K-12 Art Teaching and Magical Thinking

I've been getting works ready for the "Those who teach, can" exhibition at Indigo Artist Coop in Champaign, Illinois, May 10 - 18, 2013. Opening reception, Friday May 10, 6 - 9 p.m.

For one of my works, I selected 16 images from over 200 pictures that I took on my iPhone4 documenting some of my experiences teaching Art Survey 1 at Centennial High School during the 2012-2013 school year. My idea here is to convey a sense of a “year in the life of a high school art teacher”. As I took each of the pictures appearing in this series, I shared my favorite ones on Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and Instagram; and I even Tweeted some of them to my friends in Twitter. My iPhone camera roll (now totaling over 3000 images) is filled with these kinds of photographs, along with shots of family, friends, events, sunsets, my garden, favorite personal objects, and some creative explorations with various photography apps. I originally thought to exhibit these in a grid, similar to how I see them on my iPhone in my Instagram app.

But then, I decided to exhibit them on a timeline in order to better convey the "year in the life of an art teacher" idea. I took a quick snapshot yesterday as we finished the installation and posted it to Instagram.

There is something both ordinary and extraordinary about all of this…about visually capturing and sharing experiences so easily through digital and social media, about printing ones own photographs and presenting them for public viewing in an art gallery, about working with like-minded colleagues in our endeavors to make art with creative young people, and about being an art educator with a mission to make a difference in the lives of others. I have always thought K-12 art teachers to be people who engage in a bit of “magical thinking” when it comes to what exactly it is we do, and all I can say about that is “please let there be more magical people in the world!”

Anyone-an-artist, DIY culture, and Selfies

I put together a couple works for the "Those who can, teach" Champaign Unit 4 Art Teachers exhibition at Indigo artist coop. May 10-18, 2012, 9 East University, Champaign. The image below is one of the works I exhibited, a composited collection of my Facebook mini-collages (Selfies) that I created over the past 3 years. My other image was a collection of snapshots I took during my year of part-time teaching (2012-2013) at Centennial High School.

What are Selfies? 

Selfies are self-portraits taken with inexpensive digital or cellphone cameras (sometimes taken with mirrors, other times not) and posted on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Self-portraits are nothing new in the art world. What's new is the fact that the age of digital and social media facilitates a virtually infinite number of self-portraits to be created and shared with viewers online, and that the creators of these self-portraits are not traditional art-world or academy-trained artists, which is to also say that their self portraits have little economic value. My recent hashtag search in Instagram for the #selfie hashtag and its variants produced around 35 million photos, and a search for the #me hashtag in Instagram produced over 44 million photos. These are astonishing numbers by anyone's count.

Selfies are characterized by bloggers and social media commentators as annoying, narcissistic, insufferable, and ridiculous bordering on offensive. Selfies are also recognized as a resistant, transgressive, an empowering form of self exploration and personal creative expression, and a visual diary marking our existence in the world. There are apparently even rules for doing selfies. Although I doubt if very many of those folks who have posted over 35 million selfies to Instagram are paying attention to anyone's rules, some interesting trends suggest an the emergence of an online-world aesthetic when it comes to portraits, females' and males' selfies. Setting all these debates aside, what remains clear is that selfies are an unashamed way of saying it's #me, I'm here, please look and like!

My creative process for making selfie-collages

For my original self-portrait image I used my laptop camera, sat at my dining room table, positioned the laptop lens, and took a pic of myself.  I shared my self-portrait in color and in black and white with various folks at the NAEA who needed an image of me. With the original in hand, I started making these selfie-collages in 2009, which was about the same time I joined Facebook. My original profile pic on Facebook was a snapshot of a Christmas ornament that I modified in Photoshop. I just didn't feel comfortable in 2009 sharing a pic of me on the Internet. (LOL, I soon got over that feeling.) 

Each mini-collage selfie took anywhere from 2 - 3 hours to create and refine. The process (described below) was exacting, but lots of fun.

