Friday, March 6, 2009

Learning Connections

Jumping into Art History
by Savilla Banister and Rene Steingraber

In East Broadway Middle School students use Photoshop, GarageBand, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD to create a video of their research of an artist. Working in groups, they use these different Mac programs to make a video presentation of the artist's work and biographical information. They scan pictures from magazines, add their voices and "selves" into the presentation. After embellishing it with titling and special affects, they receive a burned final copy of their movie.

Q1: How does this project incorporate technology with other core subject learning?
A1: This project allows the students to creatively create a presentation of their research. The students are learning from the research they find, but by also using the technology to add pictures and special affects to their information, students are spending more time thinking and weeding out the information they want to include about the artist. Also, with all the programs open for the students to use, they are exposed to technologies that many adults have never touched. This project sounds fun, intellectual and technologically empowering.

Q2: Are there any foreseeable "issues" with using this technology?
A2: Whenever we are talking about technology, there is always a price involved. These specific programs are only available on the Mac computer, which excludes schools with PC's from this project. However, since many schools are embracing the Mac, this may not be a problem in the future. Though the article does not state the price for the programs used in this lesson/project, it may be expensive, especially for low income schools. In this case, you can modify the project by purchasing only the essential software. I still believe this project could be fun and creative without the use of all the programs.

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