Observation Assignment

 1. My Personal Working Preferences for Artmaking:

I've wanted a studio of my own for the last ten years because I am so particular about the space in which I work.  I must admit I'm rather O.C.D. about artmaking. I have to have all supplies I might need ready and close at hand or I can't work.  I can't count the number of times I have cleaned my apartment and laid out all of my art making just to have a roommate come along a get mad that my stuff is everywhere.  The other really annoying part is that I am slow and methodical about what I'm creating.  Over the years I have grown accustom to going to campus and taking over a classroom for the weekend.  I will clean and organize the whole room or floor in the case of the fibers department, camp out for two or three days, and work till classes start up again on Monday.  There used to be this old leather couch in the Fine Arts Building that was great for power naps.  Because I know I'm slow I have to remove all distractions or I never get anything accomplished.  In the printmaking room or the fibers department I would play movies on the projector but I almost always end up watching more of the movie than making art.  If instead I just play music over the speakers I get a lot more accomplished.
When it comes to planing out a specific piece of work I don't like to plan much at all.  I prefer to play until I feel like it's finished.  My teachers have never really appreciated that much, but some of the pieces I like the most and feel are the best quality had little to no specific design in the beginning.  Usually if I have a design planned it gets thrown out half way through.  As far as rituals go, COFFEE is the only requirement.  Four shots of espresso over ice in a small cup, to be more specific, and usually there will be four to six of them over a forty-eight hour span.  The first time I took fibers I made a needle-felted bag by hand.  I listened to the entire sixth book of Harry Potter on CD, over 100 hours in the fibers department during Thanksgiving break. 


2. Visual Exercise:



3. Observation Experiment Reflection:

I should not work with distractions.  I tried to do this assignment two or three times at home with my niece(3) and nephew(4) running around, but it just didn't work.  I was far too distracted by the kids to get anything accomplished.  I finally went to a friends house where this one drawing took me three hours.  It was painfully slow.  I watched the Sound of Music start to finish, had Facebook open, two different email accounts, three or four other web sites, Pandora and Candy Crush on my phone, and I was talking with the friends who's house I was at.  I even painted my nails neon pink because it was sitting there (I hate pink).  It just about drove me nuts trying to focus with all the distractions.  I know the iGeners think they are so on top of the multitasking thing, but I think they might be fooling themselves.
As a child my mom would play the piano as we fell asleep at night and ever since I've listen to some kind of music in order to fall asleep at night.  During the day I listen to music to drown out the noise of everything around me.  I don't know if it's a short attention span or dyslexia or ADHD but at times I can be quite easily distracted and by listening to music I distract myself from distractions.  If an art room is completely quite I feel like it becomes oppressive.  I want my students to be able to work in a way that makes them comfortable, but allows them to stay on task.  Quiet talking or texting, listening to their own music, or the music I might choose to play have all worked for me in the past.   The administration usually have pretty strict rules about cell phones and I found I am very conflicted about enforcing said restrictions.  At the same time, too much of a good thing can cause just as many issues as silence.  If students are determined enough to do something they will find a way to do it, rules be damned.  If instead students learn not to abuse certain privileges while in my room and they are being productive I see no reason why a limited amount of multitasking shouldn't be allowed or even encouraged. 

Classroom Refection

Attribute #1

"Speed" - Tapscott
Relevance - It is important that I understand this aspect of my students and adapt my habits to help accommodate them.
Classroom Application - Incorporating an online blog or discussion board into my lessons so that students can research topics and communicate with classmates on the subject matter outside of class to enrich the learning experience during class. 
- An online database that the school uses to keep parents informed of their students progress is widely being adapted by many school districts around the country.  This form of immediacy for the student's grades requires teachers to stay on top of assessments of students work.  If the same system which parents use to view grades offered the option for images than the parents would be able to see the work which generated the grade.  This option might also expose the teacher to more criticism from parents.

