Monthly Mentor

Natalie C. Jones (February)
Each month, a different member is the guest writer for the NAEA Monthly Mentor Blog. Natalie C. Jones is an artist, small business owner, and the director of education at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. She has 10 years of experience working as an art teacher and teaching artist throughout the east coast and the Midwest. Click "GO" to read her full bio.

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« PLCs and PLNs | Main | Creating QR Codes »

March 25, 2013

Communicating Learning with Parents & the Community

Today's post is likely motivated by the fact that this week we have Parent/Teacher/Student conferences in our district. I am proud to say that we have an amazing turnout for our conferences K-12. Many districts have high turnout for the elementary grades, but we have outstanding turnout for our middle school and high school grades as well. Much like the elementary, we have scheduled conferences for each of our middle school and high school students. This year, I am a senior class advisor and have tracked, or followed, my group of seniors from their first day as a freshman. They are my little family, and it is so rewarding to watch them grow from that first day of high school all the way through graduation.

Beyond scheduled conferences, how do you communicate with anyone outside the walls of your classroom about what learning is going on in the art room? As educators, we communicate through building or district newsletters, the local newspaper, or perhaps social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter depending on your district's policy on the use of social media. We diligently display work in the halls or perhaps in other locations in the community or other educational agencies in the area. I know many of you utilize other outlets like Artsonia to display and share work being created in your classroom.

I think of these ways of communicating with parents and the community to be the norm or more traditional. (Yes, even Artsonia is becoming a somewhat traditional way of sharing work.) So how can we share learning that happens in the art room in a less traditional way utilizing today's technologies and puts sharing more in the hands (or voice) of the students?

The final project that I had my 8th grade students create during the 2nd trimester was to research an artist and create a cardboard guitar that emulated the work of that artist. The research students completed was very simple and to the point: Artist's name, home country or origin, birthdate (and death date, if applicable), period or style of art the artist was known for and five interesting facts about the artist. They looked at a "collection" of work done by the artist, and we researched a variety of guitar shapes. They selected or designed a guitar shape that was similar to shapes found in the artist's work, created their three-dimensional guitar from lots and lots of corrugated cardboard, painted their guitar in a style representational of their artist, and added details like fish line strings, cardboard and toothpick tuners and more. They turned out fantastic!

There seemed to be a piece missing. If they did this research, why not have them share what they learned? I had dabbled in using QR Codes for my high school photography assignments, so students could have the assignment in their pocket when they went out of the classroom on shooting assignments. Then it dawned on me. Could I use QR Codes linked to an audio file of the student sharing the information about their artist? No one I asked seemed to know how to make that happen, so I turned to my Internet family and found some basic instructions that I tweaked a bit to fit my available technology and set up. The students made their recordings, and I put the QR Code on their guitar for parents and the community to access. I put the finished guitars on display outside the auditorium during the spring show choir and jazz band show, and they are currently on display for our Fine Art Festival of work created by all students in the building. It was a huge hit! I can see many, many more applications for using QR Codes to have my students share their learning with the world beyond the walls of the art room.

Artist Guitar Sample Artist Guitar Sample QR

What are some non-traditional ways you share learning with parents and the community?

Perhaps my next post will share the entire lesson and how to create audio files that are linked to QR Codes (at least how I know how to do them on a Mac)...

—Ronda Sternhagen

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