Art – Page 7 – iLearn Technology

Felicity from Thin Air: Inviting creativity, imagination, and play in the classroom

December 17, 2010December 17, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3543 views

The following is a re-post from my other blog: iPad Curriculum. I shared Send Felicity a few weeks ago as part of my advent collection but thought I would give everyone a little more information about this incredible site and invitation for play. Even though Send Felicity has an iPhone/iPod Touch app, the app isn’t necessary to engage in the creative play which is also available on the Send Felicity website and Facebook page. I encourage you to offer your students opportunities for play. I deeply believe that play is a strong catalyst for learning.

Application/website: Send Felicity

What it is: Everyone could use a little more magic and enchantment in their lives and Send Felicity brings students (and teachers/families) just that. Take a look at the video below to watch some of that magic unfold.

Felicity is six and three-quarters years old. She loves imagination, making things, and magic. She comes from a magical place called Thin Air. Felicity invites children everywhere to join her in play. Every day there is a new special surprise waiting for children. Each surprise invites students to engage in creativity, play, imagination, and learning. It is an enchanting-ongoing place that involves technology, imagination, and the real world in new ways. The artists, geeks, and minds behind Felicity are deeply committed to keeping the childhood experience one of magic, imagination, and exploration. They bring these values to life beautifully as an application, website, and social experience. What I love about the Send Felicity experience is the storyline behind Felicity, and the invitation to be part of something that is engaging, meaningful, and magical. The combination of the three makes Send Felicity a unique learning and interactive experience. So, how does Send Felicity work? Children can visit the application or website to learn of a new craft (adventure) to take with Felicity. Felicity takes every day objects like paper plates and makes them magical. Children follow the adventures and create and pretend along with Felicity. Children can take pictures of their finished masterpieces and upload them to the Send Felicity website, sharing the creative experience with others. The application is truly unique and takes what is real and adds a bit of magic (as you saw in the video).

How Send Felicity can enrich learning: Play is an important part of learning. It provides the building blocks for self-regulation and executive functions, promotes creativity, imagination, and divergent thinking. Unfortunately play is often stripped from the classroom. Send Felicity weaves together a wonderful tapestry of play and learning in the form of an application, a website, and a social movement. Felicity uses open-ended play and experimentation that leads to an attitude of fun learning. Felicity helps your students turn ordinary objects into creative works of magic. Use Felicity’s daily dose of magic to spark your students imaginations. Set aside some time for your students to do a little creative play. The benefits that play has on the rest of the learning day will be well worth the time invested. Go beyond the crafts and invite your students to write stories, poems, or secret letters in connection with the imaginative play of the day. Activities for Felicity are open-ended and include art, language arts, literacy, and even math and physics. Send Felicity marries technology and real life in new fun ways. The application is just a piece of the bigger picture. The application takes students physical creation and adds a little magic to it.

Send Felicity is really an app all about engagement of the mind. As an example, one of my personal favorite Sending Felicity projects Beautiful Oops:

Today we are boldly making mistakes.Today, our children will make a small mess.

Today, we’ll set out on an adventure and begin with an “oops” and end up in a place where we can look and wonder. Together, we can do something mistaken and wrong; and audacious and wonderful to surprise everyone.

This project shows children that it is okay to make mistakes, and that, in fact, those mistakes can be turned into something wonderful, new, and meaningful. Students don’t hear often enough that it is okay to make mistakes and that it is indeed an important part of the learning process. Take a look at what these beautiful oops turn into:

The Send Felicity App has not yet been released to the iTunes store, but don’t let that stop you from using Felicity in your classroom right now, the Send Felicity website is full of fun activities, instructions, and even a bit of magic. You can also check Felicity out on Facebook where she shares creations made by children from around the world! Send your students home with a wonderful gift this holiday season and point them toward the Send Felicity website. Students will love the opportunities for play and imaginations, parents will love the ideas to keep their kids learning and playing. Let parents know about Send Felicity along with this article from Geek Mom for a little explanation.