Attribute #2
"Connected yet Disconnected" - Unrath & Mudd
Relevance - A by-product of the connectivity of today's youth is a lack of social interaction on a face to face basis.  Adolescence is a particularly awkward time in a student's life.  Socially interacting in a structured yet informal and creatively free setting offers kids the opportunity to develop the protocols necessary for the future vs the highly structured environment of the core classroom.  Like recess is for Elementary, the art class can be to middle or high school students.  My classroom moto will always be PLAY, and there is no such thing as a mistake, only new opportunities for learning.
Classroom Application - Classroom critiques are often painful to sit through in beginning college art classes.  If students taught how to critique each other and themselves

Attribute #3
"Multi-taskers" - Unrath & Mudd / Rosen
Relevance - The iGens may think they are champions of multitasking but the studies show it is not true.  They are actually worse at higher levels of thinking, understanding, and reasoning.  This relates to the students ability to learn and the teachers job of knowing what and how to teach.  Being aware of any and all limitations the student may have offers more opportunities for differentiating lesson planning.
Classroom Relevance - Music can help to give students focus whether it is something I play or they play form their phones.  Music can distract them from distraction (friends) so that they focus on creativity. 

Attribute #4
"Evaluating Differently" - Prensky
"Scrutiny" - Tapscott
Relevance - These two attributes are not defined the same way but they both speak to a growing awareness of not taking things at face value, a "man word" is no longer enough.  The iGeneration must have prof first, legitimacy based on the testimonies of hundreds or even thousands of online testimonials.  Becoming a teacher does not hold the same authority it did fifty years ago.  Students now have access to the same social networks that young adults (some not young at all) flood with images of their lives.  Where once one person's word could be spread to another and another at a relatively slow pace, now one image can be viewed by hundreds or thousands of people instantly.  As teachers we must hold ourselves to a much higher standard of conduct.  The lines have blurred between personal and professional lives, teachers do not have the luxury of being anything but above reproach. 
Classroom Application - The iGeneration is able to find vast amounts of information at the click of a button, often before the words are even entered into the search.  With this overload of information the iGeneration has adapted to evaluate worthiness quickly.  Whether their assumptions are always accurate is debatable but were older generations might find it daunting even to begin to sort through the iGen'ers think nothing of it.  I myself identify with the second group often. In the modern world of contemporary art the line between what is an is not art almost does not exist.  A weekly discussion of new vs old ideas of art is would be a wonderful springboard for a class blogging activity.  IGen'ers are well equipped to investigate and search out artist which interest or relate to their personalities. 

Attribute #5
"Grow Up Differently" - Prensky
Relevance - In order to teach any curriculum to the fullest you much understand who it is that you are teaching.  You need every possible scrap of information you can, because the iGeneration has an understanding of technology which expands as quickly as the technology advances.  Lessons and projects that the students see as boring can not offer a rich and juicy learning experience. 
Classroom Application - Being unafraid to experiment with and use technology is the first and biggest step.  Using technology to create a connected classroom with blogs for communication outside of the classrooms, online forums for displaying students artworks such as Artsonia, Animation apps like DoInk or Animoto, Photoshop, Percolator App, Vimeo, or the even document camera Rotoschoping on iPads.  An iPhone or Android device are instant cameras in your pocket and provide streaming music for students 

Read & Reflect #5

It's strange to think that an article written less than ten years ago could be so completely outdated and useless.  Technology advances at such a rate that it is intimidating for me when thinking about my own classroom.  Even the ten years I've been in college (sad I know), education has drastically changed along with technology.   I took a class two years ago in which I had to buy a Clicker from the MU bookstore, it was used for daily attendance and quizzes.  I had never heard of Clickers because it had been several years since I had had a lecture class.  I was irritated with having to spend so much money on it when there was no returning it or even selling it to another student for the next semester.  One of the T.A.'s in the class had a quiz/pole he had us answer with our cell phones.  The technology was awesome.  We answered the questions by texting our responses and the information was instantly compiled and displayed on the website projected on the big screen in the front of the class.  The T.A. informed up he was using the app for his students at the local high school where he taught.  I didn't even have a cell phone the first two years of college.
M.V.L.E.'s for my future classes still seem at odds with what I envision my at room experience to be.  Firstly, when I began my student teaching I had to de"friend" several students in the district.   The state has had to adapt strict regulations concerning social media because of an abuse of power/position/privilege that some MO teachers have demonstrated.  Many of the kids I de"friended" were babies or toddlers I babysat back in middle and high school.  I like being able to see how these kids are growing up into young adults.  While this makes me feel much older than I really am, I was rather off put to learn I was legally no longer allowed to be associated with them on Facebook.  I mention this because quite honestly Facebook is the only online/virtual environment I am comfortable with.  If I was to utilize an M.V.L.E. in my classroom I will need to do a lot of research and experimenting to find a forum I am comfortable with.  Maybe that is something I need to do anyway.  For a high school setting, possibly middle, the M.V.L.E. would be ideal for offering students more time to explore and discover contemporary and historically relevant Artist.  In collegiate settings M.V.L.E.'s seem only natural now.  I never once thought twice about emailing a teacher in order to stay connected with them and at the very least Blackboard or Blogging is a necessary component to all my classes.  
Secondly, I just can't get past the need for a tactile experience in an art room regardless of the innumerable iPad Apps that are available.  There are many ways to incorporate technology into the art room and that experience should be/needs to be blended with the tactile aspects of making art.  There are as many different ways to create art as there are personalities creating it. Depending on your definition of multitasking, I have been incorporating technology into my own art making process for a decade and a half.  By listening to music I find it easier to concentrate and focus on the project, and for as many years I have been sneaking my music into class in order to work.  From my Discman to my android cell phone with Pandora streaming 24/7 music has been a necessity for me.   I see no reason why my students can't do the same with their own working process.  I would hope it'd encourage each one to be more focused on the project at hand. 

