Draw every day film link
This film was shown to us in our seminar and it was the part of the influence for my assignment
http://www.chewtv.com/index.aspx

WOW E SKETCHBOOKS! what a great idea.

From the NSEAD.........

Electronic Sketchbook and Electronic Portfolios
IntroductionTeachers of Art & Design are already very familiar with the concepts of sketchbooks and portfolios. While sketchbooks are used to record observations, ideas, reference material, sources of information and inspiration, etc., portfolios serve to collect together examples of exploratory and finished work that can be presented to others for discussion, evaluation and assessment.
Developing electronic sketchbooksAn e-sketchbook is an electronic version of a traditional sketchbook. It might include:
a compendium of images and related texts;
references to the work of other artists and designers;
original visual material created by the pupil;
sources of reference material gathered from the internet and elsewhere;
comments made about the work by others; The images may be scanned in from original drawings or paintings or could be digital photographs, or generated directly on a computer. The content could also include animations, video and sound and interactive web pages. Electronic sketchbooks should not be seen as replacing or detracting from the importance of conventional sketchbooks, but as an extension to them. Paper and electronic sketchbooks can be used together to record responses. The process of assembling content is similar in both, but as well as traditional media the paper sketchbook can include:
print outs of scanned or digital pictures of ideas and responses;
word processed text and scanned articles / images;
collage samples of digitally produced images, for example, pastel, or pencil overlay and scanned and printed again before adding to the sketchbook; Teachers can encourage the regular use of e-sketchbooks by:
creating a separate electronic folder in advance for each pupil, topic and class;
reminding pupils that they should save all source materials to this, as well as regularly saving work at different stages of development as a record of process and progress;
encouraging pupils to add any word-processed homework or on-line research to the appropriate folder; As well as getting pupils to name files and folders appropriately It is also important to develop their skills in describing their work using keywords, or 'tags'. With the high volume of digital files being produced and saved, intelligent keywording is essential to enable pupils, teachers and managers to locate pieces of work at a later date without difficulty. An electonic sketchbook needs to be a resource that pupils can use all the time they study art and design. This means they must each have file storage space on the school or department network to save their experimental and final work. There may be considerations of space, depending on the capacity of the school network, so it is worthwhile talking to the school ICT network manager before encouraging pupils to save large amounts of 'memory hungry' images!
LinksThe Virtualartroomhttp://www.virtualartroom.com/e_sketchbooks.htmNational Curriculum in Actionhttp://www.ncaction.org.uk/subjects/art/ict-ops.htm

This changes some of my current opinion on what the use of technology is in art education. It is not just about new visual media but also about traditional visual forms such as the sketchbook using different tools. This is a proper breakthrough for me in my understanding of how ICT can be used in my subject. It's not all about, film web and animation but I can take existing art forms and explore through new media.

Again this reminds me of how printing affected art and then later how photography changed how art was made.

In a way, given the time to explore I have today almost used my blog as a sketch book/note book.

I am certainly going to research into E sketch books. VERY EXCITING!

I also am going to consider the imapct that photography and printing had on art as well as global travel because obviously with the wwweb we have at the touch of a button what culturally we only saw when travel became more common place such as the Grand Tour.

http://www.nsead.org/ict/about/index.aspx

This site explores some of the reasons why ICT is becoming increasingly more vital in art education. Visual digital media is growing rapidly and art education needs to be able to continue to offer pupils and students pathways into creating and understanding what they already access on a daily basis.

John Holt

"At the urging of his sister, Holt became a fifth grade teacher. After several years of teaching in Colorado, he moved to Boston. It was here that he met Bill Hull, a fellow teacher, and they decided to start a classroom observation project; one would teach, while the other would watch. The notes and journal entries Holt accumulated during his first eleven years of teaching formed the core of two of his most popular books How Children Fail and How Children Learn, as well as his less-known and more radical work, Escape from Childhood: The Rights and Needs of Children. These three books detailed the foundational ideas of Holt's philosophy of education."

This info on John Holt highlights to me that actually as unpopular as his ideas were to many in main stream education it can not be denied that Critical reflection was totally at the centre of his practice. This is an important part of my assignment but I am struggling to know how it fits in. I am strongly influenced by John Holts philosophies of education and have even home educated my own children in the past but I also realise that school and schooling does provide a very necessary service for society as a whole. I appreciate his idea that learning occurs through the activity of the learner and not necessarily the teaching but it is difficult in practice when you are a "specialist" in a subject to not make judgments on what activities to encourage or provide. How does this all fit together?

critical reflection

I have been reading up about critical reflection as the backbone to this assignment. It is obviously an important element in all proffessions to ensure best practice but particularly in teaching it is the centre of teaching and learning for both pupils and staff. All elements of teaching it seems should be open to critical reflection as we all come to the proffession with our own backgrounds and make judgments on all things dependent on that background. I know that the basis of this assignment for me is to have the opportunity to challenge my own judgments about art education and what is important and valuable. I have in the past been part of the John Holt school of thought where education should be kept real, simple and raw. I still am heavily lead by those kinds of principles but I wonder what John Holt would have made of the Technological advancements of 2000 and beyond. Would he have been able to embrace it on certain levels or would he have steered clear away from it? I guess I may be able to find out what his views were at the end of his life but how relevant that would be to now would be difficult to tell. I'll come back to that........