I love working with radial designs in my art room. I usually work with kaleidoscope designs with my second graders and radial/mandala designs with fourth graders. Most mandala designs are symmetrical. The meaning of “mandala” comes from Sanskrit, meaning center or circle. The design usually begins in the center and branches outward.
"Mandala Maker" is a web 2.0 tool that allows anyone to create a mandala design online. This can be a great addition to my introduction to my lessons on mandalas/radial designs. On this site, students can use geometric shapes to design 1/8 of their mandala. This is a great pictorial illustration of fractions. Students have options to change colors, rotate the scale and skew the shapes. Once the students feel that they have completed their design or just want to take a peek at their design as a whole, they can press view design. This is when the magic of symmetry begins! Students will begin to “Oooohhhhh!” and “Aaaahhhh!” at what they have created but they will not be satisfied just yet! Now the curiosity kicks in and students will continue to play around by clicking “Continue working”. Who would have thought!? Eventually students will finally become satisfied with a design and it can be e-mailed to themselves or to someone else. I can definitely use this as warm-up project prior to their detailed hands-on art project.
Not only is this a great art lesson, it reinforces many concepts that are taught in our Everyday Math series and allows for cross-curricular teaching, which is a huge push in my district. Grade level teachers really appreciate the additional practice with terminology being taught in math. A few mathematical topics that will be revisited as a result of this activity include geometric shapes, symmetry, fractions, patterns, and measurement (height/width). This web 2.0 tool is not only an engaging introduction for an art project, but it is educational and enjoyable.
Roxy said...
Good find Jaime!!! I like the idea of a comic strip and the use of avatars created by students. Bitstrips seems to give more options for building avatars, which for me as an art teacher, that's a plus. For example, the Wii game system gives options but in the tour for bitstip, there seems to be many more choices for the students to build their own unique avatar so that no two are identical. I can see using this with an art club. Thanks!!!
This image was created by Erin Lodes using wordle.net. It is copyrighted to www.wordle.net under creative commons.
Roxy said...Wow! If I had taken a music class back when I was in school, I would have loved this class. Creating my own music to play in my current music game that I play! That is awesome! That would definitely get my friends and I excited about the class, the assignment and get us talking about it in our blogs! Great choice! I would love to see some examples!
Animoto is a web 2.0 tool that automatically generates professionally produced videos with motion design. The videos that are created are unique each time. No two videos are alike. The user selects what photos, videos and soundtrack they want to use and Animoto does the rest.
This web application can be useful for back-to-school nights. I can have each computer in my art room display different works of art for each grade level so parents can see what their child will be creating in that grade level. I can also use this presentation for individual student portfolios. Students can take photos or scan in their artwork to create their own Animoto presentation to share with family and friends at the end of the year. Examples of art work can be shared with other art teachers in the district or posted on my blog to share with others around the world. I can even take video clips of students creating their works of art and import it along with the photos to make a more appealing video piece.
Once your video has been created, there are more options available. You can re-edit your video to get a totally different effect by a click of a button, download it, or send it as a greeting card or receive the embedded code to place the video on a blog, site, or social network.
When you sign-up for a free account, you have access to Animoto Shorts. These videos are 30-seconds in length. You have unlimited access to produce, remix, and share as many videos as you'd like. With full-length videos you can do the same but this allows the videos to be as long as a whole song and are downloadable.
Right now Animoto is offering all educators a classroom code for an All-Access pass for producing videos for assignments and presentations at your school. Here is the website to sign-up, http://animoto.com/education/getting_started
Magic Pen is a web 2.0 flash game that works like a brainteaser. It is a physics-based puzzle playground created by Alejandro Guillen. Using the mouse, players draw shapes with a crayon to get a red ball across the screen toward a flag. In order for the players to accomplish this, players must draw bridges and other shapes to get the red ball to move toward its destination. Any shapes can be drawn anywhere to make this possible. Players can even use pins and hinges to connect shapes to get them to swing and move other shapes.
This game is addictive! The shapes are affected by gravity, friction and inactivity. You must understand how physics works in order to complete the task. Once you draw an object it is set in motion. It is extremely challenging. I tried testing out the game and the next thing I knew an hour had passed. I wasn’t even far in the game but was enjoying the challenge. This game can get the students to use their critical thinking skills to move on to the next level of the game. I can see teachers, like myself, using this game as a reward for students who have completed a project early. Play now! http://magic.pen.fizzlebot.com/
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I agree, this site has been a site that I have visited many times before in the past but I did not find as much information as there is posted now. The resources, games, blogs, and lessons for all grade levels are extremely helpful. Glad I went back and revisited the site! There is a ton of web 2.0 tools available on this site!