App Review

I remember the first paint program we had on the family computer.  I would play for hours making circles, squares, patterns, dragging out lines with the mouse and erasing with the click of a button.  The paint app of today's iPad used by artist David Hockney and to the stumbling around in the dark that I did 20 years ago are a universe apart.  I was first introduced to Hockney by my 2-D teacher Daria Kerridge.  She told me about Hockney because of his Polaroid and photo collage pieces like - Merced River,Yosemite Valley, Sept. 1982
Telephone Pole, 1982
Nicholas Wilder Studying Picasso, 1982
Patrick Procktor, Pembroke Studios, London 1982. 

Hockney has been one of Britain's most prolific and renown artist for over 60 years. Over the decades as new technology has come about he has embarrassed it.  With the iPad Hockney has created entire shows exhibiting the pieces he creates using a stylus or his finger.  In one such show he displayed 40 separate iPads on a signal wall, each with a different image.  Some of the iPads would display the creations of his image start to finish in a continuous loop while others just the final piece.   In January of 2013 DAVID HOCKNEY RA: A BIGGER PICTURE was displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.  This show displayed large printouts of his digital images in addition to his large scale oil paintings, some filling entire walls.  Hockney's earlier work has inspired a number of my own art pieces so I wanted to explore the paint apps which might be available for smart phones.

http://vimeo.com/30363451 - this is a short clip of Hockney's pieces being created.

Paint Joy - Free your inner artist - FREE

A wonderful drawing program for all ages to free your imagination and inner artist. Simple, neat while full of possibility.
With Paint Joy, you have full control of brush style, color, brush size, background color etc.
Paint Joy has more than 20 beautiful brushes, such as glow neon, glow, crayon, chalk, sketch etc. You can draw on a color canvas, or decorate any of your photos to make them more beautiful.
The app supports built-in gallery， which saves not only your drawing pictures, but also the drawing animation. You can play back your masterpieces like a small film anytime you want with the "Movie" feature in app.

Despite the smallish size of my phone I had a lot of fun creating this piece.  I had to learn how to use just the tip of my finger.  The variation of lines, colors, color effects, shading or even blocking in sections of color were are fun to play with.  I love working with lines and attempted to create a complex image with just my finger tip.  You can start with blank screen or pull up an existing picture on your phone.  I had two complaints with the app, one, the screen size of my phone was small and I would have liked to work on a larger scale and two, once I downloaded my finished drawing I could no longer play the image.  On the mobile devise you are able to watch mark by make being created.  My computer is not an iPad so I was not able to add the program to my HP laptop.  I was a little disappoint the image looked washed out once it was on my computer as well, it seemed brighter on the phone.  The Eye took me just over two hours to create.


Ideally each of my students would have an iPad to work with and if so they would have a larger surface area to work with/on.  In an interview Hockney said he would make drawing on the sunrise and send them to his friends almost as soon as he created them ten or fifteen people would have access to them and comment on them.  He would do this every day and after a year his friends had hundreds of different images of his original works.  The immediacy for me was the best part of his use of new technology of his new works.