The wonderful people over at Send Felicity are so passionate about creating a world of wonder and imagination for children to play in that they have made the technology that Send Felicity is based on open source. Interested parents, educators, and developers are invited to sign up to play along with them.

Devices: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch iOS 3.1.3 or later

Price: Free!

More Advent Calendars: Student created, creative, and imaginative!

December 2, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments21726 views

After my last post I found some new advent calendars that I just had to add to the list.

First is an advent calendar created by eighth graders at ASLS who’s teacher Mr. Akerson (@mra47) I follow on Twitter. What is so neat about this advent calendar, is it is made up of pictures of the students and teachers. Each day that you click on delivers a new devotion written by one of the eighth graders. I have NO idea how they created this site, each day all of the students pictures look a little different direction so that they are focused on the person on the date of the day (that is a total of 2200 pictures!!). Genius! They are making Weebly do things I am sure it wasn’t intended to do. The students at ASLS have a goal to get someone from every state in the US to view their advent calendar. I think we can help them out with that and do one better, let’s get them views from around the world! This student created calendar is not to be missed! This calendar is a fun one to use with your students, but why not blog lift their idea and create a similar calendar with your students? Since we are already into December maybe yours is a 12 days of Christmas calendar or a unique lead up to your schools winter break. Students could create a “word a day” calendar, math problem of the day, featured student art, story of the day, poem of the day, fact of the day…the possibilities are endless on this one. Ask your students, they will have great ideas!

The second calendar is one that is sure to spark your students imagination and creativity. Send Felicity is a beautiful idea and way to celebrate all things imaginative. Every day Felicity From Thin Air will surprise your students with fun activity ideas that are illustrated by some of the best children’s book illustrators in the world. The idea behind the Send Felicity and the illustrations are enchanting. Currently ideas are being shared on the Send Felicity website. There is an accompanying application for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad that is soon to be released. This complimentary (read free) application will guide students in creativity and imagination. Eight arts and crafts ideas will be interspersed throughout for students to complete with their families or at school. All creations can be submitted to the Send Felicity gallery. Felicity from Thin Air is meant to be a new way of learning and engagement for the mind. It is about creativity, collaboration, and sharing with a global audience. In addition to the daily activities, there are magic surprises. I don’t know what the magic is but I am assured I will know it when I see it 🙂 Get your students families engaged in some fun holiday spirit. Instead of homework for the month of December, why not give your students (and parents) the homework of following Felicity from Thin Air and engaging in creativity as a family. I guarantee that the positive effects will be much more lasting than any worksheet you could send home. Today’s Felicity from Thin Air activity is Fancy Dress for Dinner. Pick any theme and invite the whole family to show up for dinner dressed for the occasion. Costumes can be as silly or creative as you like! Following Felicity at school? Adapt the idea for a Fancy Lunch or Fancy Math class and have your students create impromptu costumes out of classroom items. Don’t have time for the cut/paste? Have your students draw their costume. The goal is to let kids be creative and imaginative!

Librarian extraordinaire Shannon Miller of VanMeter shared the Polar Express advent calendar with me. This calendar includes the beautiful Polar express illustrations and combines it with fun activities and give away opportunities. Enter a chance to win the giveaways for your class (for example yesterday was a chance to win the Polar Express bell from Santa’s sleigh) and complete the activities together. Each day is a new surprise!

How to integrate Interactive Advent Calendars into the classroom: The season of Advent is always filled with eagerness and expectancy. Build some of that anticipation into your school day by allowing students to unlock a new secret on the advent calendar each day. Use these advent calendars with the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector, or set them up as a quick center activity that students can visit. Use the advent calendars that reveal a story to practice looking for foreshadowing clues, using context clues to guess what will happen next, or as story starters for students own stories.

Tips: Each of these advent calendars has some fun goodies and hidden surprises, find the one that best fits your classroom needs.

Thank you to all of you who have spread the word to fellow teachers about my Web 2.0 advent calendar, I am glad you are enjoying it!

