Klibcke’s Weblog

I think that this course was very valuable to have taken while I am teaching now. I think that I was intimidated to use digital media

in the classroom before this class. It always required more work and seemed like I would have to do much more thinking to teach a

simple lesson. I see now that the extra time is well worth it. My students are always engaged, and if they aren’t then I switch it up

quickly.If they’re not happy, then I’m not happy. And vis a versa. They seem to have more fun, and it helps them with the tools that

they may be using in the future in their occupations.

I do think that the course should be broken up more however. It is ALOT to cover in a very few weeks. I think that if you are coming

into the course knowing nothing at all about digital media then it could be overwhelming. I have been using Photoshop for years and

there are still new things that I learn about it all the time. And every few years a new version comes out. I’m glad that we got to see

how each piece of software can be helpful, but maybe the class should be two required sections instead of one. I feel like this is an

important tool for teachers to have in their toolbox. So instead of rushing through it Corcoran should require teachers to intensively

learn more about it.

I started out my final project with the intent of making a claymation, or an animation that had clay elements.
I was going to make a smaller version of myself and have her explain how to make an animation. I was also going to

show the steps of how to make an armature claymation figure. So I filmed myself making the armature skeleton second by second

so that it would look like the armature was coming to life by itself. I then put the clay skin on the figure bit by bit and second by

second to also make it look like it was doing this by itself. I then constructed clothes, hair and a facial expression of her poking out

her lips. I was going to have her blow a kiss so that is the explanation behind the puckered lips. When I got to school I tried to import

my video for five hours. When it simply would not work, I decided to come up with a plan B. I had already done research on how to put

still images in Final Cut Pro so I decided to just make the entire animation with stills. In order to do this I took several pictures of myself

and the clay model that I had made. Because let me tell you, if I had just wasted all of that time making the model and did not use

it, I would have been pissed.

The first stills are of me with my mouth open and another with my mouth closed. This shown repeatedly with my eyes closed will

give the effect of me snoring. I also downloaded sound effects off of the internet for a touch of humor.

And now instead of using my video of the armature coming to life I had to draw it. So simply I made a spring look like it’s bouncing.

I drew two springs. The first was long and the second was shorter. Shown back to back it gives the illusion of it bouncing. I also gave it

a cartoon sound effect of a BOING sound. This gives the illusion that it actually is bouncing.

Long story short, I was able to start over and finish off the semester with an animation.

I woke up this morning in tears because it was Monday morning, and that means off to school. Off to school can mean so much to so many people. Off to school, however, brings me to tears. I couldn’t stop thinking about Friday afternoon, and the repercussions it would have on today. My second thought was then,” I hope ‘Mr. obnoxious’ or ‘Mr. bad attitude’ is absent today”. This may sound awful, but it is so true. My school operates on an ‘A Day’- ‘B Day’ schedule. Every Monday it’s the same group of kids, with the same type of greetings. So as soon as I woke up, I knew what was to come. I knew that when second period arrived they would be screaming explitives about fu*king each others’ mothers. And as soon as fifth period came into my room they would throw chairs and call me a fu*king b*tch for asking them to clean up the mess they just made. The grand finale would then be fifth period threatening me, and asking me to hold my hands up so they could punch me in the stomach. This would be an average day in my work week. But today was the day. Today was the day where I couldn’t take it any longer and just started to sob. I called my vice principal and explained the situation. I needed a mental health day. How can this be? How can you take a mental health day on a Monday? The week hasn’t even started yet! But all weekend long I kept playing back the scenario over and over again. Fourth period had gotten the best of me. At least that is what I’m thinking now. ” Kate wake up! They’re winning! You’re not even going to be there today! They’ve got you right where they want you!”. Now this may be my screwed up ego and pride, but as soon as I hung up the phone to announce my mental health day this is exactly what was playing through my head.