The Eye 

Read & Reflect #4

I started with the Ted Talk this week and ended up spending four days watching talk after talk.  I find them fascinating.  I personally don't care much for fashion, but thought it was very interesting that designers had to work harder to create uniquely branded looks and not just the brands themselves.
The reading from Rosen was fascinating, but I had to continually Google names and such to better understand the full meaning of his words.  As a whole I can appreciate and incorporate the information into my future classroom. 
As I watched the video, Remix, I was practically elated.  At the conclusion of the film it felt like I had just watched my favorite movie for the first time.  Every other thought or concern I had had that day was wiped from my mind as if I was in shock.  I started thinking about appropriation and Mary Franco's presentation on age appropriate lesson plans I'd seen more than a year before.  If I take an image of artwork someone else made, change it in three significant ways and dub it my artwork how is that different than remixing music.
They say nothing in art is new anymore, no idea or way of thinking or representation, everything has been done before.  You as an artist can only make it bigger, better, etc.  So does that mean every piece of artwork I've ever made is copyright infringement??? NO!  Remix and Johanna both pointed out that you can't copyright creativity.  The creative ingenuity that Girl Talk exhibits on stage while preforming and creating his "music" could never in a million years have been created by the original musicians.  Artist like Glitch Mob, Ruckus Roboticus, Wax Tailor, Blackmill, and Skrillex (just to name a few of my favorites) creating Dubstep music, which to me is very similar to Mashups or Funk, are creating new music built upon the knowledge and musical stepping stones which came before them. 
Images of Duchamp "Fountain" and other Dadaist pieces started coming to mind and I wanted to see how student's creative process might be changed by listening to artist like Girl Talk or Skrillex.  But although Dubstep can be found on sites like Pandora would I find Girl Talk as well or artist of the Brazilian Funk genre.  Is there a difference in artist like Girl talk and Skrillex as far as copyright laws are concerned.  Both artists are building with what has come before. If I played these artist in my classroom would I be feeding into the delinquency of our nation or helping to create a stronger one.  Would I be able to find said music legally?
What can you appropriate in art; an exercise in taking existing pieces of art and changing them in at least three ways to make it your own. Clear and concise guidelines would be needed but this activity would be a lot of fun if students were to add a musical element to there pieces reflecting what they were listening to as they worked. 
An art historical lesson could be made about looking into the history or Dadaism or who created some of the first assemblages.  What was the inspiration behind the artist choices and how might the student use the same inspiration to create pieces of their own. 

Read & Reflect #3

It is a little strange to me to think of using blogging in my own classroom.  I have always felt it was tedious and frustrating to have to blog or respond in my collage classwork, but then I don't think I qualify as a Digital Native either.  When planning out lessons I think about playing with different media and how messy can you get and still have time to clean up and go to the next class.  This is probably not the first place everyone else starts with.  The other aspects I think about are what music would help in creativity while the students are working, which pieces of music have helped me in the past, and which contemporary or historical artist and/or artwork will lead to stronger student work.  After all these considerations I have often sat and written out lesson plans using pen and paper or makers or paint or whichever medium I'm working with.  Time always seems the biggest constraint for all the great ideas I come up with.  If I were able to utilize a class blog and present a new piece of artwork of artist, lets say on Friday as students leave class, and have each student investigate and respond by Monday morning.  Then my class time could be used to build upon the information.  Or if each student had a week to do their investigating without my input, but simply build on what other students in the class discover.  I could use the weekend to provide my thoughts on what they had discovered and start Monday with a whole wealth of information pertinent to each student. 