14 Online Interactive Advent Calendars

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010Kelly Tenkely11 Comments18592 views

It is December again, which means the beginning of Advent. Advent calendars are a fun way to reveal information and “surprises” for your students to look forward to each day in December leading up to Christmas. This year I thought I would make an advent calendar of my own using Wix. I created a Web 2.0 advent calendar by choosing 25 of my favorite web 2.0 tools for the classroom. Each day you can check out a new one. (I’ll let you in on a secret, you can cheat and look at them all by clicking on the bird to get back to the calendar page…shh don’t tell anyone!) You and your students can create your own custom advent calendar like I did using Wix. Students can create an advent calendar of pictures of their school work, trivia for their parents, special audio notes, or anything they are learning. To create your own Wix advent calendar, choose a template, add shapes to the template to create your calendar pieces, add 25 pages to the site, add links to those pages. You could also create an advent calendar of your own using Glogster. Create a customized advent calendar for your students with fun surprises, quotes, video clips, sound bites, etc. It can be related to the learning they are doing in your classroom, suggestions of books to read, or reveal special rewards like extra computer time, time playing a favorite game, time for reading, etc. Be creative!

Woodlands Jr has a great online advent calendar every year that tests students knowledge about Christmas around the world. The Woodlands Jr. 2010 advent calendar is now up and ready for viewing! This is a fun way for students to test their knowledge and learn about the ways that Christmas is celebrated all around the world. As an extension, plot the places around the world that they are learning about on a world map.

BBC Radio has a fabulous Bach advent calendar. Each day your students can listen to a story about Bach or music.

The National Museum of Liverpool has an advent calendar that reveals a piece of art from the museum each day.

The Dirt Dirt advent calendar is purely fun, each day click on a number and an animation will be added to the tree.

For those of us who are app inclined, you can download a free app for your iDevice every day from Appvent Calendar.

Below you will find my interactive advent calendar finds from last year. You are bound to find one that is a perfect fit for your class!

What it is: It is December! This means the beginning of Advent along with the anticipation and excitement that it brings. The Internet is full of interactive advent calendars that you can use in your classroom to teach about how the Christmas season is celebrated all around the world. These advent calendars reveal fun facts, interactive activities, and stories.

Santa’s House Advent Calendar– This advent calendar tells a fun story. Each day reveals another secret about what goes on inside Santa’s home on the 24 days leading up to Christmas. In each picture, there is a little mouse hiding. When students click on his ears, he jumps out.

Christmas Around the World Advent Calendar– Each day students click on the date to reveal a fun fact about how countries around the world celebrate Christmas. The facts are accompanied by great illustrations and pictures. This site shows up very small inside my Internet browser (Firefox). To remedy this problem, click on “view” in your menu bar and choose “zoom”. You may need to zoom in several times.

Christmas Mice Advent Calendar– This calendar tells the story about a mouse family who celebrates Christmas. Each day a little more of the story is revealed. Each picture includes some animation.

Santa’s Advent Calendar– On this advent calendar, each day reveals a new song or activity for students to complete. There are some fun Christmas themed mysteries to solve, stories to read, and activities to work through.

French Carols Advent Calendar– This is a French advent calendar. Each day contains a new French Christmas carol sung by children. This advent calendar would be a fun one to include in a study of Christmas around the world.

Christmas Around the World Advent Calendar Quiz– This advent calendar tests students knowledge about how other cultures celebrate Christmas. Each day students are asked a question and given hints to help them answer. When the answer is revealed, students can click on links to learn more about the Christmas celebrations in that country. This site also includes great activities and teaching resources for Christmas.

Christmas Advent Calendar– Follow the adventures of Zac the elf as he tries to find a Christmas present for Santa. Each day a little more of the story is revealed.

Christmas Activity Advent Calendar– This advent calendar has fun little games and activities to play each day. The games and activities are quick and easy to complete, building mouse and keyboard skills. This advent calendar would be a good one for the classroom computers as a center activity.