• In addition to the original self portrait image (mentioned above) I took pictures of subject matter that I wanted for the collage (computers, cornfields, airplanes), initially using my inexpensive digital camera, and later using my cell phone camera.
• I also searched online for other images of subject matter I needed (soccer ball, TV set, pic of the state of Florida, etc.)
• Using image editing software (Photoshop in my case) I isolated (cut and saved as a separate image file) the part of the image I wanted to use.
• I then modified each image to be collaged. I got rid of unwanted background content; cleaned up the edges of the remaining image; and played with size, positioning, saturation, color, contrast, sharpness, levels, etc. 
• I then pasted each modified image onto the self-portrait image (using Photoshop's layers tool).
• I further adjusted each of the layered images to create my desired effect.
• Once I had something I liked, I saved that file to my computer as a .psd image file (layers intact).
• I then flattened and saved the digital collage, paying attention to format (jpg, png, tiff), resolution (DPI), and dimensions (height/width) settings. I gave each version of the image its own file name.
• I usually made two or three variations of the collaged final image. Each version had its own file name.
• Because these were for Facebook, I kept the dimensions and resolution low, but now I keep larger versions of each collaged image as well.

A couple more tips

In 2011 I abandoned the use of a digital camera and Photoshop to create these selfie-collages. I now take pics with my cellphone and use Preview (an app on my Mac) and Pixlr (a free online photo editor) to create these collages. The process is the same as when I used Photoshop. I archived most of my Facebook mini-collages to a Flickr set. These are all small format images. I wish now that I had created them larger (dimensions and resolution), saved the larger files, and then reduced their dimensions for Facebook.

For the art exhibition, my interpretive wall text for this image talked about Facebook, DIY-culture, apps, and the popularity of "selfies" in social media sites.

Regarding the "Those who can, teach" show... (a smart title for this exhibition of Unit 4 art teachers put together by local high school art teacher, Stacey Gross) all I can say about recognizing the artistry, creativity, and excellence of our teachers (all of them, not just art teachers) is that if we want good folks to choose this profession, we better start supporting them, and on that standard, I give America a big fat "F".

Capturing and Characterizing Instagram

My previous posts have talked about my fascination with both Twitter and Instagram. 

But how does one analyze the behaviors of a community consisting of 90 million users who post 40 million images each day?

Last February, I tried a little experiment to see if there was a way to use Twitter to "capture" the nature of Instagram images. For about 30 minutes, I simply watched what got Tweeted with the #instagram hashtag. Inspired by what I was seeing, I collected some of the coolest images so I could go back and view them later. In order to group the images  I liked, I re-tweeted those Instagrammers' Tweets that caught my eye, adding my own hashtag #15minutesofinterestinginstafindsontweetdeckfeb192013 to each of my retweets. I used an app called Tweetdeck, which allows me to see the Tweets of several different hashtag groups on one screen, each group in their own column. With Tweetdeck and my ridiculously long hashtag, I now had a collection of my favored Instagram images that had been shared on Twitter! Later I went back to my hashtag collection, nicely grouped together in a Tweetdeck column, and looked at what I all had gathered.  By clicking on any Instagram image appearing in the Tweeted (and now retweeted) message, I could see any image full size and displayed on a webpage (an Instagram page).  I shared some of my findings about Instagram in my Feb 17, 2013 blogpost and in one of my presentations at the Annual conference of the NAEA in March 2013. My snapshot of Instagram suited my purposes at that time. I selected what interested me and shared my findings.

What if someone wanted a more definitive "snapshot" of Instagram? How might one collect a more representational sample of Instagram images (images that were posted to Twitter)? And what procedures might one employ to understand kinds of images one finds on Instagram.  Answering this question beyond the obvious is no easy task, since by recent estimates nearly 40 million images are posted in Instagram each day. 

Today's post poses one possibility. I'm calling this procedure An Instagram Snapshot in Time (on Twitter). This procedure relies on the fact that Instagrammers appear to like Twitter, which is to say, they like having an audience. I've had to modify my strategy since last February, since Instagram images no longer show in Twitter streams. 

Here are my recommendations.

Data Gathering: Image selection

1. Establish a set time span for collecting images tweeted with the #instagram hashtag. For example, 6:00 a.m. until 6:20 a.m. on a certain day (I used Feb 20 in my example).
2. Retweet each #instagram Tweeted post, giving your retweet your own hashtag.  I recommend a descriptive hashtag with a date such as #IG_feb20_6am
3. Work fast. Instagrammers are uploading a lot of images and Tweeting about them. The Twitter stream will move rapidly. If you miss retweeting an #instagram Tweet, grab the next one. 
4. Once your timed session has concluded, you can see all of your Retweets together in a Tweetdeck column or on your regular Twitter web page. Learn to find and display tweets with a specific hashtag to see your retweets. Twitter and Tweetdeck will display your specifically hash-tagged retweet, filtering out everything else in that display. Retweets will display this way only for about a week.
5. After about a week, to see your specifically hash-tagged retweets, you will have to go back to all of your tweets, and look for those that you retweeted on a specific day and time. 
6. Next - capture the URL for every image that was tweeted with the #instagram hashtag during the timespan you retweeted them. Follow the link from each original #instagram Twitter post (that you had retweeted) to each URL. The URL will most likely be a web link to the original Instagram image. Copy and paste these URLs (from Twitter) onto a list you create in MS Word. Using your list, you can now go back and look at the images that are found at these URLs. Your Browser History will also have these URLs.
7. Repeat the procedure at noon, 6:00 p.m., and midnight so that the Tweeted Instagram images are more likely to have come from IGers living in different time zones (IGers are from all over the world).