Had fourth period gotten the best of me? It was an average day for my fourth period class until I asked them to clean up. As usual, to show my class that it is a team effort, I started to clean myself. But I lost it as soon as a student came up to me patronizing  and threatening me. ” You clean those dishes woman!”, he exclaimed. As a woman I could not and would not stand for that. I dropped what I was doing and told the class they were to clean their own mess that day. Anything and everything that they took out or spilled paint on they were to clean. This seems pretty basic, and does not seem like a punishment to most kids, but for my kids it is torcher. They refused. Instead of cleaning they: horseplayed, sang, beat on tables, yelled, and said they weren’t cleaning sh*t. When the bell rang they quickly ran for the door. I knew that this was to come as soon as they refused to clean the room. So I stood in front of the door. They threatened to hit me, push me, and pick me up and move me. I calmly said that they still needed to clean their mess to leave the room. The teenage boys were now enraged. They threw chairs, cursed me and screamed that, ” This is the teacher’s job. This is the janitor’s job. It is not MY job”. After throwing their tantrums, they cleaned their mess. It was not a quiet cleaning session however. They complained and I had gotten cursed out several times before the day had ended.

When the final bell rang to signal the end of they day, I dragged myself into the office. I explained to administration why I had referral forms, and retrieved several parents’ phone numbers. However, when I go back to school tomorrow I know nothing will have been done.

As I hold my head up to write this blog, I feel like a nail being hammered into the ground. The rest of today it may look like I’m lying around the house avoiding going to work. In actuality I know I will replay Friday over and over again until I figure out what I will do tomorrow. I’m putting in a pretty personal blog today because I wanted to ask, how far is too far? What would you change jobs over? And yes, I said change jobs. How far is too far?

This is where I am so far. I want to make a claymation animation. This claymation will be for my high school students and it will explain how to make an animation. Part of it will be the clay and part of it will be me teaching how to make the person. This may be super bold but I was thinking of making me out of clay to teach the students how to make the claymation. Just an idea, but what do you think?

After researching for my animation project I saw some easier animations, like a ball bouncing. I might introduce how to do something simpler like that for my students. And animation tricks like making the background move to make the person seem like they are moving.

I chose this because I want to do a lesson on animation/claymation with my students. And this is going to give me the momentum to do it.

But I wanted to know how long it should be if we are planning on doing a movie/animation???

And if there are specific requirements I should follow for this part of the assignment?? Any ideas??

I’m trying my very best to read this article, but I’m realizing more and more that it is in elite speak. Not the entire article, but ALOT of it. And honestly it doesn’t help that I had a few beers before reading this. Now I’m like, ” Wow, you guys are either fucking with me, or I’m drunk”. I guess we’ll see after I get some replies.

After reading this article it makes me think about how the kids I teach read and write. Most of the time my kids can’t spell out simple words and don’t even try to sound it out. Reading this, it makes me think about how they see every day writing. It must be just as distorted and crazy as this.

Even just looking at this gives me another lesson in special education, and kind of gives me a pep talk before I have to go back into work tomorrow. I need to constantly remind myself of how they learn compared to how everyone else learns. And after seeing this, I see that learning it must be just as frustrating as teaching it.

To some of you who may not know me, this is going to sound like a rant. But trust me, I do not rant unless I can help find a solution. This had been bothering me for a few weeks and I had to get it off my chest.

These past few weeks I have been faced with some very new “teaching styles”. These teaching styles, in my eyes, are things that you should steer away from in the classroom. And this is just COMMON SENSE. This may be even more difficult for me because I am a full-time student and teacher at the same time right now. And these awful teaching tactics are coming from both sides of the spectrum.

As a student, it is always very important to me that my professor does not intrude in my personal life. You do not mix business ( my school life ) with personal ( my home life ). Now of course this can be disregarded if the professor has been given an invitation into your personal life. But if there wasn’t an invitation, then you weren’t invited.( For the record I’m NOT NOT NOT talking about our Digital Media professor. Selila actually demonstrated what should be done in this scenario.) In one of my other classes a professor tells a student how to and not to raise their children. This should NOT be done in the classroom. The same scenario came up in the Digital Media classroom, and Selila handled it ALOT differently. When your teaching you should also not be discriminatory against any race, religion, gender, etc. etc. Even if it appears to you that a particular type of person is not in the room, it is still offensive. ( Oh yes, I’ve had this happen) As a teacher you should bring nothing but respect into your classroom.

Another teaching tactic I saw this week was bullying. Now what bothers me most about this is that I saw this as a teacher and as a student. As a teacher, one of my coworkers screamed at a bunch of students to get a job done. Now of course with the screaming came cursing and name-calling. You can not expect your students to respect you and not call you names if you don’t respect them. Plain and Simple.

