Last
May I was invited to be the technology coordinator for the eArts
Initiative at Lynchburg College. I develop iOS apps, have been an
adjunct professor in the Art Department at the college and had actively
pursued iPads for my Va Governor's School of Math, Science and Technology media production class. I was thrilled to be involved. The
result, thanks to the Virginia Foundation for Independent College and
those at LC who procured the grant, was an array of technology tools for
education which included the 30 iPads I would shepherd through the Fall
semester. (The 31st is my own.)
As a media producer I
had found iPads wonderful tools for creating and distributing media. I
was looking forward to being able to share this enthusiasm with my
fellow faculty members at the college, students in Gov School, LC
students and the kids who participated in the art workshops at the Daura
Gallery.
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| ABC.DC: An Art Alphabet, soon to be released iPad app for preschool kids |
My
first opportunities came with Gov School. This year was especially
memorable. The iPads played a role, but it was also a very special group
of students. That was apparently true of all of the students
participating in Gov School last summer. It was a bright, cooperative,
creative group who embraced new ideas and technology with ease and
enthusiasm. As an educator your can't really ask for more in my book.
Gov
School is four weeks long with sessions a little over 3 hours a day.
This is a huge chunk of time and a lot can be accomplished. The first
two weeks were spent working in Flash creating both artwork and
animation. The last two weeks were spent working on the iPad. The
primary development tool was Demibooks Composer Studio. The students
also created content in Procreate for their Composer Studio projects.
What was especially fun for me was to set them up with the basics of how
the program works and let them go wild exploring different options. I
encouraged them to explore the gaming functionality. They came up with
some wonderful solutions. A few are featured on the Demibooks Education page. (Demibooks Share is required to view these games.)
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| Image from Sean Pritchard's Composer Studio Maze game |
This
was a fabulous experience for the students. They even got to have an
hour web conference with the CEO and Programmer from Demibooks. What a
wonderful way to build confidence and expand skill sets. The
students made a website which documents their experience and has samples of their animation files.
My
life as an iPad wrangler shifted with the start of the Fall semester at
LC. I was tasked with faculty development and organizing a conference. I
was also excited to research best practices with mobile technology and
investigate what others had done. I wanted to make connections with
other educators in the region.
A
first step was to reach out to faculty I felt would be early adapters,
those already using technology in the classroom or those who had
expressed an interest. I started writing blog articles and sending them
to both the potential early adapters and then all faculty. Article topics included an
introduction to the eArts Initiative, discussions of specific tools,
digital storytelling and links to work of educators researching the use
of technology in education.
As
I go over my log from the semester I see all of the amazing tools/apps I
discovered. There is such a rich tapestry of tools being developed for
education. We ended up getting these apps installed on the 30 iPads; Demibooks Composer Pro,Composer Studio and Composer Share, iMovie, Animation Desk, Procreate, Adobe Ideas, Sock Puppets and Google Drive.
This is really only the tip of the iceberg. There were many other apps
that were downloaded. So many resources are free with no reason not to
investigate their usefulness in the classroom. The most recent set of
downloaded apps are museum related for the Museum Studies class, but
more about that later.
The
conference was the focus on my attention at the beginning of the
semester. Getting no head start on the semester, just procuring a venue
at the college was a trial. The most important ingredient for a
successful event is dynamic speakers. Thanks to a suggestion from LC's
Educational Technologist, Charley Butcher, I made a connection with
Travis Allen, founder of iSchool Initiative
and we were off to the races. I was very impressed with Travis and the
work his non-profit is doing. His associates, fellow students at
Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Emily Wolfe and Arvin Ross came on
campus for our "Contemporary Technology in Today's Classroom"
conference on Saturday, November 2. Here are LC student Ella Schwartz's excellent notes taken at the event, including Emily Wolfe's keynote encouraging
students to activity participate in their education and Arvin Ross's App
Smack Down.
The
faculty workshops were a lot of fun for me and very productive. The
sessions were an hour each and offered two times a day. The first was
for iMovie. This very accessible tool turns an iPad into a complete
mobile video production studio. All in one easy to handle package. My
experience with video/animation editing is on desktops with professional
tools (not that the iMovie is not used professionally) so I had tons of
fun producing a few little video projects to get myself up and running. Faculty enthusiasm was gratifying but it was also a nice surprise that
they represented such a wide variety of disciplines, including Human
Development and Learning, Philosophy, Special Education, Nursing,
Athletics, International Relations and Physical Therapy. They all left
feeling video production by the students could be a valuable asset in
their courses.
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| portion of iMovie interface |
The
next faculty workshop was on Demibooks Composer Pro . Composer Pro has the advantage of not only providing an
accessible digital storytelling format with the option to publish to the
App Store, it is a great vehicle for learning the principles of
programming. All interactivity requires programming. Composer Pro is
designed to facilitate programming without having to write code. It is
also a good tool for building games. I had numerous conversations with
LC Math Department faculty A.J. Eccles about how her students might use
this app for developing educational media for math students. Excellent
video below discussing teaching math with visual tools, perfect for a
Composer Pro project.
