What’s in your lunchbox?

I attended two conferences in the past few days: the Emerging Learning Design (ELD) conference at Montclair University and The RealTime Report (#RLTM) in New York.  The audience at ELD was primarily educators at the college and high school level.  The latter event was all about business, and I’ll be blogging about both this week. First up, ELD. Bringing little experience in social media with them, attendees at ELD asked the types of questions business people asked in 2008.  Many needed to learn the basics of Twitter and Facebook: whats a DM, how do I set up a Facebook page with students and still respect privacy, etc.  The concerns unique to education were rarely voiced.  When issues like the  amount of time teenagers spend on Facebook were raised,...

Posted by on Jun 7, 2011 in Education, Technology / Social Media | 0 comments

Visit to the Met (Part 3)

If you haven’t read parts 1 and 2 of my visit to the Met, you might want to start there.  I’ve been sharing what I learned on a Fashion in Art tour I took when I recently chaperoned a trip with NAHS students.  In this entry, I’m going to share what I learned about a statue from Mali: The Dogon people of Mali (18 c. – 19 c.) had no written language, so their sculpture and statutes conveyed information to members of their community.  The man and woman this statue are the same height and similarly carved which echos the Dogon concept that marriage is an equal partnership in their society.  However, the two figures have different roles. While you can’t see this in the picture, the man has a quiver to hold a bow and arrow on his back,...

Posted by on Apr 25, 2011 in Art / Books / Film, Education | 1 comment

Visit to the Met (Part 2)

I gave up my home delivery of The New York Times at the end of last year because once again I was looking to cut costs around here, but I do love to read the paper on paper.  My parents came to visit late last week, and my Dad is an avid newspaper reader.  My Mom is all about the coupons, my Dad all about the info, so I got the rare treat of being able to read both the local and New York papers this past weekend. Imagine my surprise when I opened up The New York Times and saw an article on my favorite exhibit at the Met on the cover of the Arts & Leisure section!  The small show outside the African Art area contains masks styled like the traditional wood masks hanging in the Met’s collection but made out of modern materials and in many instances...

Posted by on Apr 19, 2011 in Art / Books / Film, Education | 0 comments

Visit to the Met

On April 13, 2011, I chaperoned a group of high school students on a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  I went with some trepidation; the few memories I have of earlier visits to the Met all involved getting lost in some part of the Museum.  Advanced planning can sometimes help with a Museum of this size, so I visited the website and discovered the “Fashion in Art” tour.  Shallow woman that I am, this had me written all over it.  The tour became the focal part of my day when I discovered that the Costume Institute is closed in preparation for a new Alexander McQueen exhibit. Over the next few days, I’ll share a few things I learned on the tour as well as a few pieces I enjoyed viewing during my overall visit.  The...

Posted by on Apr 14, 2011 in Art / Books / Film, Education | 2 comments

Midterms

This week I gave 3 midterms.  How, you may ask, do you give a written midterm in project based classes? It’s not easy, trust me, but that’s the requirement these days.  I’m not a fan of testing in general and believe the ability to practically apply skills learned demonstrates knowledge much better than being able to memorize and retrieve.  You may be able to tell me every one of the hot keys in Blender but can you make a sophisticated character walk? My aversion to tests came about during my time in grad school.  A professor – the head of the program and my eventual thesis advisor – announced about midway through the semester that he would be administering a midterm in his class.  Yes, it was on the syllabus, but who reads...

Posted by on Apr 5, 2011 in Education | 0 comments

Dueling Apps

If you regularly read this blog, you’ll remember I mentioned a Flash animation idea I got while visiting JVV’s creative writing class.  Dueling Apps is here!  Inspired by my addiction to my iPhone and it’s ability to make me feel productive even before I get out of bed on the weekdays, this little Flash animation came in handy when teaching my animation class how to tell a story simple story using basic 2D animation techniques.  Enjoy!

Posted by on Apr 4, 2011 in Education, Technology / Social Media | 0 comments