As I was thinking about what artwork I wanted to blog about I started going back through the images of my students work from this past semester.   I worked with students Kindergarten through 8th grade and before I taught a lesson I would make exemplars for each project.  I must be a little kid at heart because I had so much fun playing with paint, markers, wire, etc.  I had more fun making the projects than the kids did at times because I better understood the different mediums and how best to manipulate them.  Projects I thought would be a blast for the kids turned out to be exhausting because I ended up having to do so much work with each student individually.  With a classroom full of 20 to 30 students one on one attention is not an easy thing to do.
 So all that being said I decided to show pieces that I made for the students and then the students pieces which coincide with them.  This first piece is a project I created for my seventh graders at Pioneer Ridge Middle school. While student teaching I had the opportunity to attend a planning session of all the middle school teachers in the district.  There are over a thousand teachers in the Independence Public School District, and I was a little surprised to see only four middle school art teachers.  At these monthly meeting each teacher would bring a lesson plan or two which they had created for their kids and present it to the group.  One of the lessons was entitled Zentangle, a term I had just been reading about while looking for ideas for upcoming lessons.  Zentangle is an easy to learn method of creating beautiful images from repetitive patterns(artteacherscloset.blogspot.com/2011/04/in-art-room-zentangles.html), in case you have not heard of it.  I have always loved creating my writing styles, in high school I would draw my friends names out for them in Old English script for them for fun.  The idea of doing a project inspired by Zentangle seemed like a lot of fun.  
I started with the handout I was given and drew an E for my first initial. My host teacher Faith said she had about a hundred 8x11 canvases boards which were given to her and a box of various gauge wire that I could use it I wanted.  The project just kind of fell together as I was playing with the materials available to me.  Each student picked one letter from their initials, drew it using Zentangle inspired designs filling an 8 x11 piece of paper, painted over top their pencil lines with back tempra, used water color to fill in the spaces and add another design element, and finally used varying types of wire to make the letter stand off the page.  I am a perfectionist when it comes to my own artwork so I should have known that this was too involved for seventh grade students when it took me every bit of a hundred hours to finish my exemplar.  As the students were working on their pieces there was usually one step of the process which they excelled at and the rest were a struggle.  Most were able to get a design done and when they started using the tempra to paint over the pencil they would get frustrated with how slow and careful they had to be.  Many started out with intricate designs but by the time the wire was completed most detail was left out.  When it came time to work with the wire many students practically gave up because they couldn't make it do what they wanted.  One student Walter, loved every kind of art but he made a simpler kind of art.  His W here was complete in three class periods I think.  But I liked it more than many of the others because he did the best he personally could do and never complained.  If he wasn't sure how best to shape the wire or make a thin, straight line with the paint he would ask for help and try over and over until he was satisfied with the results. 

The original idea for this project came from a magazine of collaged winter scapes, but the more I looked for specific colors in magazines the harder it became to find enough variations in color.  I love color, and find that I am very sensitive to the subtle differences in shade, tone, and vibrancy.  This was a fifth grade project and my host teacher at the time Kristy, suggested that I use construction paper instead of magazines for the collageing She then showed me her cabinet of paper.  It was a beautiful thing, it really was.  I had so much fun going through and picking out every variations I could find.  It was fun up until I started cutting it all up.  I must have had forty different colors, again a bit of an over achievement.  I was hoping the kids would be able to create pieces with a pointillism quality to them, but realized far too late that these were just fifth graders meeting once a week for fifty minutes.  In explanation of the project I put together a PowerPoint of landscape images, but the students found it hard to be able to draw such detailed images in simple blocks of color.  I had made a collage out of magazine cuttings and was using it in addition to my lesson.  Again the students were confused on what exactly they should be doing so finally I decided to make another examplar for the classes.   I probably spent an entire weekend making the above piece and another similar piece.  Why I thought fifth graders could ever be expected to put anywhere near that much work into a project is a mystery.  I had a lot of fun doing this piece and my students seems to really like sorting through all the colors and wasting lots of glue.  The one element that I think really helps the collages make sense was adding the black tempera paint outline, and I owe it all to one of my students.  She asked if you could outline the edges of each section of color to help each one be more readable.  I was very resistant to put black paint on top of something I put so much effort into, but in the end it makes each images stand out to much more. 
I spent entirely too much time and effort on this piece but it was worth it in the end, for me anyway.  The student's pieces was awesome.  Even some of the ones I was skeptical of at first ended up being the greatest after a bit of black paint.  

Read & Reflect #2

My overall impression of the articles for this week is overwhelming inadequacy on my part to be able to connect with this iGeneration.  I may have been born apart of the Net Generation but I feel a decade behind.  As a kid we never had the internet until I moved out.  I didn’t own my first computer until I was nineteen.  My first cell phone was at the age of twenty-one, and I was reluctant even then to get one at all.  I liked being unreachable to my job and others if need be.  In the last five years I have been playing catch-up to be on an even keel with my classmates and peers.  Even now having a smart phone, I don’t feel at all up-to-date with the iGeneration students I want to be teaching. 

I have always viewed art making as a tactile (kinesthetic) process. As an artist I want to be able to feel the materials as much as see or smell or even hear them.  The smell or oil paint, the sound of a sewing machine or the creak of reeds as you weave them together, the vibrancy of color that is revealed as you open a kiln after hours of waiting, the dryness of pastel or charcoal as the dust filters to the floor.   There are many technologies which can be used to create art but I will always prefer the smell of chemicals in a dark room over the tedious hours spent in front of a Photoshop window. 

