Sites to Explore

This is a list of internet sites with mostly free creative and educational tools of interest to art educators. It will never be complete, there may occasionally be broken links, and I'll update this list only periodically.

A downloadable PDF of this list is available on my website.

Last Updated March 1, 2013

Interactive online technology tools, repositories, sites for storing and sharing

Animoto - Animoto turns your photos and video clips into professional video slideshows in minutes. Fast, free, and simple. http://animoto.com/

Artpad  -  an online drawing site (they call it a digital canvas). Students use online tools to draw and paint, and view their art in a “gallery” setting. http://artpad.art.com/ 

ArtSTOR – Online art image repository of art works from around the world, past and present. High-resolution images, fully identified. ArtSTOR is available through many university libraries. Subject to copyright restrictions. Sign In through your University Library Login and Password.

ArtBabble - Art video-sharing site. http://www.artbabble.org

Artsonia – Artsonia.com is the world's largest online digital art gallery for students and teachers. It offers a searchable online image gallery, and may include artists’ statements. http://artsonia.com

Audacity - Free downloadable software for audio editing (good for creating podcasts). http://audacity.sourceforge.net/  

Aviary - Online free image and audio editor. Also has a Screen Capture.  http://www.aviary.com/

Bitly – Shortens long links, gives real-time stats, helps you share, track, and analyze your links. See also Ow.ly http://bit.ly/ 

Blender - Free/downloadable 3-D modeling program http://www.blender.org

Creative Commons - Alternative copyright licensing system http://creativecommons.org

Blip FM -  Streaming Music. Search for free music to stream. Listen to free music recommended by real people. Create your own free Internet radio station. A blip is a combination of 1) a song and 2) a short message that accompanies the music. http://blip.fm/home

Blogster - Free online blogging community that features specific-interest blogs. http://www.blogster.com/

Calzles -  an online site for creation of digital stories or timelines using multimedia files (images, video, music, blogs, documents, etc.) Could be used for creation and sharing of albums, narratives, or research on topics of interest. http://www.capzles.com/

Creaza  - An online multimedia storyboarding site. Offers an integrated, web-based toolbox for creative work, both at school and in your free time.  You use the toolbox along with various fully developed thematic universes:  historical periods, fairy-tales, fantasy worlds, and current challenges, such as climate/environment. Creaza tools:  Mindomo is an online mind mapping tool for visual learning, developing creativity and problem solving. With Mindomo, you can organise and get an overview of thoughts, ideas, links, and other information visually With Cartoonist, you can compose multimedia stories.  You can use the tool to create comic strips or more personal digital narratives. MovieEditor is an online video editor to create movies, complete with professional-looking titles, transitions, effects, animation, music, and narration. MovieEditor is a full-featured timeline-based video editor, similar to traditional desktop-based video editing tools. There’s just one big difference: MovieEditor is web-based and a web browser with Adobe Flash gives you instant access. AudioEditor is an online audio editor for recording, slicing, and mixing audio. With AudioEditor you can produce your own audio clips and soundscapes. http://www.creaza.com/

Creative Commons Search - Looks for material that is in the public domain, not its own search engine, but works through independent organizations. Users need to verify the copyright attributes of material found. http://search.creativecommons.org/

Common Craft - 3-minute user-friendly video tutorials on everything technology. (RSS, Social Bookmarking, Phishing, Cloud Computing, etc.) http://www.commoncraft.com/about/who

Delicious - Social bookmarking site that allows you to highlight, annotate, tag, save, and share links with others you designate. http://www.delicious.com/

Digication - provides e-Portfolio and Assessment Management Systems for K-12 and Higher Education Institutions. http://www.digication.com/

Diigo - Social bookmarking site that allows you to highlight, annotate, tag, save, and share links http://diigo.com/education

Dropbox – virtual storage site for documents and files of all formats (docs, powerpoints, videos, images).  You can create and share folders and files with multiple people.  Free. https://www.dropbox.com/

Facebook – Online social network with text, video, image, link sharing capacities.

Flipbook - Make a flip book online. you draw with your mouse on the drawing area and use the arrows to add frames or to go back to previous frames. You can use the 'save' button to save your work in progress without publishing it. You can reopen it again from 'my flipbooks' and keep working on the animation until you are ready to publish it. Lots of examples available on the site. http://www.benettonplay.com/toys/flipbookdeluxe/guest.php

Flickr – Online image repository, frequently used by artists, operates under Creative Commons/Public Domain Licensing. Popular photo-sharing site. http://flickr.com

Foursquare - a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices. This service is available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as Smart phones. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby. http://foursquare.com/

GIMP - Free/downloadable image-editing program http://www.gimp.org

Glogster - A Glog is an interactive visual platform in which users create a “poster or web page” containing multimedia elements including: text, audio, video, images, graphics, drawings, and data. A Glog is created using a very easy to understand, drag and drop interface that is relevant, enjoyable, and scalable for students of all ages and learning styles.  Glogster EDU meets or exceeds national educational technology and content area standards for teachers and students of all ages: K-12 & Post Secondary. http://edu.glogster.com/

Google Art Project – interactive museum sites, view galleries in street view, create your own gallery. http://www.googleartproject.com/

Google Docs - Create and share your work online and access your documents from anywhere. Manage documents, spreadsheets, presentations, surveys, etc in the Google interface. https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&pa...

Google Groups – online groups using the Google interface. Often used as a closed social network. http://groups.google.com/

Google Sites - Free website or wiki builder http://sites.google.com

Google Maps: Street View. Lets you explore places around the world through 360-degree
street-level imagery. You can check out restaurants, visit neighborhoods, or plan your next trip. http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

Instagram – not really an Internet site, but rather a mobile imaging app and social network with 90 million members.

