The Bullying Project

Taylor and I are wrapping up our experience at New Paltz middle school with a final project with the classes. We were asked by our teacher to create a project with big idea of bullying. After a couple brainstorming sessions, we had come up with the final idea inspired by postsecret.com. Created by Frank Warren, Post Secret invites people from all over the world to send him postcards anonymously with a secret and image on the face of the card. He continues to scan the card and post the best on his blog. After doing a project similar to this in Art for the Exceptional Child, we decided to create a lesson for the middle schoolers.

In searching for support material, we came across the movie "The Bully Project." This documentary was part of many film festivals and will be released to theaters soon. Check out the movies website here. For those too lazy, here's the trailer.

 

Another video we showed the class, our teacher Mrs. Sturgis came across. She was interested in creating videos with the students as the bully project prior to our post secret idea. This is similar to what she was looking for...

So after a day or two of brainstorming and deciding on the final project, we came to the decision between Taylor, myself, Mrs. Sturgis, and the second art teacher Mrs. Grushaw, that all the students in art would participate in the post secret regardless of their grade. This section "bullying" would be introduced to the students grades 6-8 and every student would create an anonymous secret and place it in a box. We would collect all secrets, filter for inappropriate words/sentences, and type them to help for anonymity. The next day of the lesson students would take someone elses secret and create a post card representing it. These would all be collected and hung around the school so everywhere students go there would be post cards and secrets to see. It would hit students harder because these are REAL secrets from their peers. Here are some of the post secrets we found from the original blog we showed the class. 

 

And here is our teacher example we showed the class. Ours is larger than the students will be. 

"Anytime someone said anything stupid I'd write it on a post-it, put it on the back of my door and laugh about it later."

Again, to expand on what all of us teachers thought for projects it was the decision that each grade would create post cards as the intro to the subject. From there each grade would have their own project to show. For example, the thoughts as of right now are 6th grade- creating lifesize silhouettes to be placed around the school as if bullying was taking place. (ex: in a stair well there could be a silhouette of a boy pushing another boy down the stairs) 7th grade- using Wordle to create posters with words that describe bullying and how they feel. 8th grade- create short films in groups based on situations from the post secret project. A different film will be shown every morning on the announcements for the school to see as bully awareness.

Just after the first day of introducing the topic, students seem excited and interested in the projects. They have voiced their opinions and think its "cool we are doing this so other kids can know what some people think." They were able to share experiences and see that other students in the class related to them, even when they thought they were alone. I can't wait for our next day to work on these with the class. We may be going in an extra day just to see the progress! I think this is something a lot of students could benefit from in other schools. Bullying is a nationwide problem that needs to be addressed. Mrs. Grushaw is even taking ideas from this project to the high school students!

Tim Lefens Lecture

Tim Lefens is the creator of A.R.T (Artistic Realization Technologies).
Author of Flying Colors
a.r.t.lefens@artrealization.org
When Tim realized how much he loved art and that he may lose it, he tried to create a way for those who couldn't move to create art. It simply allows those that struggle moving their limbs to control a laser and decide the outcome of their art.

Tim had multiple theories about art itself and the way people think about life/art as a whole.
Here are some of his theories--
Death Bed Theory- If you only had 4 hours left and were on your "death bed" what painting would you want to see on your wall?
Trunkated Pyramid- There are only so many people who can be ballerinas or astronauts. But, Warhol and Duchant sliced off the top of the pyramid and allowed everyone to become equal on this level of art, "joke art."
Double Funnel- You can't get there by calculating or manipulating. You have to go all the way through a funnel and then shoot out of the second. Lefens didn't realize what he was experiencing until he was staring at the stars and had the realization that he was so small in this vast universe. The further down you go in the funnel, the further out you come the second.
Two Plateaus- One on vast land and 6 feet to second plateau. An artists greatest challenge is to take that leap. Take the leap to the second plateau to find the better place.

The body and spirit cohabitate against their wills. the body belongs for the earth, the spirit for the sky.
He believes the secret to finding real art is by losing yourself and letting go. Somehow get yourself out of the literal world. It took Tim a near death experience to have a vision and realization of the beauty in the world. He explained an instance where he saw the sprinkler as beautiful dropplets of water in slow motion. Similar to paint brush strokes. I love this idea of taking something so fast paced and quick and slowing it down to find the beauty we may miss in our fast paced lives.
If you are aware you are looking at art, that it is framed, you haven't gone far enough. "It's only art if you forget who you are or where you are."

Marcel Duchant (signing a toilet bowl) to Andy Warhol (silk screen of a soup can)- these two artists opened up the "floodgates for mediocre art."

I was fortunate enough to attend Cardinal Hayes last year, 2010, with Art for the Exceptional Child. It was an amazing experience to be able to observe the laser technique at work, much different than simply hearing about it. Students in wheelchairs with severe disabilities are able to create art with the help of a laser and a "tracker." Assistants are the trackers and will ask yes or no questions for the students/artists to respond and create their artwork. Students have the freedom to choose canvas size, brush surface, and color of paint. They are able to control the entire piece, all they need is the hands and functions of the trackers.

Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites

After reading the article Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life by Danah Boyd,  I was able to understand a deeper look into the world of Myspace. As well as looks upon Friendster, Xanga, and Facebook.

Skyler, 18, said to mom, "If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist." These social network sites develop significant cultural resonance among American teens.

I checked out some of the sites launched to attract teens.
Faceparty- a site to meet other teens with similar interests, chat, and gossip specifically in the U.K.
Bebo (Blog early, Blog often)- Users receive a personal profile page where they can post blogs, photos, music, videos, and questionairres to which other users may answer.
Piczo- a photo website builder and community, users can add items such as images, text content, videos, glitters, shout-outs, and profile pages. Took off in the UK

These are all similar sites in which a community is created and teens are lured in by constant entertainment. They can simply log in and "stalk" other users, pictures, and videos they post. 

We were asked in class to expand on the section Network Publics.
Here, public is best defined as "a collection of people who may not all know each other but share 'a common understanding of the world, a shared identity, a claim to inclusiveness, a consensus regarding the collective interest.'"

Boyd goes deeper into the definition to focus on the 4 properties that fundamentally separate unmediated publics form networked publics:
Persistence: This is the fact that information posted online can be replicated, copied, or reproduced. Enabling communication, but also extending the period of existence of any speech created
Searchability: We may not be able to find one another in a town or state, but by a couple of clicks on a keyboard, a person can be found within seconds. Words or things they may have said can be found just as easily
Replicability: This is similar to Sweeney's article about cloning. Anything in the networks public can be replicated/repeated or copied. It can be made over and over or be used again and again by different individuals
Invisible audiences: This can cover parents, community, administrators, anyone who has access to the internet. It is virtually impossible to know all of those who come across our path online. 

Most of this has been brought up in our education. As students we have been informed of what is okay to post online and what "the public" is capable of finding or seeing us post on social network sites. I don't think this article changed any of my concepts of the networked public. I have had an understanding that what is put online is easily replicated and searched by simply typing a name into Google. One of the things I would look out for as a teacher, would be issues that arrise with children. This is an easy way of students to get a hold of one-anothers information. It is an easy way for bullies to key in on a students pictures/life/history. 
In one of our previous readings, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, an interesting game came up. It was called Medieval Space. In this game students would create a Myspace for a medieval character such as Henry the VI or Queen Elizabeth. As an art teacher I would be extremely interested in having students create a Facebook for artists. They would have to research information on the artist and plug in the information to create a profile for the artist chosen. As a follow up, students would need to friend other artists created and leave messages on the others walls as if they were the artist themselves. 
They can create photo albums of the artists work, profile pictures, "like" pages, etc. Because Facebook and social networking is a popular topic for the youth, this should be a topic they enjoy and are able to relate to.  

Glogster

If you enjoyed one of my previous posts about Wordle, you may enjoy this site!
It is a similar site that allows you to create a form of posters. This site is more for text and images. You can add videos, animated images, text, or graphics to enhance your poster. Here is a little example of something I threw together when testing out this site.



Pretty cool, huh? You can change the background and rotate pictures/text however you'd like. Try it out here!

This would be great for classes in a similar way Wordle could be great. If the student is finished with a product they can create a poster for the subject they were working on in their class project. They can submit it to a class hard drive or a class blog so the teacher can see what the student works on. 

Popplet

Popplet is this nifty little site that allows you to create a visual outline of something. I practiced using it for my Narrative project for Technology in the Art Room. I actually really enjoyed this. I am more of a visual person, so being able to add images to my audio project was helpful for me. I was able to visualize the point I was trying to get across by sound (which I was having a difficult time with, might I add). Let me know what you think when you hear my narrative piece!

But all in all, I enjoyed Popplet. I think it is a great colorful, eye grabbing tool to have. You can sort by color, topic, and incorporate images and videos. Check out mine!

Observations Day 3

Today during observations in the New Paltz Middle School, Taylor and I saw our first "A" day. The big project throughout the day was the sixth grade self portrait collages. Each student needed to create a self portrait incorporating multiple images for a person in the center and words that describe their personality as a border. Throughout the day there were three sixth grade classes, Mrs. Sturgis taught the first class and then allowed Taylor and I to take the reigns for the next two periods.
Jumping into the lesson on the spot was not that hard after watching Mrs. Sturgis do it. The classes respected us greatly and acted as they would if Mrs. Sturgis were teaching.
I found this great trick for the cleanup process for this grade while teaching these two classes. Adding a little competition to their day made for a quick cleanup. When the first table was clear and the students at it were sitting quietly, I deemed them first place! After I announced this to the class, they all quickly picked up their pace and rushed back to their seats with quiet mouths! Worked like a charm. For a 5 minute cleanup, all students were in their chairs after just 3 minutes.

Show and Tell

 

Gulp

 

Gulp: The making of