Organization of Data: Create a Data Archive 

1. Go to each URL (web page containing the Instagram image) given in the Tweets during your time span (and that you have now either have in your browser history or listed by URL on a list that you created). 
2. Capture or download the image and accompanying text appearing on each Instagram web page. 
3. Create a labeling system for each image as you capture and archive it, for later analysis. For example, relabel each image file with an easy to understand label such as IG-1_feb20_6am.jpg; IG-2_feb20_6am.jpg , etc...  The underscore symbol makes the file label easier to read. 
4. Create a list of the Instagrammers whose image you have archived, identifying who created IG-1_feb20_6am.jpg, who created IG-2_geb20_6am.jpg, etc.  Use their IG names.
5. Create a short profile for each Instagrammer, following their Tweets and Instagram uploads to their profiles, and then to their websites or other social media accounts. Obtain as much information as possible by reading their profiles and following their links.  Who are these folks?

Creating an Image Archive through Online Curation

Once Instagram images have been identified for inclusion in a study, it would be great to be able to see the entire set all together in one place. There are may ways to curate a collection of images found on the Internet these days.  One of my favorite tools for curating collections is Pinterest.

To create a collection online of the Instagram images that had been tweeted with the #instagram hashtag, I spent about 20 minutes retweeting these #instagram tagged tweets so I could go back to my Twitter account later to see what all I had. Then, on my Twitter page of my own Tweets, I followed each of my retweets to each IGer's instagram image. Once I was on the site where their Instagram image was displayed, I pinned each image to a Pinterest board. Under each pinned image, I also included the number of likes and comments each image had generated within about a month since the IGer first posted the image. Instagram is dynamic. Anyone that sees an Instagram image may continue to like and/or comment on the image long after the image is originally uploaded to Instagram. As a result, Instagram likes and comments are not a static number, and the number of likes and comments I provided under each image in my Pinterest collection may change over time. Therefore, I recommend doing this procedure a week later in order to capture likes and comments. After about a week, there will likely be few additional likes or comments for a specific image.

Below is a screen capture of part of an Instagram image archive I created in Pinterest from Instagram images that had been tweeted with the Twitter hashtag #instagram on Feb. 20, 2013.  I called my Pinterest collection (aka "pinboard") "An Instagram Snapshot in Time, February 20, 2013". The use of the term "snapshot in time" is intended to convey that this was a strategy that captured Instagram posts to Twitter at a particular time. My entire Feb. 20, 2013 collection is now available in one Pinterest pinboard at http://pinterest.com/edelacruz/instagram-snapshot-in-time-feb-20-2013/

Figure 1: An Instagram Snapshot in Time, February 20, 2013

Data Analysis: What can we say about Instagram imagery and their creators? 

Instagram images are anything goes! They will be fun to describe, code, and sort. The process is inductive, but systematic. There are numerous writings in research methods discourse that explain how to analyze qualitative data in order to make sense of it (Guba & Lincoln, Patton, Maxwell, etc). Commonalities across those writings about data analysis methods include closely reading the material gathered, describing the material, coding it, categorizing and grouping similar content together, identifying patterns that emerge, and explaining what's there based on these aforementioned procedures. 

At the onset of any study of Instagram, I'd be curious to know what these images are about and what aesthetic qualities they have. What is their subject matter? What are their aesthetic qualities? How many Instagram images are totally abstract, partly abstracted, or realistic? How many are "selfies"? How have they been manipulated using apps and filters? How many are closeups, mid-range, or far away shots? 