Internet Archive - The Internet Archive works to bring together anything and everything that resides in the public domain texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages. http://www.archive.org   

Issuu: You Publish - Online site for self-published materials. Collect, share and publish in a format designed to make your documents look their very best. Customizable templates make self-publishing easy. Explore a world of publications by people and publishers alike.  http://issuu.com/explore

Jing – real time screen capture application, online and free. Interfaces with screencast.com. Take a picture or make a short video of what you see on your computer monitor. Captures audio as well.  Limited to 5 minutes. Share it instantly via web, email, IM, Twitter or your blog. Just tell Jing where to send the screenshot and it's there and ready to share. When you send to a destination like Screencast.com or Flickr, Jing even places a hyperlink on your clipboard. Simply paste the link into an IM, e-mail, forum post, anywhere…and when the person clicks it they see your freshly-uploaded screenshot. Uses: collaborate on a design project, share a snapshot of a document, comment on students' homework, demonstrate how to do something in a computer, etc.  http://www.techsmith.com/jing/

Kerpoof - Created and operated by Disney. Online site where students and teachers can: Make artwork, Make an animated movie, Make a printed card, t-shirt, or mug , Tell a story, Make a drawing, Vote on the movies, stories, and drawings that other people have made. Kid friendly and mostly free. (classic embedded Disney commercialism, but not too bad.)  Has an educator’s page just for teachers, and a parents’ page.  http://www.kerpoof.com/

Kidblog - Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with their own, unique blog. Kidblog's simple, yet powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs. http://kidblog.org/home.php

The Learning Network - Run by the New York Times. Through subscription online (free). News features, lesson plans, interactive. To honor The Times’s longstanding commitment to educators and students, this blog and all its posts, as well as all Times articles linked from them and from our Twitter and Facebook accounts, will be accessible without a digital subscription. Teachers and students can use The Learning Network to engage with the news, whether by commenting, taking quizzes, playing games or reading articles. http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/

Livebinders - Free online site to organize and present your resources and teaching materials. http://livebinders.com/

Lulu.com – On-demand Publishing site. Lulu.com lets you make, self-publish, print and sell print-on-demand books, e- books, photo books and calendars with free book publishing. http://www.lulu.com/

Ow.ly – Allows you to upload text documents, images files and (soon) video files; creates a shortened URL (weblink), and interfaces with Twitter – where you can post a short message to accompany the linked file. http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url

Paper.li – Paper.li aggregates and then publishes in magazine format Twitter posts, with their accompanying images and video links) according to the hashtags you designate. Also says it publishes from Facebook and Google+. http://paper.li 

Picnik – online image editing software. Imports images from Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, or your desktop. http://www.picnik.com/

Pinterest – A content sharing service that allows members to "pin" images, videos and other objects to their pinboard. Also includes standard social networking features. http://pinterest.com/

Prezi – Free. Create astonishing zooming/rotating presentations live and on the web. Prezify your PowerPoint or Keynote slides http://prezi.com/

Pixlr – Pixlr is an online photo editing site. Looks and works a lot like Photoshop.  Ypload images, edit them, and save to your desktop. Free. http:// http://pixlr.com/

Scoop.it – online social bookmarking site, formats bookmarked sites into a magazine-like interface.  http://scoop.it.com   

SAM Animation- Stop Motion user-friendly downloadable software designed specifically for students and teachers for classroom use. SAM Animation is a software platform that allows the user to make stop-action movies using a USB or fire-wire real-time camera (i.e. web camera or webcam) and whatever props the user desires. The software is both Mac and PC compatible and free to all users willing to register with www.samanimation.com. http://www.samanimation.com/

Screencast-O-Matic - the original online screen recorder for one-click recording from your browser on Windows, Mac, or Linux with no install for free. http://www.screencast-o-matic.com     

Scribblar - Simple web-based interface for online collaboration. Multi-user whiteboard, live audio, image collaboration, text-chat and more. http://www.scribblar.com/

Scribd - Free social publishing site, where tens of millions of people share original writings and documents. http://www.scribd.com/

Skype  - Free Internet video conferencing site. Because you can share your screen with anyone on Skype for free, you can present slice shows, websites, word documents, etc to anyone you are connected to through Skype.  http://www.skype.com/

Slideshare – Free. Offers users the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolios. Searchable archive on about every topic. http://www.slideshare.net/

Second Life (SL) - a virtual online environment in which you create your avatar (online persona) and visit SL sites and interact in various environments with other SL avatars. http://secondlife.com/   You need a fairly good graphics card and a computer with lots of power.

Sendspace – Free. Large file hosting sharing service. Upload large files; tell Sendspace where to send them by e-mail. Recipient gets email download link. http://www.sendspace.com/ 

Sumopaint -  Online image editor with lots of tools for image creation and manipulation. Upload images or start from scratch. Almost as good as Photoshop (even has layers, etc). http://www.sumopaint.com/app/

ThinkQuest  - ThinkQuest is a protected online environment that enables teachers to design and carry out learning projects within their classrooms or in collaboration with ThinkQuest’s global community. Projects come to life when students create pages with text, pictures, multimedia, votes, brainstorms, debates, and messages. ThinkQuest is designed to make it easy for teachers to set up learning projects within their classrooms or in collabo­ration with other students and teachers around the world. The environment is flexible so that teachers can design projects to meet their specific teaching and learning goals. Developed and hosted by the Oracle Education Foundation, Thinkquest  – Interfaces with Twitter, you can log into Twitter, upload a document from your hard drive, and Twitter creates a shortened link to the document, which is hosted on Scribd.com. http://www.thinkquest.org/en/TwitDoc 

TwitDoc – Interfaces with Twitter, you can log into Twitter, upload a document from your hard drive, and Twitter creates a shortened link to the document, which is hosted on Scribd.com. http://twitdoc.com/

TwitPic - lets you share media on Twitter in real-time. You can post photos or videos to TwitPic from your phone, from the site, or through email. Similar to yFrog. http://twitpic.com/

Twitter - Micro-blogging and instant messaging tool. 140 characters. Numerous #hashtag groups share content on specific topics. Twitter hashtag groups also sometimes organize online meet-ups at specific times to discuss specific topics, post conference highlights. You can sigh up for RSS feeds to your website or email.  http://twitter.com

Tumblr -  is a microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, or choose to make their tumblelog private. The service emphasizes ease of use. http://www.tumblr.com/

Vimeo - Video-sharing site, used more often by artists.  http://vimeo.com

VoiceThread - Record and playback conversations around images, documents, and videos http://ed.voicethread.com  See http://www.artjunction.org/voicethread.php for advice on using VoiceThread in the art room.

Weebly – Online free web hosting site with easy to use web templates and a drag and drop editing interface. http://www.weebly.com/  * Art teachers I have worked with seem to like Weebly.

