Something About Art.

One of the classes that I will be teaching at CLPJH in a couple of weeks will be Computer Graphics and Website Design. I have already talked the "Computer Graphics" part over with Mr. Jewett and he has given me the go-ahead to have the kiddos work on Computer Graphics Art projects to start a Computer Art gallery in our computer lab (which currently looks like crap, with faded constuction paper and old Apple posters everywhere.)

To that end, I have started some research into Computer Graphic Art and have come across some amazing sites. I have little to no artistic talent, but some of the capabilities that we have with computers today makes me think that our class could do some cool stuff.

One site that I particularly enjoyed was the site of Karin Kuhlmann, a German graphic artist that does some amazing work, like the small picture above. If you have any interest in such things, visit her website here.

A Rare and Valuable Weekend Posting.

It is Saturday afternoon, and I am blogging. This is rare. Because of this rarity, this blog is probably worth alot more than my other blogs. Maybe.

On Friday morning, the alarm went off at about 6:15 a.m.

I did nothing.

At around 7:20 a.m., I decided that I was not going to school on Friday morning. Friday mornings, we have Technology class from 8:00 a.m. until 12:00 noon. Today, the class was going to be working on the creation of personal websites, using Microsoft Publisher. To be honest, I pretty much have the website making stuff down. I have already created a 100MB website, complete with reference materials, personal information, search functions, image galleries and a fully operable online storefront that took credit cards. Whipping out a personal bio webpage sounded pretty easy. My plan was to whip this out in 30 minutes or so, then turn the project in over the internet and then work on some of my PP reading for a couple of hours.

However, I started working on the website stuff in Dreamweaver, the program that my Junior High kids are using at CLP. I got involved in figuring out slices, rollovers and popup menus, trying to jazz up my little webpage. Next thing I look up, it is 11:00 a.m. and all I have done is learn, not produce. Oh, well.

Shannon and the kids wanted to go to lunch, so we all went up to the university and had lunch at Braiden Hall, the dorm across the street from the Education Building. As we were walking in, Mauricio, our Technology instructor, was coming out. I told him that I had to take a "Family Morning," he seemed ok with it. Anyway, for 5.50, Shannon and I got all you can eat lunch and the kids got to eat for free. In addition, you can take "to go" boxes with you, so I took along enough pizza for dinner. Not bad, all things considered.

Emma was interested in meeting "my teacher." We all went over the Project Promise classroom and Terry introduced herself to Emma. It was really cute.

Shannon and the kids took off and we spent the balance of the afternoon with Terry, discussing Planning. We watched a fairly good film regarding "The Differentiated Classroom." Differentiation pertains to the teaching of a varied level of student capabilities in one class. This is of great interest to me, as in my Computer classes, there are some obvious splits in computer capabilities and I need to know how to handle them all.

We ended the afternoon with another discussion of "Person Maps," a follow up from last week. I love these, as I used them alot when working with the Developmentally Disabled population. They are neat tools that really bring out depth of understanding of the true issues of a student. Some others in the class are a little unsure about them.

Now it is the weekend. I have done almost nothing but relax all day.

How was that for value?

A Good Lesson On Thursday

Anyway, getting on with the story, but giving it a different post...

So, I lay in bed for a good couple of hours, rehearsing everything about my mini-lesson 100 times. I tend to do this whenever I have a big presentation, I worry about it. I analyze it. I perseverate over it. I wish it would stop. I tend to put as much time into worrying about a presentation as I do developing it in the first place. This does not fit into a healthy sleep schedule. I can't wait for our rural experience in Caliche, were I get to worry all about a presentation of some sort while lying on someone's couch in the middle of a cornfield. Oh, well.

I put together a pretty good lesson, reviewing brandmarks and the elements of good logo design. I got 10 well known logos from the Internet and put them into a slide show, then the students (Abby, Lynn, Tim and Kylie) tried to recall as many of them as they could. We then had a good discussion about the logos, what they looked like, what they had in common, what their function was, and so forth. Then, the group "brainstormed" their ideas for a good logo design. This was followed up by a list from an expert of 6 Key Elements of Logo Design. My group came up with 5 of the six. Then, I set the crowd loose to develop some logos of their own for made up companies. It went pretty well. The group seemed to have fun and learn some things. It was not perfect, of course. My preparation time made me cut out some of the fancy colors and graphics that I would normally like to add to a presentation and the great song that I had for background music didn't work on the computer I was using, but it all went pretty well.

Then the rest of the groups gave their presentations. Kylie did "Body Parts in Spanish," Abby did "Bicycle Parts in French," Lynn did "Bankruptcy," and Tim did a "Get to Know You" session with some amusing exercises. I particularly like Abby's presentations. She has been in my Mini-lesson groups since the beginning. I enjoy listening to her speak in French. I find it amusing. We all did well. Terry was our instructor and filmer and had encouraging words for all of us.

In the afternoon, we met with Lee to review some Environments information. I often wish for more meat with Lee. He has a ton of great experience and wisdom to impart, but we are only getting pieces, I feel. The last of the "Behavior Theorists" groups gave their presentations on Skinner and Dreikurs and we talked about student groups, how to make them and how to control them.

After 3 weeks of the STEPS program, I can officially say that it sucks. I am not opposed to learning any of the information that we are covering, but the presentations seem to have become a blur and it is hard to be sure that you are learning everything. Alot of days, I just come to class and listen to whoever talks to me, not really knowing if I am learning about "Students" or "Tools." Plus, we get to pack all of the information we are receiving into about 5 different big projects, all due in a couple of weeks. The good news is that it will all be over in about three weeks and we will be student teaching full time. Maybe I shouldn't complain, this could last for 4 months....

Tomorrow, we have our Technology class. We are supposed to begin developing a "personal website." This is to teach us how to use web page design software. As I have already developed a 100 MB website complete with reference materials, personal information, search pages, and a completely operational online storefront, I feel as I pretty much know this information, but I will be there anyway.

Hey, Where the Heck Have You Been?

OK, so I haven't written for about three days. Sorry. I last wrote on Monday, after my student "shadowing" at CLPJH. Tuesday, if you remember, is my crappy day, with classes from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. (including Methods from 3:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m.) On Tuesday, we started out with Barb McWhorter giving a guest lecture regarding "Multiple Intelligences." Barb is a past director of Project Promise and was a good lecturer, with a couple of good exercises thrown in. Multiple Intelligences reflect the varied "specialties" for learning that people tend to have, such as mathematical/logical, linguistic, musical, and so forth. An exercise reinforced the idea that I specialize in linguistic learning, but I was a little surprised to find that my second best "intelligence" is musical. Although I stink at music, I do enjoy the pattern discovery and varieties of pitch and tone that are associated with music.

In the afternoon, we did some "Success" stuff with Mauricio and Ali, mostly discussing "facades," the tendency of people to hide behind false fronts, not exposing their true selves to others. OK.

In our Methods class, we talked alot about upcoming projects and did some more online stuff in the computer lab. To be honest, I don't remember a whole lot of it.

On Wednesday, we have "Independent Study," time for us to get library or computer work done on various projects, or complete reading (which I am sorely behind on.) However, Shannon had a project that she had to get done ASAP, so I stayed home with the kids until lunch time while she worked. I had intended to spend the morning completing my write-up of my "Adolescent Theorist" for our Jigsaw group (instead of doing individual work on 8 different development theorists, a number of us have banded together to divide the labor. My portion of the research is a number of days late.) I got to the PP room just as we were starting Ali's "Tools." This was a short little discussion of "Learning Centers," different tables or areas set up around a classroom for students to learn things, then move on to another area. Ali set up 4 stations, and we circulated in these stations for the rest of the afternoon, then we were dismissed. We reviewed "Crisis management," "Emotional Intelligence," "Student Facades," and "Qualities of a Good Teacher." As an example of these stations, the "Student Facades" area had us watching the first 20 minutes of the movie "The Breakfast Club," then discussing the varied student facades and how to "reach" them. OK. Some of these "fluff" activities get old after awhile.

