The Teacher Toolbox » Art

Sigmund, Dora & SCAMPER

Adrian — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:39:56 +0000

Over the last few years I’ve become very interested in creative process. What is it that enables some people to have an amazing output of creative ideas? How can we teach ‘creativity’? Can we truly teach creativity? Am I creative or am I doing what creative people do?

One of my favourite creativity tools is the SCAMPER Process. I particularly like to play around with the ‘Substitute’ & ‘Combine’ part of the process to produce ‘creative’ pieces of work.

In my ‘Dora Meets Sigmund’ comic I’ve ‘Substituted’: Comic Life for paper, digital photographs for drawings as well as ‘Combining’ Dora from my daughter’s doll house & Freud from my workspace. The dialog comes from ‘Combining’ aspects of a joke my cousin and I had via email. Thanks cuz!!!

Try a little SCAMPER yourself, you’ll be amazed with what you come up with.

Flips, Slides & Turns as Falsh Animations

Adrian — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:27:49 +0000

Hi All,

I’ve just added four new flash movies to the Symmetry site that demonstrate:

Flips Across a Vertical Axis, Flips Across a Horizontal Axis, Slides, and Turns or Rotations.

A HUGE THANKYOU goes out to my Flash guru Andrew of onlineartschool.info fame for creating these. Feel free to check out his site when you need ideas for your art programs.

Cool Online Photo Mosaic Creator

Adrian — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:29:31 +0000

In my workshops I often expose the punters (eg Happy Steve) to Andrea Photomosaic as a simple way of introducing alternative digital photography to their students.

Today I’ve stumbled across an online version that those of you with despotic systems administrators might like to try.

These images look great when you get them printed out on photographic paper. They are a great fundraiser if you and your students make them into calendars for the parent community.

Personally I prefer the stand alone software as you can build images using your own library of photos. But this online mosaic creator site is a nice introduction.

Have fun with it.

Adrian

New Comic Strip Creator Tool

Adrian — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:57:30 +0000

A huge thanks to Sharon in Scotland for suggesting stripcreator.com to go with the others free online comic strip generators listed on my site. It certainly has a lot more options than some of my older tools.

As an introductory activity to comic strip creation I have the kids bring in the ‘lamest’ joke they can find. They then have to create a comic strip out of it. It is an excellent way to discuss pun. For the ‘the usual suspects’ that don’t bring you a joke, Yahooligans has a really good lame joke section that they can peruse.

Here are a couple of ideas from my webpage for using sites like these:

- Use the websites provided to produce a short comic strip about something you are passionate about.

- Using the websites above create a comic strip of a joke that will make an adult laugh. NB you will need to use a clever play on words rather than something that will make a child laugh.

- In a group of 4 convert a fable into a comic strip. Hints – You will need to sub-task a lot and be very clear on the design decisions you all make.

Wordle & Poetry

Adrian — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:18 +0000

Today I’ve put together a scaffold for people wishing to experiment and be a little more creative in the publishing of poetry.

The poetry scaffold is a step by step guide to creating a verbal collage about each student. It encourages reflection and experimentation.

My son added a Wordle to his blog based on his blog tags and I made mine by ‘Pasting a heap of text’ into Wordle. We enjoyed playing with this tool and I think your students will also.

Have fun with Wordle

Adrian

PS Try performing this poem by readng it with a different volume and intonation for each word. Maybe even with a soundtrack behind it of Miles Davis

Hiroshima Day and Teaching Empathy

Adrian — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:20:42 +0000

Each year Hiroshima Day (August 6) just tends to slip under the radar in most schools. But I feel this day is so important that I spend the whole day on it in order to teach a little empathy.

One of the activities I do during the day is introduce ‘ecphrastic poetry’. This is a very powerful form that offers many opportunities to – ask questions, observe, interpret, infer, synthesize, hypothisise and, in this case, empathize.

Tonight I’ve put together a webpage of scaffolds that I’ve collected over the years that will help you on your way to adding ecphrastic poetry to your tool-box. I’ve also added a couple of teaching ideas and resources for Hiroshima Day. NB I’ve added a .bmp file of the parchment and Peace Park Dome from the poem above for you to download, drop into an image editor and publish the poetry you create.

Adrian

Kafka as a Narrative Starter

Adrian — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:35:26 +0000

By combining the first line of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ and the Build Your Wild Self character generator you will get a great narrative starter or a launchpad into literary description.

The Story Starter

‘As (insert name) awoke one morning after disturbing dreams, he/she found himself/herself transformed into an enormous creature.’

Franz Kafka – Metamorphosis – 1916

Surrealism – Another Online Art Lesson :)

Adrian — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:35:40 +0000

Surrealism is either a form that students either love or hate. In my experience I find boys tend to like the Surrealists much more than girls. I wonder what your experience is?

Surreal Painter is another online art tool that allows you to make all sorts of design decisions in creating your own surreal art.

NB You might like to try put the only Surrealist joke I know.

Q. How many Surrealists can you fit in a phone box?

A. A fish.

cheers

Adrian

PS Thanks a heap to karlyb from my Twitter network for this tool.

Mondrian Online

Adrian — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:14:47 +0000

When exposing children to Art’s diverse makeup I always make sure I throw Mondrian into the mix.

It is so cool to see students firstly mock Mondrian’s works but when you challenge them to emulate the works they find it much harder than they had initially imagined. At this point I throw in the line, ‘ Surely there is a beauty in the way the paint is applied to the canvas. How do you think he got it so ‘flat’ looking? ‘.

In the realm of traditional media I have had most success in producing ‘Mondrian like’ homages by giving the students small paint rollers and black electricians’ tape.

Now we have online tools such as the Mondrian Machine

… and life is sooooooooo a little easier

Adrian

Online Collage Generation

Adrian — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:21:03 +0000

After watching Ze Frank’s talk on TED (as recommended by Adrian G) I’ve been looking around the web for online art creation tools. NB I’m not looking for these to to replace traditional media but rather to enhance it. These tools allow students to experiment with a multitude of ideas very quickly as they refine the Design Process.

The Collage Machine is one of the tools that I’ve been interacting with to create discussions about the ideas behind collage.

Adrian