Wikispaces – Wikis are simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together. http://www.wikispaces.com/

WordPress - is an open source Content Management System (CMS), often used as a blog publishing application. WordPress is used by over 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites. WordPress has a web template system using a template processor. http://wordpress.org/

yfrog - Similar to TwitPic. Share your images and video on Twitter with yfrog. Upload the image or video, add a message, and tweet it to followers. yfrog offers a short URL service that can be used anywhere. You can email the short URL to friends. Your images and videos are stored online in your yfrog account. http://yfrog.com/

YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/  See also - Richard Byrne's alternatives to YouTube:  http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/30-alternatives-to-youtube...

  

Online Social Networks and Sites with Resources for Art Educators

Art Education 2.0 - Social Network for Art Educators, hosted by Ning, 8000 members worldwide sharing ideas in blogs, images, videos, uploaded teaching resources, and chats. There are 111 Groups of varying sizes in Art Education 2.0, some are more active than others.  Groups include: AP Studio Art Teachers, Artists Teaching Students with Disabilities, National Board Certified (art) Teachers and candidates, Artist Trading Card swaps, One Day On Earth, Comics in the classroom, Artists who Teach, Art Café @ Second Life, Artsonia Users and Wanna be Users, etc. http://arted20.ning.com

Adbusters - a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society. Lots of resources for teaching critical visual literacy here. http://www.adbusters.org/

Art21 - PBS series on contemporary artists in the US.  Lots of high quality images, content about contemporary artists, thematic lesson ideas. http://www.pbs.org/art21/

Artsedge - ARTSEDGE is the Kennedy Center's free digital learning platform for arts education. Resources include lesson plans, guides, audio stories, etc. http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators.aspx

Artsednet - Education-related activities, lessons, and resources offered by the Getty Museum for teachers, students, professionals, and the general public. Lots of lessons and resources on artists for K-12 art teachers. http://www.getty.edu/education/

Boing-Boing – Originally a zine and now a blog, Boing Boing provides weekly snapshots or archives in the form of short descriptions and images, videos, and links of/to art, culture, technology, literary publications, music, science, gadgets, games, and just about everything else found on the web. http://www.boingboing.net/

BuzzFeed - website that combines a technology platform for detecting viral content with an editorial selection process to provide a snapshot of "the viral web in realtime." Every registered user of BuzzFeed has a homepage that contains links to their most recent contributions to the site. The BuzzFeed homepage consists of a time-sequential list of posts from users and staff members. The content of the posts is usually either a video, image, or link. These posts are the site's attempt to capture the essence of viral media currently resonating on the web. http://www.buzzfeed.com/

Deviant Art – deviantART is a platform that allows emerging and established artists to exhibit, promote, and share their works within a peer community dedicated to the arts. The site's social network environment receives over 100,000 daily uploads of original art works ranging from traditional media, such as painting and sculpture, to digital art, pixel art, films and anime. http://www.deviantart.com/

Digication - (NAEA) Hosted on the NAEA website with e-portfolio with lesson plans, images, and blog posts by teachers. http://naea.digication.com/home_guest.digi?sid=1601&cid=0&t...

Digital Art Education - Social network for students at the Digital Arts Technology Academy http://digitalartsed.ning.com

Edmodo - leading social learning network for K12 education, offers online classroom communications tools for teachers and students: including online library, blogs, webinars, and free private microblogging in the Classroom with built-in security features that give teachers privacy controls over their virtual classrooms. www.edmodo.com/

Educators PLN Ning - Online social network for educators. Everything you find in a good Ning: Groups, Blogs, lots of  conversations and posts about trending topics from the classroom, lots of “how to”, access to educators’ lessons and multimedia files (whatever they shared), etc. See their Twitter Edchat Page - a feed from #Edchat on Twitter. (Members of the Educators PLN may view Twitter Edchat Page page. Interaction in #edchat requires a Twitter account. http://edupln.com/

#edchat – a Twitter hashtag group of educators, mostly k-12, who share and discuss issues and experiences in education.  This group posts throughout the week, but also meets online in twitter on Tuesdays at noon EST and 7 p.m. EST to discuss topics selected in advance by the group. Need a twitter account to participate. Anyone can see the Twitter feed online.

Edutopia – Online site developed and maintained for teachers and learners by the George Lucas Foundation, dedicated to the development of 21st-century skills. http://www.edutopia.org/

Merchants of Cool - PBS Frontline documentary about the creators and marketers of popular culture for teenagers. Lots of teacher-created lessons here, and feedback from teens. Critical visual/media literacy orientation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/

Pew Internet & American Life Project - one of seven projects that make up the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. The Project produces reports exploring the impact of the internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. http://www.pewinternet.org/

Project Gutenberg - Online open access site where you can download over 33,000 free e-books to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device. http://www.gutenberg.org/

Rotoball 2009 - International Animation Project http://www.carrotrevolution.com/rotoball

National Art Education Association - NAEA is the world's largest professional art association, with 22,000 members worldwide. NAEA's website is rich with information, teaching resources, policy documents, portfolios, and links to additional resources and networked online communities. http://www.arteducators.org/

Second Life (SL) - a virtual online environment in which you create your avatar (online persona) and visit SL sites and interact in various environments with other SL avatars. http://secondlife.com/   You need a fairly good graphics card and a computer with lots of power. See system requirements: http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/ There are 78 Education & Nonprofit groups in SL http://secondlife.com/destinations/learning, and 88 Art Groups in SL. http://secondlife.com/destinations/arts  Second Life (Education Group) Wiki: See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Second_Life_Education 

Taking It Global - Collaborative learning community that provides youth with access to global opportunities, cross-cultural connections and meaningful participation in social movements for a better world. See the educator’s section. http://www.tigweb.org/

Teacher Tube - Online teacher-made videos for teachers and students.  Demonstrations, lesson plan videos, etc. http://www.teachertube.com/login.php See: Teacher Vision (part of Teacher Tube) - content is organized by subject, grade and theme.  Theme pages feature cross-curricular lessons, graphic organizers, printable handouts, quizzes, books, etc. for every area of focus, making it simple for teachers to create a study unit that is inclusive and varied. http://www.teachertube.com/teachervision.php

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) - a nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading”.  Hosts conferences and videos of inspiring and informative speeches online. Almost 900 TEDTalks are now available. http://www.ted.com/

Twitter4Teachers wiki  -  http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/w/page/22554534/FrontPage

Sites and Blogs Created and Maintained by Art Educators 

Art on The Move - Created by Susan Bivona, Art Teacher at Mount Prospect School, Illinois. http://art-on-the-move.blogspot.com/