Tips: Each of these advent calendars has some fun goodies and hidden surprises, find the one that best fits your classroom needs.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Interactive Advent Calendars in your classroom.

The Street: World Music

November 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments2829 views

What it is: I am currently working on a fun project for Starrmatica tagging and organizing websites and resources. One of the resources that was new to me is The Street: World Music. This is a neat interactive learning journey from BBC radio where students can learn about other countries and cultures through music. The Street features five families from five different countries including India, Ireland, Brazil, Turkey, and Nigeria. In each house students can learn more about the country, instruments, musicians, religion, and food from the country. Students have plenty of opportunities to listen to the music.

How to integrate The Street: World Music into your curriculum: Music is a neat way to introduce students to other cultures. It allows an inside look into the culture by sharing the sounds of the culture. What I like about The Street, is the way the music is introduced along side religion, food, and information about the country. This site gives students a wonderful overview of five countries where they can not only read about the differences, but they can see the differences (through photos) and hear the differences (through music). The Street is a great site to introduce into any classroom, music teachers will appreciate the look at the instruments and musicians of the country. As an extension activity, have your students create their own “house” for The Street. This can be done offline with paper and a collection of music, photos, and information. Alternatively use a website builder like Weebly or Wix or a Wiki to collect the information in an online space. Students can choose a country to learn more about or create a house for their own country, thinking about what is important to their culture. Want to extend the activity even more? Connect with teachers from different countries and have the students learn about different cultures together. Use Skype or Wetoku to connect the classes and play music from each culture. Create a wiki together to collect and share information learned.

Tips: If you are looking for teachers to collaborate with, use and search the #glolab hash tag to connect.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Street: World Music in your classroom!

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery for Kids

November 2, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3077 views

What it is: This is the last of the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery sites, it is just as great as the others! BM&AG for Kids is a fun site where students can learn more about Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Victorians, World War 2, and the Art Gallery and Museum. The site aims to give students a chronological understanding of these historical events, knowledge of the events, people, and changes in the past, organization and communication, and historical inquiry. Each section has a collection of online related activities and printable activities.

Ancient Egypt- students can learn about ancient Egypt, explore a virtual Egyptian tomb, and explore real mummies.

Ancient Greece- students can learn about ancient Greece and design their own Greek pottery.

Roman Empire- students can learn about the Romans in Britain and dress a Roman soldier for battle.

Victorians- students can learn about the Victorians and explore a Victorian painting.

World War 2- students can learn about the war, assess a bomb damage report, and view pictures of Birmingham from World War 2.

Art Gallery- students can view paintings and learn about landscapes.

Museums- students can explore 6 museum activity zones where students can explore each museum.

How to integrate BM&AG for Kids into your curriculum: The BM&AG for Kids is a good site to incorporate into history lessons. The site does an excellent job of helping students relate the different time periods above chronologically through an interactive timeline. The online activities help students understand each time period, giving them activities that will help them make connections in their learning. The BM&AG for Kids site is a good place to begin a study on a time period. The site provides students with just enough information to whet their appetite for more. Many of the activities offer basic information that could then be connected to primary sources. For example, in the tomb exploration, students are asked to find items in a tomb. In the activity, there is a basic explanation of each item. A great extension would be to find primary sources and photographs of the actual items to share with students (or better yet, let them find the primary source!). Students could then create their own “tomb” either online using online pictures and a creation platform like VoiceThread or Glogster, or an offline tomb with printed primary sources.

Tips: BM&AG for Kids was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will have reviewed. To view all the Birmingham Museum sites, search “Museum” or “Birmingham Museum” in my search box above.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using BM&AG for Kids in your classroom!