In attempting to answer these kinds of questions I would use procedures that come from art criticism and art history. Art critics and art historians often talk about subject matter, meanings, visual qualities, processes, conventions of style, the context in which the art form was produced, biographic information about the artists, and intended audiences.  Researchers in engineering and empirical aesthetics have also attempted to describe images and (using statistical methods popular in social science research) explain how they are understood or appreciated by audiences, but their methods are not particularly robust. Art history and criticism use empirical methods that are qualitative, narrative, and more authentic and convincing: description, image analysis, identifying conventions of style, and finding out about the creator of the image. Using art criticism strategies, I recommend describing Instagram the images with short phrases or single words that identify subject matter, compositional strategies, and aesthetic qualities in each image. Each image will have multiple descriptors (which can later function as codes for analysis purposes). A table of images and their descriptions is a must. The table would include the image label and identify its creator. Possible areas for description and analysis might include but are not limited to the following:

• subject matter
• composition, framing strategies, and depth of field
• formal qualities such as color, pattern, lighting, or texture
• degrees of realism or abstraction
• kinds of transformations made to the photo through apps and filters
• locations where the pics were taken (if discernable or described)
• the content of the text that gets tweeted with the image

Like any qualitative research, content that seems important enough to become a descriptive category should be shaped by the data itself (the images). The descriptors heading the rows in the Table 1 below are just a starting place.  

    Table 1. Describing Characteristics or Attributes of Instagram Images

                                     
                                                               
                                   Data Analysis: Coding of Instagram Images

The above descriptions of Instagram images should be coded for later analysis. Each Instagram image should be coded with multiple characteristics, including a code for the each of the major categories that you establish as important (my initial codes are derived from my Feb. 15, 2013 informal study, and are shown in the shaded column below). Using my coding, a cityscape could be coded as SM-A to indicate: Subject Matter=Cityscape. Using my coding, a “selfie” (self-portrait) could be coded SM-E(self) to indicate Subect Matter = Portrait(Selfie).

Table 2. Coding Attributes of Instagram Images and Posts

Data Analysis: Frequencies of Attributes

Once attributes of individual images are described and coded using the symbols given in Table 2, a frequency table for each attribute (such as subject matter or compositional strategy) may be constructed to find out how common an attribute is across multiple images.  For example, how common are cityscapes or sporting events? How common are dynamic diagonally composed images? How common are color images vs. black and white images?  How common are filters and apps used to modify images?  Using MS Excel, a frequency table would need to be created for each attribute that seems important. (Table 3 shown below is hypothetical, and was created in MS Word.)

Table 3. Instagram Subject Matter Frequency Table

Data Reduction

Based on analysis of about 50 Instagram images that I had collected from Tweets during a specific time on Feb 20, 2013 (see my Pinboard or Figure 1 above) , I found some trends that I have also seen in my other Instagram forays. Commonly posted subject matter included exterior and interior scenes, friends and self-portraits, food and clothing, events or sports, pets and favorite personal objects, signage, closeups, and interesting abstractions. Figure 2 below gives examples of commonly found subject matter from my Feb. 20 collection. Clearly, at the time of this snapshot in time, Instagram conveys the experiences, values, and stories of their creators through various themes and contents.  I have never been a universalist in my understanding of art forms, and I always consider art in the context of its cultural context and artists' intentions. But there's just something about these individual Instagram images that transcends their creators.

Figure 2: Subject Matter Trends from February 20 Instagram Archive

Who are all these people anyway?

Any characterization of the Instagram community has to include descriptions the Instagrammers themselves. Who are these individuals? Where are they from? How many are male/female? What other demographic data can one attribute to these Instagrammers? In my Feb. 15 study, I was able to find out quite a bit of information about the Instagrammers by following their tweets back to their Twitter and IG accounts and looking at their profiles. In some cases this also included following links to their Flickr accounts, and even to their webpages. I talked about this strategy briefly in my post about my NAEA presentation.

Some additional digging (following links back to their websites) would help in development of a separate table of characteristics of IGers.  Such a Table (see Table 4 below) would provide a "snapshot description" of these folks, and allow for coding of attributes given in each of the columns for later analysis. Additional attributes would emerge and be added in new columns, as study and analysis of these IGers commences.

Table 4. Characteristics of Instagrammers 

Neither image analysis nor describing characteristic of those Instagrammers whose images are selected would be a fast process. But using such systematic procedures such as this "snapshot in time approach" gives substance and breadth to the researcher's explanations.

Limitations

Limitations of findings from this approach include the fact that we don't really what percentage of IGers (Instagrammers) also Tweet their images to Twitter, but I can say with confidence, it's a whole bunch. Other limitations include obvious questions about "which" moment in time best represents the images shared in the Instagram community, and whether or not 20 minutes is sufficient time to gather images.

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