Art Junction - A collaborative virtual environment in blog format, offering activities, projects, and resources for teachers and students. Created by Craig Roland.  http://www.artjunction.org/atcs.php

The Art Teacher’s Guide to the Internet -  ideas, tools, and resources for teaching art and design in a post-digital age. Created by Craig Roland http://artjunction.org/blog/ Check out links to other sites on Craig’s Blogroll (right side of his Blog)

The Carrot Revolution - David Gran's art education blog and resource page http://carrotrevolution.blogspot.com

Dryden Art - Elementary school art website created and maintained by nationally recognized art teacher Tricia Fuglestad, Arlington Hts., Illinois.  See Tricia’s links: Fugleblog Wiki, Artsonia, and Vimeo. http://drydenart.weebly.com/  

Graphic Design - Union City, Pennsylvania Graphic Design and Middle School Art, created by Kris Fontes. http://www.krisfontes.com/

The Imaginarium -  Online gallery of Rebecca Rohloff Plummer’s artists’ sketchbooks and journal writings. http://rprgallery.com/gallery/main.php

Incredible Art Department - Founded in 1994 by Ken Rohrer as a showcase for his elementary art students in a school in Indianapolis, Indiana, and now one of the most resourced and visited art education sites in the country. You just gotta see it. http://www.incredibleart.org/

The Teaching Palette - A Blog dedicated to the teachers who constantly work on perfecting the art of education. Created and maintained by Hillary Andrlik and Theresa McGee http://theteachingpalette.com/2011/03/24/artsonia-artist-statements...

Zonkey Street - Website created and maintained by Ian Sands, Art teacher, Apex, N.C. http://www.zonkeystreet.com/ “The purpose of Zonkey Street is to encourage artists everywhere to make Zonkey Art. “You should get involved by creating Zonkey Art and posting it on The Art of Zonkey Street Facebook Page.”

  

Other sites, blogs, ed-tech how-to tutorials, and random things I liked

Mashable – Their description doesn’t do this site justice. Mashable covers the top social media news on topics like Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Twitter, Amazon, Pinterest and More. http://mashable.com

11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year. By Richard Byrne -  crate a blog or a website, build a wiki, create videos, use an online service to save your bookmarks (social bookmarking), make a podcast, etc. http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/08/11-techy-things-for-teache...   See detailed but east to understand explanations with great diagrams - http://issuu.com/richardbyrne/docs/how_to_do_11_techy_things/1

The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators By Richard Byrne - http://issuu.com/richardbyrne/docs/super_book_of_web_tools_for_educ...

30+ alternatives to YouTube. By Richard Byrne - http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/30-alternatives-to-youtube...

6 easy ways for students to publish videos online. By Richard Byrne   - http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/11/six-easy-ways-for-students...

Ken Thomas’ public domain images from nature - http://kenthomas.us/?page_id=13

Mommies in academia

I'm working on a presentation for the NAEA Women's Caucus at our 2013 annual convention. My presentation topic is Advice to Mothers in Academia. Our session is intended to be interactive. We have stories to tell. 

Sandwiched in as I am between an aging father and two teenage children, and with the benefit of hindsight, today's post shares my insights about being a female academic in a major public research university, a position I both cherished and walked away from in the peak of my career in 2012 after achieving the rank of full professor. Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, nobody seemed to noticed that I was the only female faculty member in the then 50 year-old art education program at this university to have ever attained full rank.

Soon after entering my university position as an assistant professor, I read Women of Academe: Outsiders in the Sacred Grove by Nadya Aisenberg and Mona Harrington (1988). My take-away from that depressing book was that women didn't fit in the hallowed halls of the elite university. Aisenberg and Harrington explained why: women are their own worst enemies. We labor over our research way too long and end up with far fewer grants and publications than our male peers; and we neglect (refuse?) to network with individuals with connections and who can advance our careers. Clay Shirkey's more recent rant about women in 2010 pretty much summed it up: women aren't tough enough or clever enough. Other more formal observations about the behaviors of women in the workplace aren't particularly complimentary either. When I see this kind of material, I can't help but wonder, are the women described in these characterizations just naive insecure mean girls? Or is there something else in play?

Women do make terrific educators, despite data that might suggest otherwise. But as Madeline Grumet poignantly observes through the stories and reflections shared in Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching, doing that job well exacts a price on women's personal and family lives. With due diligence women also perform all those helpful behind-the-scenes time-consuming mommy-like things when asked by our employers (gathering information and preparing reports for colleagues and superiors, committee work, tidying up and organizing our shared facilities, advising students, building up programs of study, developing new courses, professional and public service, etc.). Women think these duties to be important and needed, only to be surprised to find out afterward that it was work that didn't really count in questions of merit for salary and promotion. How can such work matter enough to be asked to do it, but not count?

So it's no surprise that women don't make it to the top in large numbers outside of those typically female professions. Working women, many of whom are also mothers, perform their professional responsibilities dutifully, without fanfare, knowing that they are neglecting those that matter most, their families. Not a great feeling, but a common one amongst those few high achieving working moms who've made it, as Rebecca Meisenbach finds. I wrote a paper about some of my own institutionally sanctioned "service" work, and the lack of institutional value placed on such work in salary and promotion considerations. I concluded that despite such considerations I would have done things at my university pretty much the same, regardless. By doing things my own way, have I been my own worst enemy in the academic hierarchy?

These are some of the things I've been thinking about...about women in academia not being tough or clever enough, about being both too nice and too mean at the same time, about doing work that is requested but not valued by superiors, about being a member of the sandwich generation, and about feeling guilty for devoting so much to the institution at the expense of family life. For me, being a mommy in academia has also included having to downplay, defend, and protect my legitimacy as someone's mother in the face of condescending comments like "oh, you must be busy with your kids" that really meant "you are not doing enough for the institution". Or challenging departmental requests to attend meetings at odd times outside of the typical workweek because colleagues (without children) wanted to leave town for the weekend on Friday mornings. Or being given bad advice by administrators about family leaves. Just after receiving tenure I became a mother. I was advised by a superior not to take advantage of the Family Medical Leave Act. He informed me that if I did it would negatively impact my retirement income because it would deplete my sick days allowable to count for service credit when I retired. I followed his advice. His claim has since proved to be completely wrong, and in retrospect, I should have taken the leave as intended by the law and as it was my right to do. What would I say in these situations today (condescending comments, unthoughtful scheduling of meetings, poor administrative advice)? Would I be more assertive, more knowing, more clever?