Every artist and student is different and deservedly so.  In Deresiewicy’s Solitude essay he repeatedly states that students of now and tomorrow will be incapable of disconnecting from media and technology.   “They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude.”  Throughout art school I tried to work on and finish pieces with friends around me.  I always ended up working by myself in an empty art building in the middle of the night.  Solitude is a necessity for the contemplation process of any and all of my artwork.  I like to work in the middle of the night because no one is likely to be awake and need my attention.  I can be alone with my thoughts.  Music is likely to be my only companion I take, if any at all.  This concept seems to be at odds with the last two generational trends however.  I must always remember that the way things work for me is not likely to work for others. 

This last semester doing my student teaching I thought I would allow students to listen to music as they worked in an effort to create “MY” ideal working environment.  What I soon discovered was that my classical or instrumental music did nothing for the students but make them tired.  I decided to let them pick the genre of music and was amazed at how not relaxing an experience it was for me.  I could hardly concentrate on the lesson I was teaching but the students would be speeding away at their projects as though it was the greatest project ever.  If the current educational system is in fact static and passé the art room needs to be as forward thinking possible.  The room I had for 6^th, 7^th and 8^th graders had ten student computers.  One of the first things the students asked of me was to be allowed to use said computers.  They went on to inform me that the computers were never touched.  As cell phone use was strictly forbidden in the classrooms I had no problem with the students getting on the computers to look up images for their projects, but that was about it.  My lesson plans were very hands on and only required the individual’s imagination.  Using Prezi instead of PowerPoint presentation went over well, I thought.  At least there were fewer distraction behaviors from the students.  But after reading and viewing all the technologies students associate as common place, my efforts seem feeble and grossly inadequate.    

I find myself leaning more and more towards Tapscott's opinions of the Net Generation possibly because I am a part of this so called "Dumbest Generation" and truly disagree with Bauerlein's conclusion. Or maybe I am aghast to associate myself with such a negative labeling. The thirteen traits of Rosen’s “Rewired” and the Eight Net Gen Norms” compiled by Tapscott are encouraging, but the characteristics of my “Net” generation and those of the iGeneration are not all positive. Is it that the iGeneration is being raised on a constant diet of technology or that parenting is being replaced by the use of technology because a single income is no longer enough to support a family? Are we allowing computers, television, videogames, etc. to raise the current generation of children because parents don’t have the time or energy to interact with their kids? “I come home from school, boot up my laptop, grab a snack, and get online. I stay there studying and talking to friends until mom calls me for dinner and then head back there right after dinner. Unless my mom or dad needs me I stay in my room until I go to sleep.” (Rewired, pg. 30) Is it really just about how the child wants to spend his time? I can’t fathom being so isolated and connected at the same time. Maybe I’m not as much a part of the net gen as I thought.
I was comforted by the idea that we are a generation of scrutinizing and critical individuals. As I was reading the section of Tapscott’s article on Scrutiny, the State Farm app commercial came to mind:
"I thought State Farm didn't have all those apps?"
"Where'd you hear that?"
"The internet."
"And you believed it?"
"Yeah, they can't put anything on the internet that isn't true."
"Where'd you hear that?"
"The internet." “The Internet.”
“Oh look, here comes my date. I met him on the internet. He’s a French model!”
“Ah, Banj’or” www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I
State Farm uses this idiocy of the statement “They can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true.” to dispel views notions that they are not keeping up with technology. But when I was a kid my parents were very distrustful of anything related to the internet. I remember my teachers continuously reminding us that Wikipedia was not a credible source of information for papers. If half of what you read on the internet is false in one way or another, no wonder people are skimming through articles instead of “sustained, undistracted reading”(Nicholas Carr – Is Google making us stupid).
After reading Carr’s article I updated my status on Facebook with Richard Foreman’s conclusions of today’s society. I particularly agreed with his “pancake people” statement. “‘Pancake people’ are spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.” (Richard Foreman). I was interested to see if any of my “friends” would comment, question, argue, anything really. After four and a half days I haven’t received even a “like”. Whereas if I had posted a picture of my cat doing something stupid and cat like I would have received all kinds of feedback. I don’t think of my friends as being dumb or shallow in thought, but I am somewhat disappointed in the lack of response because I posted something which required deeper thinking. “The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds” (Nicholas Carr – Is Google making us stupid).

