
            
 "Schools as institutions have been slow to react to the emergence of this new participatory clulture; the greatest opportunity for change is currently found in after-school programs and informal learning communities.(Jenkins p.4)"


I'm not so sure why this statement is so shocking to me because I was in high school only four years ago, but I find it very unsettling that most students learn valuable skills and retain more information outside the classrooms.  I don't feel like this is the teachers fault, because I know many work hard to include digital media in lessons whenever they can, but it comes down to the school system that limits what teachers should teach, how they should teach it, and the resources to do so.  Jenkins list three concerns about students interacting on their own that include unequal opportunities, misperception, and ethical concerns.  I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for reasons why there is need for a more formal education in digital media in the classroom.


There are skills listed that come in play with digital media literacy.  Of these eleven, I feel that the two most important in my experience are judgement and collective intelligence. Digital media should be taught in the classroom because with the availability of the internet, students need to be able to set apart virtual reality and real world concepts along with reliability and credibility and understanding the intent of the information being given.  Also, I feel that there has always been taboo around techie-computer literate people and that they keep to themselves, game all day long, and have little interactions with others.  Collective intelligence along with networking is a great to link people, ideas, and information together.  The digital media world is no longer as individualized at it use to be and it think that is the whole point for the participatory culture. 

Digital Media for Educators: What? How? Why?

Digital Media for Educators

What is it?

Digital media is anything that informs us on a subject, helps us learn about something, or makes us aware of something electronically. The Internet is one of the biggest sources of digital media with an unlimited number of digital images and pictures, news articles, e-books, academic journals, blogs, discussion forums, online seminars, and information on anything you would want to know about anything. Other digital media includes video, PowerPoint presentations, video and computer games, virtual labs, media library's, audio files, and image generators such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Using digital media in the classroom helps teach material in a more creative way than just lecture and worksheets.

How and when do we use it?

Digital media can be used for both entertainment and educational purposes and is great tool for educators. It allows you to bring in an endless amount of information to students in the classroom, learn about things on a much wider scale, and teach the material in different formats so that it appeals to all students. In an art class setting, digital media is used when images of artwork are presented to the class by using PowerPoint, slide shows, or art history websites. Also, film and photography are now a big part of digital media because work is moving from manual to digital technology. Students use digital media with written reports, websites, presentations, photo essays, and more with projects that they make.

Why is it important?

Digital media is a great interactive learning tool that stimulates students visually and mentally. Especially in today's technology based society, it is important to use digital media in the classroom to expose students to it and get them comfortable with it. Digital media also provides a source of communication of individuals and groups with emails, blogs, and discussion forums, that keeps a conversation going among students outside the classroom.

Examples/Sources

Below are a list of websites that are based around digital media and are resources for teachers.

Teachers' Domain

PBS Teachers

Discovery Education

Apple -Education-Digital Content Creation

Side Note

I think that using digital media as a teaching aid is a great way to teach a variety of material and is often a missed opportunity in many schools today.  The thing about the digital world is there are many possibilities and multiple paths to link you to your goal.   This new generation has taken a greater enjoyment of learning because digital media has made it more fun and allows students with different learning styles to learn the same material.  I believe it is important to incorporate different techniques in teaching coursework and we should be using even more digital media than there is in the average classroom now.  Potentially, the use of digital media could change the dynamics in the classroom completely.