I'll close with some tips for moms and other women in academia.

1. Salaries. Salaries matter greatly both during ones work life and in retirement years. From the onset of one's career we need to be proactive about knowing how initial salary decisions are made, and thereafter how increases are granted. Universities are nebulous, subjective, and opaque in revealing these decision-making processes. Asking for annual merit salary increases includes providing empirical evidence of ones merit and productivity, along with institutional and marketplace salary comparisons. Those comparisons guide specific amounts one should seek and requests need clarity and specificity. 


2. Terms of appointment. Appointments to university posts typically include teaching, conducting and publishing research, securing grants, service, and in some cases, administrative work (like chairing departments or programs). When negotiating for or complying with terms of appointments year by year, we need to know beforehand exactly how mandated work will be evaluated and how it will be counted toward salary and promotion considerations. Once the value and weight of these duties are clarified, we have a formula for balancing our time devoted to each of our duties. I can't stress how important it is to find out how and how much the work counts, and to stick to the formula in allocating our precious time.  Again, clarity. 


3. Focus. Clarity counts here as well. Have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. Become the expert in an area that is clearly valued by both your disciplinary area and the institution. Merge teaching, research, and service/public engagement as much as possible. Disseminate your work into both the academic knowledge commons and the public arena. 


4. Network. Developing professional friendships both within and across disciplinary departments provides both inspiration and support for ones work. Networking can be as simple as attending presentations, reading colleagues' papers, inviting colleagues to your presentations, initiating or participating with colleagues in joint projects of mutual interest, and sending acknowledgements or congratulatory messages to colleagues for their accomplishments. These strategies are not only productive in terms of facilitating your current work, they facilitate the development of professional friendships that may become a foundation for future work. 


5. Share your successes. Modesty doesn't pay in academia, and rightly so.  The institution wants to know about employees' successes, and in some cases those successes are aggregated into data that is disseminated to policy makers or the public at large.  We need to share our successes widely with administrators and colleagues. 

In summary, my tips are to have clarity, focus, and friends in the institution, and be our own public relations agents. My paper about entrepreneurial strategies for university workers who value public and community engagement elaborates on some of these tips. There, I talk about networking, leveraging resources, and maintaining a vision amidst setbacks. I'm also curating a Scoop.it collection of research and readings on the topic of women in the workplace, with a particular (but not exclusive) interest in working moms. I'll post the link here when I have it better organized.

The Space Between the Nodes. PLNs & Social Media

I put this post together as a think-piece I prepared for one of my group 2013 NAEA presentation with Craig Roland, Tricia Fuglestad, and Ian Sands.  The topic was PLNs. I also created a group Pinterest board with shared resources about PLNs.

A PLN (Personal Learning Network or Professional Learning Network) is a collection of contacts (friends, associates, colleagues, and loose connections) with whom one connects, shares, converses, and learns from. PLNs are nothing new, and educators and artists all have a PLNs. What's new is all the attention PLNs are currently receiving in the ed-biz. PLNs are both real (face-to-face) and virtual (online). This post is about online PLNs. Being online also means that these PLNs utilize social media. There are ample resources online about PLNs (real and virtual), so I'll share my own insights about and experiences with my online PLNs.  

PLNs and social media.  PLNs and social media go hand in hand, and I fail to see a clear distinction between them. Social media is just that, social. There's an active community on multiple social media sites, or rather, multiple overlapping and constantly changing communities inhabiting these places. Personal Learning Networks are non-hierarchical and self-directed. I engage both my PLNs and social media as means of sharing, connecting, and learning on my own terms. Sometimes I'm all-in (immersing myself in the online environment, learning what I can, and reconnecting with friends and associates). Sometimes I share and participate only intermittently (as time allows and my creative, social, and personal urges dictate). And sometimes, I turn it all off and do other things.

I use social media for creating, sharing, conversing, and learning. I currently maintain accounts (curate content) on several social media sites (mostly Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Scoop.it, and Instagram). I'm migrating off Delicious after they got rid of stacks. I share and manage (curate) content these sites to focus, annotate, and I recently opened and maintain a paper.li account (to aggregate and publish Tweets of interest to art educators). The headers of my website, Tumblr, and blogsite all provide navigation links to one another, and my other accounts link back to my website. Inter-linking these sites allows me (and others if they are interested) an easy way to move from one to another. My work shared is shaped by what I have learned from others, a considerable amount of which I have learned through my online connections to people whose work I admire (aka, my PLN).

Varying in several ways, my online PLN is a loosely connected, multi-dimensional, and dynamic aggregate of people I know, don't know, follow, talk to, learn from, and with whom I share content using social media. Variations in how I engage with my PLN include the following.

• Time invested - When, how much, and how often I connect to my online PLN;  whether my contact is synchronous or asynchronous; and whether it is short term or long term in duration. I have limited time and many interests and projects. Intermittent engagement with various contacts in my PLN and in various sites works for me.

• Relationship to each of my connections - How and how well I know my contacts, where they live, how and why I include these individuals or groups in my PLN, how (or whether) I interact with these contacts. The types of relationships I maintain in my PLN are varied and constantly changing.

• Nature of interaction - My PLN interactions may be casual or focused, planned or unplanned, work-oriented or just for fun. My interactions include my own content sharing, liking others' content, commenting, asking questions, direct messaging, reposting someone's content to my audiences, and (to a lesser degree for me) planning or collaborating with folks. Oftentimes I am just observing (lurking) and learning from what others are sharing online.

• Purpose - My motivation for doing all of this includes staying informed about initiatives and professional practices, staying connected to individuals and groups that I value, looking for help or feedback on something specific I am doing, collaborating on a project, advocacy, self-promotion, and fun.

I share an illustration from my NAEA presentation about how I learned about and from a photographer from Japan (someone I have never met in person).

I often interact in Twitter using an app called Tweetdeck. 

One day in February while perusing my Tweetdeck #iphoneography hashtag column, an image caught my eye.

Wanting to know more, I followed the creator’s link back to her twitter account and followed her there. 

I noticed after clicking on the image that had appeared in Tweetdeck that the photographer had uploaded this image with Instagram.

So I followed her tweeted link back to his Instagram site, and "hearted" (liked) the image. ...noticing also that the image was cross posted to his Flickr account. 