Read & Reflect #1

In six weeks I will be celebrating my first 29th birthday, and depending on the day I feel ever so old. I recently went on a trip with two “little old ladies”, one is the mother of my childhood friend and the other her sister. I do not consider myself to be tech savvy in any way, but last September I joined the smartphone revolution and succumbed to having an outlandish phone bill in estrange for staying connected. This summer I spent 2 weeks with these ladies who learn to type on a manual type writer, bought cell phones only because their children asked them to before going on a cross country trip, have no idea what a GPS is or how to use it, get confused after night because of night blindness.

If I need to figure out where the closest Wal-Mart is I pick up my phone and Google it. I know how to follow a GPS because I had to learn to use it while driving a cab for two years. There are things that I now find simple and second nature, like using my phone and every 5 seconds anytime I want to clarify some fact that I never would have foreseen even three years ago. Anytime I want to make sure I'm telling someone I'm free on the right day I look at my phone. Things that I have always needed to use my memory for, I have replaced with my phone. I don’t know if it is a positive step forward, my memory is worse than ever, but I wouldn't go back. I've come to think of myself is much more technology advanced. In the first few years of college if I needed something done on my computer I had to ask a friend favor. With the absence of said friend over the last two years I have learned to do it for myself. It was often painfully hard and took forever, but I did it because it was a necessity.

This new generation, who from infancy has been surrounded by technology that is continuing to change, evolve, advance, there is no struggle to stay caught up. They are continually learning, but without the struggle to adapt or rewire ones brain. David hockey was an important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s. He started off making entire pieces with Polaroid images. He has evolved with the technology over the years and his art making has changed with it, who is to say which is better. Who says that taking picture with a Polaroid and using thousands of them to document a life or experience is any better or less valuable than using an iPad and spending hours upon hours making these intricate and amazing painting. He created an entire gallery of iPad paintings which he featured in the Biennale, a world renown and prestigious thing.

I have always had issues being able to type as fast as the thoughts come to my mind. I have struggled with blogging or responding to comments on Blackboard and finding a way to type fast enough to get the thought down before it’s gone. I read terribly slow and dyslexic; many times I lose the thought before I can get it typed. Through the use of my smart phone I can talk and it types; I can get all the thoughts down before they're gone, even creating this post I'm using my phone.

One thing that impressed me from the video was how Korea overcame their economic crisis with technology. Creating free internet everywhere provided people access to the technology to better their family. With this quote blessing they also created a new list of problems that they are making strides to cure, like the psychologist who spent years studying the effects of internet. Does the advancement of technology make us better at multitasking or does being able to go through 12 different things all at once mean you have no attention span. I know even doing my homework I was distracted over and over and over by my phone, email, etc. I am distracted by the technology around me, but is it because I'm easily distracted or because technology is making me more distracted.

After watching this documentary and reading these articles I have never felt a larger generational gap to the kids are growing up a technology saturated life. Is there a balance, I think so, but it comes from the parents providing boundaries. As educators we're not in the home; we are not the ones to set boundaries in their daily lives. We need to give students access to opportunities to better themselves. As teachers we have to improve and grow and learn every bit as much as the world of technology is changing.

Hello, my name is Esther McCune and for me art making is not successful until my hands are dirty, my clothes are stained and the room I’m working in is in a state of organized chaos.

This is the start of my third year in my certification/master’s program at MU and true to form I am late getting enrolled in my classes because of some conflict with any one of a half a dozen departments. I love and hate MU, I can’t stress enough how much I have respected and enjoyed my teachers but with equally as much frustration I have hated having to deal with the bureaucracy of MU.
This past spring I did my student teaching in the Independence School District and loved every minute of it. I got wonderful recommendations for all four of my principles and full marks from my host teachers, but no job yet. So I will continue moving forward with the program and continue trying to get a teaching position.

The piece below is one of my 8th graders, we had a lot of storms last spring and I wanted to incorporate them into my lesson plans.

The second is one of Cezanne's Mont Sainte Victoire from the Nelson Adkins in Kansas City, a personal favorite

The last two are a pastel piece I did for a friend last fall so that he would have a reminder of home while stuck in Columbia MO