While I was a student, I also saw forms of bullying in the classroom. I don’t want to go into full detail because that would just rat the professor and class out. But if you’re in the class you know what I’m talking about. As a student, I do not feel safe inside of the classroom if the teacher is constantly analyzing my every move and then talks about it in front of the entire class. I also do not feel safe if the professor calls a student out every class with name calling. And I certainly do not feel safe with a professor who needs to be in constant control. Every scenario can be turned into a lesson if you let it.

As a student, if I do not feel safe or comfortable in the classroom I will then shut down. I will complete my work, and then not talk to anyone and won’t even acknowledge the professor. I feel like a line had been crossed, and I do not take disrespect in any shape or form. I can see why many students within my school may also feel like this with other teachers. Students at my school are always trying to hide-out in my classroom, even during lunch. If someone feels disrespected, you are not going to get respect back.

I also learned the differences between Open Access and Open Source sites. Open Access sites are ones that can not be modified, but hold a great deal of valuable information. Open Access sites that I didn’t even know I used every day are Google and Hotmail. I mean, I knew they were free, but I didn’t know there were a whole genre of educational sites like this. Open Source sites are then the ones that can be modified or edited by anyone. Sites like these that I have also used are Wikipedia.

After researching more about Open Access and Open Source sites, I found some good ones that may be helpful with extensive projects and every day uses. Sites that I found for every day uses were those that could help putting together documents, resumes and reports. The site that I really likes for this was:

www.docs.google.com . This site had free templates for everything from business cards to photo albums. Another site that also helps produce word documents and spreadsheets that is free of charge is: www.thinkfree.com .

From an art teacher’s perspective, it would be helpful to have more tools for manipulation and design in the classroom. I found some sites that can be helpful and are free of charge to download.

www.Gimp.org , www.infranview.com and www.picasa.google.com , are all sites that are for photo manipulation, touch-ups and rendering. For video production, editing, and conversion I found some great sites that are also free of charge. Cam studio is a desktop screen recorder that can be used to record right from home. Their site is: www.camstudio.org. www.audacity.sourceforge.net , is a site for audio editing that is free of charge, and for converting movies into any format I found: www.erightsoft.com/super.htm .

Sites that I found that are for helping teachers with lesson plans and curriculum are:

www.hippocampus.org and www.hotpot.uvic.ca. I was really impressed by Hippocampus’ site. You could register (for free of course) so that you could make custom digital interactive lessons for your students. The only downfall was that I didn’t see many for visual arts.

I didn’t see anything posted about reading, but I don’t think that is a free weekend pass. I definitely think that it means that I need to be blogging myself. I wasn’t really sure of what to blog about so I guess I will talk about what I have been doing for my project.

My project deadline is November 10, and I am doing animation in the classroom. My goal is to have one of my classes actually create their own animation for the project and also bring in some research that I have been doing. Some of you may already know that I teach at a special education school for children who also have behavior difficulties. So in order for me to get this lesson done with them I am going to have to go through ALOT of planning. I also have to pre-select which classes will be doing this project based on their needs.

When first thinking about animation, I immediately thought of simple animations made in flash or after effects. I also thought of claymation. As a warm-up activity I usually give my students clay or play-doh to make certain objects or fantasy scenarios. The kinesthetics is perfect for this group of students, and they also make some great stuff. Due to this I was thinking of having my class make a 10 sec. claymation. In order to get this done however, I would have to break it up into numerous separate activities to make sure they understand all of the concepts that go with making an animation. I’m very excited about this lesson, and I know the kids will be blown away by it.

After doing some research on the topic, I found some great sites of animations that kids have done in other classrooms. I didn’t even think of this until I started researching, but one classroom had non-digital animation. Would I be able to bring some examples of that into our Digital Media Classroom? Or should I leave that out? Examples of this would be a flipbook or a circular piece of paper with pictures on each side and strings attached. On one side of the circle is a cage and on the other is a bird. When you twist the paper you see the bird in a cage. Sounds pretty basic, but I think that it would really get my kids thinking about animation, even in the simplest forms.

I haven’t really done extremely in depth research on animation and how it is used in the classroom, but I think actually making one will help speed things along for me. Let me know if you have any ideas for me and my topic.