The link from her Instagram page took me to his Flickr site. After viewing some photos, I added this individual as a Flickr contact and favorited some of her images in Flickr. 

I can now see and comment on her photographs in Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr. In studying her images, I am getting new ideas for my own cellphone photography.

I am intrigued by the dynamics of PLNs and social media. I like that I control when, where, how, how much and with whom I interact in social media sites. I find the links to networks of individuals to be strong and relatively stable by virtue of their association with highly popular social media sites, but my association with any one individual or site at any given time is loose and unpredictable. I am as much of an observer as I am a commentator or content creator, and I spend most of my time in transit. There are some pretty interesting writings about networking theory to consider, but that's another topic, so I'll close with two observations: I like the space between the nodes (using network-theory-lingo), and the benefits of building and interacting within my PLN has exceeded the amount of time I've invested.

Love You, Mean It! The Instagram Phenomenon

2019 Addendum to this post. The nice thing about self-publishing online is that you can endlessly edit and update posts (yes I know some people might find that practice not in keeping with the nature of blog posts, but I make my own rules here).  So with regard to what I wrote in 2013 about IG, it is pretty "dated", IG has grown and changed in interesting ways, Facebook bought it for a bazillion dollars a while back, young people like IG and are abandoning FB because FB is full of boring parents, grandparents, etc.) and I sincerely hope that Zukerberg and his crew don't ruin IG like they did FB.

I've been fascinated with Instagram. Instagram is an iPhone photo-app and online community (also available on Android). But more than that, Instagram is a phenomenon of gargantuan magnitude (90 million active Instagrammers in January 2013, 40 million Instagram posts daily). In my Integrating Social Media post, I noted features of Instagram. Today's post extends and elaborates.

Screenshot of some of my "likes" in Instagram

Instagram is a social media site and photo app that allows users (Instagrammers or Igers) to take pictures, apply filters to their photos, tag them, upload them to Instagram, follow other Instagrammers, and interact online using their iPhones, Androids, and other mobile devices. One can also see and interact with Instagram through a variety of apps and sites that function on computers. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2012, 13% of Internet users use Instagram, and it is especially appealing to adults ages 18-29, African-Americans, Latinos, women, and urbanites. I'm not sure how many Instagrammers automatically cross post to Twitter, but a 15-second snapshot on Twitter on the evening of February 16, 2013 (see my video below) gave me an appreciation for how active (phrenetic?) the Instagram "community" (if you can call it that) is on Twitter.


Instagrammers often tag (hashtag) their images. Adding hashtags (word preceeded by the # symbol) to uploaded content is a way to make that online content searchable, groupable, and identifiable with a particular group. Hashtags are used in Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, Flickr, Delicious, Scoopit, and to a lesser degree, Pinterest. Instagrammers' uploaded photos often include multiple hashtags (10 or more sometimes) for maximum exposure and reach. Instagram-related and photography-related hashtags that I identified Sunday Feb. 17, 2013 in about 15 minutes on Twitter included (but were not limited to) the following.

#instagram #instagrammers #instahub #instamood #instagramhub #instago #instatags #instalike #instagood #instagold #instanice #instacool #instame #instababe #instafun #instajoke #instaparty #instabored #instapause

#instablue #instadaily #instaday #instapic #instaphoto #photoinsta #instamovie #instaflash #instagistanbul #instaturkey #instanusantara #ig #igers #igaddict #ignation #igdaily #webstagram #tweegram #statigram

#picoftheday #picofday #bestoftheday #photooftheday #foto #photography #photohub #iphone #ipad #iphonephotography #iphonephoto #iPhoneography #iPhoneographie #iphonesia #iphoneonly #iphone4 #iphone4s #iphone5 #photojojomacro

and #boycottInstagram

Similar findings (commonly used tags) have been shared in several ways. For a list of Instagram's most popular tags, see Webstagram's top 100 tags.

Popularity in Instagram is measured in terms of followers and likes. Instagrammers want to be seen, they want to be followed, and they want to be liked, or in the world of Instagram, "hearted".



Interestingly, Instagrammers like (heart) much more than they comment. (It's faster and easier to click than it is to type), although one also occasionally sees some very long posts. Comments are typically short, descriptive, or funny; and they often elicit shorter and sometimes equally amusing replies. Unsurprisingly, one can even buy Instagram followers and likes.

Instagram image subject matter varies as widely as its users. On the morning of February 19, 2013 I did a little study on Instagram. For about 15 minutes, I used Tweetdeck to watch the #instagram hashtag feed (Tweetdeck allowed me to see tweets in columns, grouped by whatever hashtags are included in each tweet). I collected (re-tweeted with a new hashtag) some of the images that caught my eye, using the hashtag #15minutesofinterestinginstafindsontweetdeckfeb192013 (yes, it was a ridiculously long hashtag) to group my Instagram-finds so I could look at them later. Common Instagram photos included travel photos, landscapes, cityscapes, nightclubs, street life, road trips, parties, beach scenes, ski trips, food, flowers, fashion, nails, tatoos, shoes, animals, celebs, friends, family, selfies, events, objects of desire, etc. etc. Some images were highly stylized through filters and apps. Others seemed to be unmodified snapshots. There's a sense of immediacy, a here-and-now quality, in many of these images. Others are quite intimate, sometimes too much so, and perhaps a bit narcissistic. Some are blatantly transgressive or voyeuristic. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of self-identified photographers sharing really beautiful pictures, and a lot of creative people making and sharing all sorts of unusual images (art?) in Instagram. I couldn't help but wonder, who are all these 90 million people (beyond the snapshot provided in the 2012 PEW study)? But I guess there's no easy answer to that question. Instagrammers' names and bios and are as unpredictable and diverse as their images. Some of my favorite IG names from my February 2013 foray included:

purelyethereal

superherodiva

personyoumayknow

swaggernonstagger

betweenthepanels

Kinkyclown

dream_in_color

Cutestcatseverr

tiedyed_tacos

tinydinosaurs

lululove

gracieguineapig

sucklord

hazeystate

swaggernonstagger

13thwitness

worldonpause

cultofbeauty

missprofessor

thelastsuppernyc

instagrampitbulls

and

poundsofbread

The overwhelming popularity of Instagram has spurred all kinds of secondary markets, ready to transform Instagram images into other things (canvas prints ready to hang, tee shirts, coffee mugs, etc.); to sell Instagram images to businesses; and to monitize the Instagram phenomenon by any means possible. Purchased in 2012 by Facebook for a reported 1 billion dollars, one can safely speculate that the monetizing of Instagram will only grow, and that Instagram users will need to scramble to stay abreast of changes in Instagram terms of service.

So, what do I think of Instagram after about a few short months of immersion? I like the diversity, weirdness, banality, creativity, and monumental size of Instagram. There's something about Instagram that captures something larger than just what's being depicted or commented on in individual images. Like many art forms, Instagram captures the universal in the particulars. Individual Instagram images convey our collective interests, experiences, stories, and values. While critics decry Instagrammer bad behaviors, and the pointlesness and redundancy of much of what gets posted to Instagram, my own forays into Instagram-world give me pause for appreciation and even awe of this  vibrant, unwieldy community. I also like my own little corner of Instagram. I follow about 100 people, only about half of whom I know, and I am similarly followed. I enjoy some of the images I see, and I study and learn from others. And I just love getting Instagram hearts! At first glance, a sense of affiliation within the Instagram community or any particular Instagram hashtag group seemed incomprehensible to me. There's just too much, it's all quite diffused, and connections amongst Instagrammers seem nebulous and opaque. Yet, within my own tiny little circle of follows, followers, and hearts, I both seek and sense a loose connection to my own little Instagram network. One can only conclude that this feeling is similar for other Instagrammers. So in summary, I see tremendous potential in/with/through Instagram for creative personal expression, social commentary, fun, experimentation, exploration, connecting, and learning...all of which are good ingredients for art education

p.s.,  - you, mean it!

Social Media: Work, Play, Share

By most accounts, and for better or for worse, social media is shaping the manner in which humans interact and affiliate. Humans have always engaged in social networking. But new digital media (web-based and mobile platforms, applications and sites) take social networking into an entirely new realm as tech savvy, media hungry content creators, conversationalists, curators, and consumers upload, download, post, and blog to their heart's desire. Popular social media sites allow our uploads to automatically cross-pollentate (feed into) other sites. That's a nice feature, making it possible to post an image, comment, and tags to multiple sites at the same time. Many sites allow uploading of content through both old technologies (computers) and new technologies (mobile applications, aka apps).

I've been messing around trying to integrate Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Instagram so that I can upload content from my iPhone to multiple sites at the same time, without repeated posts of the same material going on any single site. My DIY strategy is trial and error, checking out the Help tools and FAQs in each site, Googling a question, and consulting a contact (viewing the online content of or direct messaging members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) via my favorite just-in-time go-to places - Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and/or Flickr).

Not all of these sites "play nice" together, and some of their sharing features are just confusing or don't work well. And there are interesting recent demographic trends occurring amongst users of various social media...worthy of further consideration.

Things that stood out today as I experimented on my compact-handheld-electronic-multimedia-communication-device (aka cellphone) with multi-site sharing features.

1. Instagram. Instagram is a mobile app that has become increasingly popular amongst both tweens and artists. Instagram is a contraction of the words Instant+telegram. On my iPhone Instagram offers the option to simultaneously post content to Tumblr, Flickr, and Facebook. I only had to sign in to my other sites once to allow Instagram permission to post to them. Statigram is a web-based platform for viewing Instagram images from a computer rather than from a smart phone. (See my Statigram). Webstagram performs similarly, and I'm sure there are other  sites that similarly display Instagram collections by account holder. In Instagram (mobile) and Statigram or Webstagram (laptop) you can follow people, see who your followers are, and "like" images (like, in Instagram means clicking on the heart symbol). You cannot upload images from your laptop to Statigram. I noticed that Instagram crops pics to a square format (a tribute to the olden days of photography). That's not good when you don't want your images cropped. I posted this issue as problem on my Facebook page, and one of my FB contacts shared a fix (InstaSize) that retains the rectangular format of my iphone pics posted to Instagram. I tried InstaSize and went back to the regular Instagram square format. 
2. Tumblr. Tumblr is an increasingly popular micro-blogging host. You can micro-blog in Timblr from a laptop or a cellphone (cellphone requires the Tumblr app).  Uploading an image from my iPhone to my Tumblr works well, and I had already set up Tumblr (on my laptop) to automatically post my Tumblr content to Twitter. In my web-based version of Twitter the "view photo" feature works for my shared Tumblr content. The Tweet also inserted a link back to my Tumblr where the image was originally posted. But in Tweetdeck (an app that works on both computers and smart phones), there is only a link back to Tumblr to see the content, no nifty "view photo" option.  For those who want to see content immediately, and not have to follow links to see a pic, this isn't cool.
3. Flickr. Flickr is a web-based photo sharing site. I described Flickr in my previous post, so I won't dwell on it here other than to say that I can share content from my Flickr web site to both Facebook and Twitter, and the Flickr app for my iPhone also allows multi-site uploading of images and accompanying texts.
4. Don't double share same content. This part gets tricky for newbies like me. Many social media sites allow cross posting to multiple sites at the same time. Instagram, Flickr, and Tumblr each will cross post to one another and to Twitter and Facebook if you tell them to. Sometimes I've cross posted a picture from my Tumblr account to Twitter without knowing, other times I've accidentally double posted a picture to a site. I've played around with my settings, specifically in my permissions for access in Flickr and Tumblr (to other sites), to see how my cross posts appear on my other sites. 
5. Tag everything. Tags both make your content searchable, and they allow you or someone else to aggregate content within a social media site identified with a word or phrase. Twitter users have developed a sophisticated and robust hash-tagging system. Tumblr also has tags that work similarly (but without the hash mark). Without the tags or hashtags your posts are unsearchable. 
6. Adult thumbs, adult standards. From an iPhone, it's almost impossible to correct typos in the comment box or subject area accompanying an upload. From my laptop, scrolling back and forth across the text is a breeze. That makes my mobile uploads subject to text errors, which I'm then compelled to fix, which means removing or deleting the content and starting over. Mobile is supposed to be fast and easy, but maybe built for 13 year olds who text all day, have small thumbs and don't care about spelling.

In closing, I should add that it has not gone unnoticed that 14 year old kids are already doing much of this, and K-12 teachers are, well, kindof behind. If there is a take-away from all of this, I would hope that the real message of this post is that everyone is creative; mobile media can be fun, exploratory, and educational; and that art educators have an important role to play in teaching, working with, playing with, and even learning from their already tech-savvy students.

