Diving In

The iPads are finally here and we dove right in and are working out all the logistics together. The tech crew spent hours (no seriously, hours!) on the phone with Apple. They finally got me set up to I can purchase my own apps through the Apple's Education Store. You must buy a volume lease for each app on each iPad, but all the apps I have bought so far had a considerable discount and didn't break the bank too bad. I ended up buying 20 licenses because it was the same price as 10. One can only hope that the future is bringing more iPads my way! I wrote $200 into my grant for apps. My tech guru set me up with two $100 dollar vouchers. This is the smallest increment when buying the vouchers from Apple so take note when writing a grant! I do have to say just one my shout out to the tech crew, Omar, Drew, and Scott! They spent so much time putting the cases on, figuring out Apple's system for education, and then personally delivery them to my art room and syncing them up! The iPads automatically sync when I download an app to my iTunes account on my classroom computer, so I don't have to individually manage all ten! We named the iPads color names, red, yellow, green, etc to coordinate with how my tables are labeled. The green table then always uses the green iPad. Hopefully this will help me keep track of projects and possible problems!

Process over Production

My curriculum is an assemblage. It is not pretty and perfect on paper (although I try my hardest on Google calendar and the gazillion spreadsheets I've made ) but when put into process my curriculum accounts for the students, encounters, lines of flight, and all the little nuances of an art classroom environment. I teach artmaking with a developed plan of process. I teach students PLAY, SKILL BUILDING, KNOWLEDGE BUILDING, and help them make PERSONAL CONNECTIONS. After all these processes are are achieved, we make art that has MEANING.

I recently took a graduate class at The Ohio State University and the word assemblage was part of a new language we learned from the philosopher Deleuze. We used process to understand his concepts. I didn't always understand the class material in readings or when we were given assignments. As soon as I dove into the process however, concepts became clearer and understanding happened.

This is how I want my students to learn---with moments of discovery and new understandings. I don't want the curriculum to be all about producing pretty things for spectators to gasp at, but a curriculum that is deep and considers more than fancy new tools---it considers the student.

My goal is to include the iPads in all parts of my curriculum and enhance the process of artmaking that I believe is so important to a contemporary art curriculum. Stay tuned...

the beginning

Last fall I called my tech guru at work and asked him if he would support me writing a tech grant.  I asked him how many iPads he thought I should ask for and to my surprise his answer was a class set!  Really!?!?  You think the foundation will support that?  YES!  Apparently, art teachers are making the best cases for why this technology needs to be in our curriculum and it worked!  10 iPads are scheduled to be in my classroom this coming fall!

Since the online community had given me the research I needed to write my grant, (and I won!) I think I should share my experience and add to the dialogue that us art teachers are creating a buzz about.  So here it is.....