This week I wanted to take the advice from the reading that we were given. In the reading it talks a lot about how web logging is a public network. It also talks of how writing to the whole wide world can be inspiring to open up more, and to share meaningful discussions and debates. Given that advice, I wanted to see if there were any web logs for teachers with special needs students. I searched through a few sites when I stumbled upon this site:

Now my immediate reaction was to skip it right off the bat because of the simple name of the site. Naming your blog site, “tard-blog”, is not only insensitive but just flat out wrong. If this truly is a teacher with students who have special needs, I guarantee karma will kick you in the ass if I don’t beat it to you. After being infuriated already I then see a picture of a boy with down syndrome. Now this picture isn’t a regular picture, it is clearly making fun of children with disabilities.

I may be extra sensitive to this subject because I also work with special needs kids every day. Because of my tendency to over react to small things, I asked Randolph to look at it and to see if I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing. He immediately Googled the author’s name, Riti Sped, and came across another site:

This site talks about how compassionate this woman is on a daily basis for having to teach these students. She even says that she loves her job because, “ Also it is nice

because the kids believe anything I tell them”. Under the paragraph of saying how great this woman is it then asks more questions. The next questions just so happens to be, “ Riti, if you like your job so much, why do you make fun of your retarded students? Why would you put this page up?”. This paragraph goes on to explain that it is her way of relieving her daily stress that she gets from her job. It also states, “ …And no, I don’t make a lot of money. This does not bother me or even slightly persuade me to change careers. As long as I have money to drink myself into a stupor 4 nights a week and wear nice shit, I don’t care”.

I feel like this woman couldn’t get any more frustrating than this. And I almost want to stop this blog right there. But for Selila’s sake I will keep going to meet requirements.

In the reading for this week it goes on to say that there are also surprises when web logging and responding to other people’s personal opinions. It even gave a case where people responding to another’s web logs should be more sensitive because there is another person on the other side with feelings. But I don’t think it mentioned anything about what you put out there being insensitive or cruel. I think if people are going to put insensitive material out there, they should expect it to come back to them three-fold.

http://www.fullduplex.org/tardblog/tardfaq.html. http://www.tard-blog.com/

I first off want to start this blog by saying, I wish I was more computer savvy than I am. I feel like any part of me that is computer savvy comes from pure luck. I hit a few buttons open a few programs and POOF! Something happens. If it isn’t what I wanted to happen, then I go back and hit a few more buttons and open another set of windows. And of course this process could take hours, or if I’m lucky could take five minutes. With that being said, I am only computer savvy because I’m Irish.

This semester I really want to learn more about animation and video. I am really into seeing masking and layering in videos right now, and want to learn how it’s done. I also want to mix animation with video to see what I come up with. Of course I hope that I don’t come up with a lame 80’s music video. I understand that this is, “Digital Media for Art Educators”, but I will pretend that this is also a, “How to Improve my Own Art”, class.

Every once in a blue moon I will get very excited because two days in my week will crash into each other. Not meaning that I fall asleep as soon as I get off work without eating dinner, but that something extremely interesting will come up twice in one week. This past week Selila gave us the article expressing how important it is to have the skills to teach students in a digital age. And I also was talking about how important it is to have a warm body with nurturing capabilities inside of the classroom. As I thought more about this I realized that there is a very fine line that is drawn when referring to digital media in the classroom. Just because students may be using digital media in the classroom, does not necessarily mean that it is implemented correctly.

T.C. Williams High School, as well as many other schools in Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland, have received new technology for each and every student within the school. In many cases there is a lap top readily available for every student within the classroom. The students also receive their agenda, lesson plans and schedule for the day on that computer. Not to say that this alone can interfere with the student’s learning, but if it’s not used properly it can. Maybe I am just too easily imagining a high school student with learning disabilities, like those I teach every day. But I feel like there is validity in taking a better look at using technology in the classroom.

If using laptops with internet connection, it will be easier for students to chat, and surf the web while lessons are being taught. This even for me is a HUGE distraction. I feel like I have taken a break to check my face book status five times since I started typing this paper. So imagine how easy it would be for a less focused high school student. Having the students physically partake in a lesson is also extremely important for kinesthetic learners. Without those hands on activities it is so much harder for students to actually see what is being created. Smart boards are also an up and coming technology within the classroom setting. But what is the point in having them if the teacher doesn’t even know how to use it properly or is honestly just too lazy to.

I am definitely not saying that teaching the students how to use technology won’t be helpful. I think that the more we help the students prepare for their future, and teach them how to be active members in society the better. But I feel like if you just hand a bunch of students computers nothing will be accomplished. Just like all cases it’s not the tools you use, but how you use them.