Falling in Like with Flickr

I'm kindof liking Flickr these days. I've been using Flickr to back up, organize, and share my iPhone and digital camera photos, and to connect to other Flickr users. Flickr is a terrific online photo sharing site and community for artists. Flickr is free up to a point. After I accumulated too many pics, I bit the bullet and upgraded. I still consider myself a novice Flickr user, so perhaps this post will be beneficial to other Flickr newbies. (My Flickr sets)

Things I like about Flickr: (click on the images to see larger)

Sets. Your Flickr images appear in what Flickr calls a Photostream. Flickr sets allows you to organize your photos from your Photostream into sets. You can easily add, delete, and relabel images in your Flickr sets. Fashioning a Flickr set of your own images is  like putting an art exhibit together (aka online curating).
Easy upload from iPhoto. iPhoto has a share feature that connects right to Flickr. You can send one image, multiple images, or an entire event with all of its images to your Flickr site. You can send images directly to specific Flickr sets or to your Photostream.
Mobile App. Flickr's mobile app is easy, free, popular with tech enthusiasts. You can upload and label multiple images at once from your smartphone. Everything you upload appears in your Flickr Photostream.
Privacy settings, Labels (Tags). Flickr allows you to determine who can see your images. This is a great feature for a student group or project in which you want to limit public access to the images, or if you want share photos only with selected family/friends. You should both caption and "tag" your Flickr images as soon as you upload them. Tags (labels) are like "keywords" that you add as text content that always accompanies your image. Tags make your own Flickr images searchable at a later time, by you or by others. This comes in handy when looking for a pic you uploaded a year ago. In your own search for specific kinds of images uploaded by other Flickr users, searching by keywords (tags) is very convenient (if others have added tags to their Flickr images).
Photo-editing. Flickr now has a built-in photo editing feature (called Aviary) for cropping, adjusting, and/or applying various filters to your uploaded images.  The Flickr editor is located under the flickr Actions icon. Flickr's new mobile app and photo editing features allow Flickr to now compete with Instagram and Twitter.
Contacts. Flickr contacts - you can follow and be followed by anyone in Flickr. You can comment on or designate as favorites your contacts' images, and they on yours. This is a great way to keep current with your flickr contacts' new works, and a great way to build an audience for your work.
Groups. I love the Flickr groups, people sharing images in just about any style, theme, or genre one can think of. You can join as many groups as you like. Some groups are moderated, and require permission to join and upload images. Others are completely open. Lots of peer-to-peer participatory possibilities for art educators and students here.
Flickr favorites. Favorites. You can mark just about anything created and shared by others in Flickr as a "favorite", and create a collection of your own consisting of your Flickr favorites. This is a nice way to collect images and ideas, and to share with others (students, peers, etc.) how people make images.
Student Participation. Flickr offers wonderful possibilities for students to create galleries, see one another's work, and comment on selected pieces (their own and the work of peers). You can create closed groups in Flickr for this purpose, and you can control commenting features. See the gallery of student work from High School Art Teacher Deborah Brock's photography class.  As mentioned above, you can adjust Flickr's privacy settings to limit who sees uploaded images.  This might be necessary if you are showing images created by students who are minors and your school requires limited access to their content.

In summary, there are plenty of online sites to share and archive (back up) images these days. If for no other reason, and without all the Flickr bells and whistles, Flickr remains a great site to store, organize, and share images. Its copyright policies are clear and the site is easy to use. I can make my material private if I so choose. And there are over 6 billion images in Flickr to inspire my own art, research, or teaching.

Playing with apps

Active learning, learning by doing, just-in-time, DIY...  These catchphrases fit the amped up digital world where global kids, aka millennials know more about new creative media than their teachers. Hey, kids have more free time on their hands, don't work for a living, pay mortgages, or maintain households, and mom and dad are footing the bills for all those the digital toys.

So how do busy adults and teachers catch up?  

In a word, PLAY. (act like kids)  Below are some images from apps I've played with on my iPhone.  These apps meet my criteria for utilization: ever present, easy to learn and use, free, fast, and gratifying. The captions underneath the images link to sites that describe features of these apps.

Hipstamatic	PS Express	Instagram
MySketch	ColorSplash	CamWow

I'll be posting and commenting about my mobile snaps and apps to a Flickr set, Tweeting my favorites with a couple hashtags (#iphoneography #apps), and sharing some of them on my other micro-blogging sites Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram.

A not so ordinary day in the life of a public servant

A not so ordinary day, May 1, 2012

On May 1, 2012, I taught my last class at the University of Illinois, locked the door of my seminar room, and drove home. After 23 years there, I had recently been promoted to the rank of full professor. I was the first female faculty member in the then 50 year-old art education program at this university to have ever attained full rank.  As any female academic working in the ivory tower knows, this was no easy accomplishment. My work at UI was filled with amazing opportunities and recognitions for which I am very grateful. These include research, fellowships, and grants; publishing and presenting my research throughout the world; teaching and developing innovative new courses; working with smart talented undergraduate and graduate students; advising terrific student Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations; collaborating with highly respected scholars in other disciplines; organizing and hosting events; chairing the art education program and overseeing our now 45 year old Saturday morning laboratory art school (a community-arts program serving about 400 k-12 students each year); initiating and participating in exciting public engagement endeavors; and receiving a wonderful array of national and campus awards. 

I have always considered my work as an art educator to be a worthwhile and needed form of public service. In 2011 I examined the spate of attacks on the public service sector (and teachers in particular), but I remain steadfast in the conviction that teaching is a critically important profession. In my own professional work throughout my years at UI (and continuing to the present), have I creatively blended teaching, research, and public engagement. I have articulated some strategies that facilitated my public outreach efforts at UI. These strategies include positioning teachers as public intellectuals, adapting entrepreneurial strategies, utilizing digital and social media, and remain connected to my community of practice. (BTW, I tweeted a link to my "Entrepreneurial Strategies" essay after it was published, and Richard Florida retweeted it!). 

In my post-UI professional life, I am currently teaching for the University of Florida Online Masters in Art Education degree program. I also recently accepted a part-time art teaching position at a local high school. I continue to edit the research journal Visual Arts Research this year. And I remain active in the National Art Education Association (this year as co-president of the NAEA Women's Caucus).