Teacher and Student Productivity Tools

Week Nine

With the wide array of rapidly changing technology available, it is especially important for teachers to be self-reflective after formative and summative assessments. Student learning outcomes can inform instruction and create opportunities for improvement. Being proactive learners, actively searching out purposeful ways technology can augment student learning, teachers can gain their own competencies using applications and tools which serve to improve their own time efficiency. With many schools becoming increasingly a 1:1 computer to student ratio, online classroom applications allow teachers to organize lessons, links, course content, testing, and grading capabilities. The online classroom is also advantageous for the absent student to easily work from home or the substitute to have lessons readily available.

With the increasing deluge of technology available, it is easy for teachers to get caught in a maelstrom of confusion. Best classroom technology practices should be used to enhance student learning, while improving classroom efficiency. Each course content being different, visual art is among the most underrepresented department. After conducting absorbent research, I found some wonderful resources.

Mental Floss provides links to online art museums around the world. Among them,

Google Arts and Culture features a well documented collection of art from over 60 galleries around the world. The Vatican Museum has its collection available online including and amazing virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel.

The J. Paul Getty Museum provides a wide variety of useful curricula and guides to help educators build visual literacy in the K-12 classroom. The search engine filters lessons by grade level, content subject, and type of activity. The museum also provides lessons for K-12 ELL students at the beginning, intermediate and advanced level. They have worked over the years to refine the effectiveness of beginning lessons. Each of the lessons focus on artwork in their own collection.

The Art Institute of Chicago hosts an online resource, Art Access, which was developed to educate visitors with historical context, design content, and style. It also provides lesson plans which can be used for art educators.

The Literacy Shed has an unusual array of animated movie shorts which can be used to inspire creativity, critical thinking, and build visual literacy in any classroom. Movie shorts can be used to develop art projects which formulate story endings, or question prompts which tie art to Common Core Standards for English.

Kinder Art is a site dedicate to lesson plans which cater to children and adults with disabilities. The site is organized by grade and discipline. There is also a Lesson Library which organizes art lessons by medium or technique.

Edutopia has many resources which are geared toward teaching ELL students many content areas including the arts. It also details good pedagogy theory and the best practices.

Deep Space Sparkle is a site which caters to teaching art to students with special needs. Lessons are organized by subject, technique, and grade. There is even a section on this site which articulates how to teach or apply many of the art concepts such as the principals or elements of design.

For digital technology tutorials, YouTube has a wide array of video lesson on the latest visual design applications. Lynda.com has been a leader in the digital design industry offering many design application video tutorials. Most county library branches may offer free memberships with a library card login.