We finished our Stations at 3:30 p.m. I dashed up to the computer lab to compile my Adolescent Theorist information. I was reviewing Carol Gilligan, one of the first theorists to notice that girls develop differently than boys. I see her point, I suppose. I got this write-up done by 5:00 p.m.

I then dashed home to watch the kids until bedtime, then I got to work developing my Mini-lesson for Wednesday morning. This took me until almost midnight. I didn't really get to sleep until 1:00 a.m., then I got up at 4:00 a.m., rehearsing my lesson in my head. Argh.

A Shadowy Monday

Well, this is Monday, after school at CLPJHS. I spent the day following M, a student in two of our Computer classes. The day started out with Personal Economics, Art, Computer Applications, Science and then Graphics and Web Design. We then had Lunch. After lunch, we had English, U. S. History and then Mathematics to conclude the day.

To be honest, it was a pretty long day. M is a pretty undermotivated student. His friend S says, "M thinks best when he is late." This is actually a pretty accurate statement, from what I can tell. He was about 5 minutes late to his first period class, Personal Economics, because he forgot his Art assignment on the way to school and his Mom had to take him back home to get it. The art assignment, however, was due last Thursday. In Art, the class was creating postcards, using collage and other arty-type techniques (I know little about art.) During the 45 minute period, M rearranged his cutouts for his postcard twice and glued four things to a piece of cardboard. The assignment was due during class. He told the teacher after class that he would work on it at home and turn it in later. After turning in last weeks assignment today.

In Computer class, M is working on his "emulation." In this project, the students are to use a graphics program to emulate the look of a webpage, without using anything that they do not create themselves. M's project consists of redoing the "Pizza Hut" logo, which he is doing by taking the original and tracing over all of the colors in the graphics program. This appears to be a common technique for M, use shortcuts whenever he can.

In Science class, the kids were watching the conclusion of a documentary regarding pollution, the rain forests and dolphins. The documentary starred Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Danson and a host of other celebrities. There were frequent pleas in the film for students to write their congressmen or senators to stop this, that or the other thing. I saw the whole exercise as being very politically biased.

In Lunch, M wolfed down his food, then went back for seconds to give to his friend S, who did not have any lunch money. He indicated that his dad is out of town and that his mom doesn't have any money for him. I felt bad for him.

In English class, the students went to the computer lab to type up the poems that they have been working on over the last week. M had not even started his poem. He sat at the computer in the lab and banged out 12 lines of a poem discussing the things that he does at his home. He turned it in at the end of the period.

We then went to M's least favorite class, U. S. History. The class was learning about Pilgrims and the Mayflower Compact. M did not have any notes from the lecture in class last week and did not really write any notes today, either, although the teacher indicated that the notes written today could be used on the upcoming test next week.

In Math class, M has almost all of his homework done, but not everything. The teacher asked each row of students in the classroom to hold up their homework if they were done. M held his up. He got back an old assignment and got 10 out of 10 points. It appears that he is actually pretty good at math, when he bothers to complete assignments.

At the end of the day, M said, "That was really cool, having you come to all my classes with me!" I was pleased that he liked my company. He is a pretty nice kid, and smart, in his own way. For some reason, he really seems to struggle with staying on task and completing projects and homework in a timely fashion. Not sure what this information means with respect to my Case Study, but there it is....

After class got out at 2:30 p.m., I came back to the North Fork Computer Lab and have spent the last two hours completing an assignment for my Business Methods course, due tomorrow. It pertained to the Integration of Business and Academics and was an exercise in ways to involve such subjects as Math, Reading and Writing into activities for a Business Course. Argh. Mostly busy work!

All for now. More later on "Things I Noticed as a Junior High Student!"