BeMused- Museums and Art Galleries: Watch. Look. Do. Discuss

November 1, 2010November 1, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3055 views

What it is: Bemused is another site from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. BeMused helps students be excited, aware, informed, amused, and involved in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Through videos and activities sections students can discover more about the museum and gallery. Students can get involved by visiting the Your Say section or submitting their own artwork to the online Gallery. Students can watch videos including an introduction to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and short poems created by kids inspired by the issues surrounding slavery and Olaudah Equiano’s life. The online gallery holds beautiful artwork created by students. Your students can create and submit their own artwork for the online gallery. The activities section has interesting quizzes and activities about art, history and museums. In one activity, students try to find the faces in famous works of art as quickly as possible. The Your say section gives students an opportunity to talk about history, art, and museums. Students can add to an existing topic or start their own topic for discussion. Currently discussions include what would you like to see in an art gallery?; who is your favourite artist?; and Is graffiti art?

How to integrate BeMused into your curriculum: Bemused is a good place for students to be inspired by art and history. This site encourages student interaction. Students can join into forum discussions about art or history and even submit their own artwork to the online art gallery. In the video section, students can watch a video of student created poems centered around history. Use the video for classroom inspiration. Your students can create and write their own poetry inspired by history. If your students have visited many of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery sites, they may enjoy challenging themselves to the quizzes in the activities section of the site.

Tips: BeMused was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using BeMused in your classroom!

Bedazzled-Interactive Museum and Art Gallery Magazine

October 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2990 views

What it is: Bedazzled is another site from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In this interactive magazine, students can discover more about style, fashion, and accessories from the past to the present. Students will learn what clothes say about them (and what they say about people in the past), look at accessories throughout history, read an interview from a jewelry designer and learn how to make their own jewelry, learn about what fashion tells us about different cultures, view actual pieces of fashion and accessories from the museum, and learn about what jewelry was used for and represented in the past.

How to integrate Bedazzled into your curriculum: Do you have students (read: fashonistas) who are absolutely positive that they don’t like history? Introduce them to a love of history with the Bedazzled interactive magazine. Your students will be drawn in by the fun fashion magazine and will be intrigued by the way that fashion can be used to learn about history. Allow your students to explore the pages at their own pace as a center activity on the classroom computer or in a lab setting where each student has a computer. The magazine is an entertaining read but also packed full of history. After your students read through the magazine, challenge them to choose an accessory, fashion item, or jewelry to learn more about. Ask them to find out what was happening in the time period that the piece is worn and how the item can help them better understand the people of the time period. Take it a step further by asking students to write a fictional short story about the person who wore the item using historical facts that they learned in their exploration.

This interactive magazine is a great way to show your students that history is more than a collection of dates and facts. History is about stories, it is about people just like them. Give your students that connection and the love for history will begin to blossom. This site would have hooked me as a child!

Tips: Bedazzled was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Bedazzled in your classroom!

Alien Adventures: Museum tour

October 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2466 views

What it is: Alien Adventures is another site from Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. The premise of the site is that an alien king has sent two aliens, Borg and Zunk, on a mission to find out about Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Students join the aliens to discover information and activities about the collections there. Students will learn how to create a masterpiece, find hidden messages in portraits, learn about landscapes, and learn about signs and symbols. Students can also play history games like the curator collection game or the extraordinary Earth game.

How to integrate Alien Adventures into your curriculum: Alien Adventures is a fun way for students to explore a museum and learn more about art and history as they interact with fun activities and games. I love how museums are creating such wonderful websites for students to explore and enjoy learning more about art and history.

Can’t swing a visit to an art gallery or museum this year? Don’t let your students be deprived of the experience, visit the online offerings for the next best thing. Allow your students to explore the Birmingham collection online with the help of some aliens and then, come back as a class to talk about what they saw and learned on their “trip” to the museum. If you don’t have enough computers for each student, use a projector or interactive whiteboard to explore with the aliens as a class.

Tips: Alien Adventures was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Alien Adventures in your classroom!

The Pre-Raph Pack

October 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment5366 views

What it is: The Pre-Raph Pack (don’t you love that name?) is a brilliant site about artists, the techniques they used, a timeline that spans 100 years, and a collection of images from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. First students discover the Pre-Raphites (that is artists who were before Raphael). Students will learn about the influences, the different styles that emerged, the early and late style and the lasting influence that these artists have. Students can learn more about the individual artists which are easily categorized and searched by last name. Next, students can learn about the different painting techniques that were used from the wet-white technique to the use of bright and vivid colors. The timeline lets students explore each time period of the almost 100 year Pre-Raphaelite movement. Finally, students can see the collection of paintings themselves. The collection is easily searchable by category.

How to integrate The Pre-Raph Pack into your curriculum: The Pre-Raph Pack is a comprehensive look at the Pre-Raphael art movement and the collection at Birmingham. Students not only get a peek at the artists themselves, they learn the history, technique, and what the movement meant to art.

This is a well put together site for use in any art class, but the in-depth look at the artists and the history makes it a great site for any classroom. Art is a medium that can absolutely hook a child on history. They begin to see that art has gone through evolutions and that it is deeply reflective of the times. If you have a student who is struggling with history, introduce them to a little art history and see if you can’t help them make different connections with the stories. I have said this many times before, but history was a hard subject for me. I saw it only as a collection of dates, facts, places, and names that I couldn’t get to relate to each other. It wasn’t until I met my husband and he started talking history, that I realized that history is all about story. The Pre-Raph Pack is a site that can help your students begin to connect the pieces in history.

Use the paintings on this site as writing prompts, ask students to write about the story they think is happening in the painting. The collection includes everything from history and medieval, to religion and myth, to portraits, literature, and landscapes. Each of your students will be able to find a painting that speaks to them.

Tips: The Pre-Raph Pack was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Pre-Raph Pack in your classroom!

Juxio: Online Visual Creation Tool

October 25, 2010October 25, 2010Kelly Tenkely10 Comments5265 views

What it is: Juxio is a new visual way to create and communicate. The web application lets students take their own images (or images from Flickr, FaceBook, or Picasa) and add them to an image stream or panel. Text descriptions can be added to the stream to describe the images. Streams are where text and images get placed. Streams expand in width as elements are added. A Jux (Juxio creation) can be expanded vertically by adding additional streams. This is useful for organizing content into categories or for comparison. Each stream can have its own header to add meaning or depth to a Jux creation. Events are used to visually segment streams. For example, students might have an animal stream of pictures that is segmented into the events “mammals” and “reptiles”. After students create a Jux, they can save it as a PDF file, print it, or share it online via email, Facebook, Twitter, or url.

How to integrate Juxio into your curriculum: Juxio is a fantastic online tool to use for online visual creation. Students can mash-up text and photos to create their own Jux that can be used to organize information or display understanding. Use Juxio for animal classification, vocabulary, historical time lines, changes over time, to tell a linear story, or display any information in an organized fashion. Take pictures of a science experiment for students to turn into a Jux, they can start at the beginning of the experiment adding captions to each picture. Text boxes can be added for students to type in their hypothesis at the beginning of the experiment and to add a concluding statement at the end. Take pictures of a school field trip and create a Juxio to tell the story of what happened on the field trip. A Jux can be created individually by students in a computer lab setting, or by a whole class using an interactive whiteboard. Class Juxio’s can be created to display new learning, each student contributing to one Jux. The finished product can be printed and saved in the classroom with the URL sent home so students can access the learning from anywhere. Use Juxio in place of a traditional Friday newsletter. Take pictures of students throughout the week, add captions explaining what learning happened during the week and add a stream for upcoming events and reminders. Anytime you add student pictures to a newsletter, the chance that a parent takes the time to read it goes way up!

Tips: Juxio requires an email address for sign up. In addition, students must be 13 or older to obtain their own account. If you teach younger students, create a class account where you are the owner. Students can create a Jux using the class account and save it with their name in the title.

Juxio offers the option to purchase the finished Jux as a poster. Prices are very reasonable and can be used for customized classroom decoration. Cool!

If your school has access to an iPod Touch or iPad lab, Juxio can be downloaded directly to the device as an application.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Juxio in your classroom!