Revising My GAME Plan

What have you learned that you can apply to your instructional practice?

I have reflected upon the first approach that I would like to make on ANGEL, our online learning environment, and taken the first steps to building a reflective blog to use with my student after the new year. The first blog will still be a reflection on the description and interpretation of a famous artwork. Two weeks later, the second blog will be a reflection of their first project. At first, I thought this would be difficult because of the memory required to upload that many jpegs into the system, but the IT specialist figured out a way it could be done easily. I am hopeful that this plan will work. Therefore, I feel confident that I have learned what is required to begin building my online environment.

In attempting to build an online professional learning community, I have work to do. I have learned that simple attempts to begin collaborations (i.e., starting a blog, joining a group) are not sufficient to engage individuals in a fruitful collaboration. It is a busy time of year, and I need to be patient. Yet, with the coming of the New Year, I also, need to be more persistent in the exploration of Art Education 2.0, and find other venues in which to collaborate with other art educators.

What goals are you still working toward?

As explained above, I am still in the process of designing an online environment in which my students can reflect upon their own artwork, as well as, the artwork of famous artists. My development of an online learning community will also, take more time and persistence. Goals I will pursue as soon as Christmas, and this class are over. Time is a key element in realizing these goals.

If you are not ready to set new learning goals, how will you extend what you have learned so far?

My goals to build a course in ANGEL, is a work in progress. After I get the blogging underway, the possibilities are numerous. Maybe working on a collaborative report in small groups, using a wiki, as a culminating project each 12 week session, or making an infomercial on a famous artist. Can the students convince their audience that their chosen artist is unparalleled in the world of art, and that they must have the available artwork as an investment?

A professional learning community has unlimited potential. At this juncture, I don’t have plans to set new goals, the exploration of the potential of online collaboration is enough for me to pursue. Once I have gotten deeper into the process, more layers of discovery and communication will reveal themselves. I look forward to the adventure.

What learning approaches will you try next time to improve your learning?

There are many applications with which I would like to experiment. I have downloaded Inkscape and Gimp onto my laptop, and they are also available on each computer at school. It goes without saying, the academic teachers have been quite busy building their courses on ANGEL, and haven’t had the opportunity to become familiar with these more creative applications. Logically, these new applications are under my umbrella, and I would like to become familiar enough with them to help the staff expand their curriculums to include projects that incorporate the “new visual literacies”. If we all take a piece of the challenges ahead of us, and train each other, technology in education will seem less daunting.