Matthew Peterson - Teaching Without Words
The
next workshop was on Adobe Ideas. Adobe
Ideas is a vector drawing program that allows the user to import images
from numerous sources, like Google. We played around with importing maps
and annotating them during the workshop.
The last workshop was another iMovie/Digital Storytelling session. I had recently stumbled on this brilliant quote about storytelling from Kris Wetterlund from her book, If You Can't See It Don't Say It, A NEW APPROACH TO INTERPRETIVE WRITING. She is a museum educator so she references visitors when educators would substitute students.
The last workshop was another iMovie/Digital Storytelling session. I had recently stumbled on this brilliant quote about storytelling from Kris Wetterlund from her book, If You Can't See It Don't Say It, A NEW APPROACH TO INTERPRETIVE WRITING. She is a museum educator so she references visitors when educators would substitute students.
"We
think in stories. Call them schemas, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models,
metaphors, or narratives, they are how we explain the world to ourselves and share
our worldview with others. We tell ourselves stories about our selves(identity),
stories about the world (perceptions), stories about others (relationships),
and stories about our experiences(interpretation). This hard wired impulse, to document
and share our experiences, is at the root of all of the arts. At the same time
we are attracted to seeing the world through another person’s eyes. Listening
to someone else’s stories is like
being
in a flight simulator trying out a flight path. Stories are simulations
we run on the mental machinery of our own imaginations. Because of the human attraction
to stories,
storytelling
is a powerful way to connect with visitors."
Story telling is critical in both teaching and learning. iPads provide easy access to many tools for ditigal storytelling.
My research revealed a local discovery. Our neighbors to the north, Sweet Briar College have a wonderful program y:1. As they explain on their website, "The y:1 program is designed to develop students’ technological skills and enhance digital sophistication. Every y:1 student receives a free iPad loaded with applications and a digital version of the Common Reading book." I went out to Sweet Briar and meet with Cathy Gutierrez to learn more about the program. Her class in the program is The Raw and the Cooked: Seeing Culture through Food. Of course I was very interested in how the iPads were incorporated into the course. It was very disappointing no Sweet Briar faculty member involved in the y:1 program was not able to come to the Contemporary Technology in Today's Classroom.
My
work with the elementary school age students through the Daura Gallery
for these past 3 or 4 years has been a highlight of my work at the
college. This weekend we will be making a movie with iMovie. During our
session in October with the iPads we played with the app warhol.DIY.
A very informative, entertaining iPad app that lets the user mimic a
silkscreen in the style of Warhol. The process of creating a photo
silkscreen is replicated on the iPad from a photo the user takes or
imports. The students had a great time and some of them were also
exploring painting with Procreate and animation on FlipBoom Lite.
Procreate is a very sophisticated program and I was thrilled to see a
six year old working with ease.
 |
| Daniel's Warhol-style self portrait |
The
iPads were also used as a portable gallery to share images with the
Daura Gallery students that were relevant to what we were doing that day
as well as to document their work, whether is was digital or not. Here
Grace is documenting her stick puppets in a photo taken with an iPad.
Although
independent of my role as technology coordinator for the eArts
Initiative, I am currently teaching/substituting for a colleague. The
class, MS 201, is part of the Museum Studies minor at LC. We are using
the eArts iPads to research museum apps and the students are designing
their own virtual iPad exhibition with five to ten objects of their
choosing. Researching, conceptualizing and planning with images and a
site map is what is feasible within the time I have with the students.
We are using Google Drive to compile the lists of museum apps we are
finding and then they will upload their final project to the MS201
Google Drive folder. This is a great way for the students to share their
work as well as submit it for evaluation.
There
is no doubt in my mind that tablets are here to stay and will
profoundly impact educational experiences in the future (as they are
doing now), just as computers have done. Many of the wave of students
coming up who will be entering colleges in the next few years will be
exceptionally savvy in working with mobile technology. Colleges need to
be players in that game on every level.
This has been a wonderful opportunity for me to wrangle 30 iPads. I may not have that many to manage in the future, but there will be at least one, my own!
Addendum:
The
number of resources is staggering. Here are a few from my bookmarks
this semester. Many other references are included in previous blog posts. Here are a few more:
Connie Bauer
This
site is for university instructors and students who have an iPad and
want to know about some very useful iPad apps for school/education use.
Baruch College and the Rubin Museum of Art hosted a conference that
outlined the great strides in innovation and development that is
garnered through partnerships between higher-education institutions and
museums around the globe.
The iPad has a number of unique features that provide for interesting possibilities in teaching and learning.
iPad trial at Oberlin College
Conclusion
Although there is tremendous value for what the iPad can contribute to the teaching and learning process, it can only do so in the hands of an individual--owned, operated, and managed by a single person.
Conclusion
Although there is tremendous value for what the iPad can contribute to the teaching and learning process, it can only do so in the hands of an individual--owned, operated, and managed by a single person.
Good general resource/info below
This link is to a very informative graphic about storytelling
One of the wonderful things about this learning space (I mean this blog)
is that it is built collaboratively around a shared interest. This is
what James Paul Gee called 'passionate affinity learning' .
"Passionate-affinity learning occurs when people organize themselves in
the real world and/or via the Internet (or a virtual world) to learn
something connected to a shared endeavour, interest, or passion.
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