By Carol Haggerty
Teacher of Visual Arts
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” ― Confucius
At Millis High School (in Massachusetts), we use a blended learning approach in all art classes – offering a variety of methods and resources to engage student learning. One method of study in this class is through itslearning and another is Google Classroom. These on-line components (called learning platforms) are designed to augment regular class instruction. While online learning platforms may vary in the way they look, feel and the student interface, the goal is always the same – to supplement, enhance and support student learning!
Art, Design and New Media feels a little bit like a polished gem – the class runs so smoothly. The students are naturally engaged by the content and are humming along only 2 weeks in. We’ve covered digital citizenship, digital media types and storage and are just starting to really consider art and design. Most of the content is delivered thru itslearning (and me) but I’ve added a Google Classroom component.
After composing their reflections/journal entries, students then copy/paste their writing into their itslearning eportfolios. This reinforces expertise and flexibility in manipulating digital media. The students have also just started uploading artwork to our online gallery on Artsonia.
The itslearning dashboard includes embedded videos and a google survey. The content folders are on the left and contain all of the resources for that assignment.
Digital Photography and Advanced Computer Art is another eclectic mix of students. But this one can also be my biggest challenge as I strive to meet the broad needs and interests of all the individuals. I further complicated things this year by starting to switch all of the resources from itslearning to Google Classroom. The unfortunate result was a complicated workflow for all and I have just decided (with relief) to remain with itslearning for this year. Another complication this year was a Weebly blog set up change. I am not entirely sure what happened but tomorrow I have to help 9 of my students RE-Do their blogs. They wound up with web pages as opposed to blogs – and that won’t work as the web pages do not sort by individual post. In spite of work-flow issues, we have had much initial success as evidenced by some of these great project pics:
