The Bi-Weekly Reports of Amanda Dahl

Originally, this box of Strawberry Delight Frosted Mini Wheats claimed to improve kids' attentiveness by as much as 20%!

In reality, this healthy-seeming cereal contains a lot of sugar! Here it is with a more honest label...

Attached is the lesson plan associated with these photos:
MEDIA LITERACY LESSON PLAN.docx

Here is an overview of the lesson plan:

Grade level: 5th grade

Introduction:
On a daily basis we are fooled by advertisements. Whether is how a model looks in magazine, actors look on television, food looks in a commercial or even how action movies are made; our eyes get tricked on a daily basis. It is up to the viewer to discover what is fact vs. fiction. Over the last thirty years, scientists have had a better understanding of the role of diet in chronic disease risks. In the United States, diet is now believed to the fourth of the top 10 causes of death. (Mathios) These facts are alarming, but true. It is a matter of health that students become aware of what they are viewing and make educated decisions on what's reality from truth on their own.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Federal Trade Commission considered restrictions for the advertisements of certain food containing false advertisement. (Wilm) Since then, there have also been several other laws made based on what can be said and how far food industries can push the truth. It is almost a guarantee that if you were to look into your food cupboards, there would be lies staring you in the face. In this assignment you will be detecting these on your own, you are welcome to look in magazines, your cupboards or on the Internet for inspiration. After the student has picked out a label they will be responsible for researching what the real ingredients are or the real facts.

Here is yet another very helpful, very cool tool for teaching art history. I actually found out about it in History of World Art II here at UMD. The Vatican Museums website (http://www.museivaticani.va/) has a feature that brings you on a high-quality virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel. The zoom-in tool is fantastic - you can closer to Michelangelo's famous painted ceiling than you could if you visited the chapel in real life. This virtual tour allows a class to view this magnificent piece of art history without taking a very expensive field trip.

Source: Vatican Museums. Web. 10 Nov 2011. http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html.

"How to Catch Wild Bread"

This is a silly "how-to" video using pixilation animation. Attached is the lesson plan that goes along with this animation...

ANIMATION LESSON PLAN.docx

Here is an overview of the lesson plan:

This week, I found a blog by the Digital Arts Technology Academy (DATA) called the Di Blog http://www.data-di.us/ (Di stands for Digital Imaging). DATA provides students with a variety of visual arts projects using digital technology (digital photography, Photoshop, web media, 2D/3D graphics, and animation). What I find most intriguing about DATA are the Di Challenges . Di Challenges use Challenge Based Learning (CBL), which encourages students to use everyday technology to solve real-world problems. These types of projects allow students to think globally and work together efficiently.

In my future classroom, even if we don't get the chance to participate in such widely collaborative projects, we could still think and learn about important global and social issues through digital art. For example, students could design posters or T-shirts or animate public service announcements (on bullying, drug-use, etc.) that could simply be shown around their school. Even small efforts lead to big impacts.

Being a huge art history buff, I know that I'm going to incorporate as much art history as I can into my future classroom.

Anywho, Art Is Messy lead me to this awesome site: Smarthistory (http://smarthistory.org/). In a nutshell, Smarthistory is an online art history textbook. Pick a work of art from a list of time periods, styles, artists, or themes, and you can hear a conversation about the piece by real art historians. The conversations are causal and understandable, and short enough to not lose the attention of students.

Here is an example of a conversation about Vincent Van Gogh's Self Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin:

Showing students these conversations on Smarthistory would not only give them the chance to view historic works of art, but would teach them how to talk about a work of art like an art historian.

How to Make a Pixilation Animation:

Pixilation animation is stop-motion animation with live actors as subjects. Objects may be incorporated as well.

Equipment needed:
-Digital camera
-Tripod (optional)
-Computer with Photoshop software
-A location to film or a capture station (such as a large sheet of colored paper to use as a background)
-Props
-Friends!

Here is a professional example of a pixilation animation:

Here is our pixilation animation:

Quirky Anxiety in Disguise from Amanda Dahl on Vimeo.

Sources:
"Her Morning Elegance." Song by Oren Lavie. Animation by Yuval and Merav Nathan. http://youtu.be/2_HXUhShhmY

Murphy, Mary. Beginner's Guide to Animation: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2008.

"Pixilation Animation." The Flying Animator. 6 Oct 2011. http://www.the-flying-animator.com/pixilation.html

My friend John Hoban has been teaching art in Duluth for over a decade and is passionate about the use of digital media in art education. He recently established a Facebook group called Duluth Sketch Bomb, which brings Duluth artists together to share their passion for art, swap ideas, improve their skills, and, overall, just have some fun. At least 4 times a year, the artists in this group will meet at a restaurant with their art supplies, pick a topic out of a hat, and represent it in any way they see fit. At the end of the session, the artists will admire each other's work. Topics and art works can also be posted to the Facebook page at any time.
Being part of this group is a lot of fun, and it makes being on Facebook more meaningful and enjoyable. I think that a Facebook group like Duluth Sketch Bomb would be a hit for middle and high school students, since more and more of them are catching the social networking bug every day. Instead of having the students meet at restaurants, the teacher could set up the classroom like a coffee shop once a month, giving the students a fun social atmosphere in which to make art. This experience might even encourage some of the students to create their own similar group outside of school and keep it up for years, even if they don't decide to pursue an art-related career.

While wandering through http://www.carrotrevolution.blogspot.com I stumbled upon something that was so interesting, I played around with it for almost an hour before writing this report about it. It's called the Google Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com) and it takes you on virtual tours through a selection of art museums around the world! It's awesome. You can even click on a work of art, zoom in, and see it much more up-close than you would if you pressed your face against it - something you can't do in the actual museum! The clumps of paint in Van Gogh's The Starry Night are just as beautiful as the painting itself. I spied on and saw every detail of the tiny people in the background of The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It was so much fun to feel so close to so many different artworks from around the world and throughout the centuries. There is also a feature (if you have a Google account) in which you can create your own personal "gallery" with your favorite artworks from the site. What a great teaching tool this is - art teachers whose schools cannot afford trips to big-deal museums like the ones featured on the Google Art Project can allow their students to wade in the enormous ocean of the art world with just the click of a mouse!