Entertaining Escher

For Fun Friday this week, I thought I would share a few Escher posts I recently ran across.

View this interactive panoramic Tribute to Escher in Out of this World.

from http://geekologie.com/2013/05/mc-escher-inspired-interlocking-wooden-f.php (click on the link to see more pictures of this amazing floor!)

appoLearning

(Full disclosure, I have written some of the reviews of apps on the site – Spatial Reasoning  for elementary and Logic and Creative Problem Solving  for middle school.)

appoLearning is a relatively new guy on the block when it comes to educational app reviews.  The site comes from the developers of appolicious.  They recognized the complexities of finding apps on the iTunes stores, and produced a site that gives you many more tools to narrow down your search.

appoLearning is just as ambitious, though the format is a bit different.  “Experts” review educational apps using a special report card, and describe their top 5 in each category.  Some of the apps are free, and others are not.  If an app scores highly enough to be in the top 5, though, you can be sure that it is well worth its price.  One of the highest price apps that I reviewed, Dragon Box, for example, is one of the best educational apps I’ve ever run across.

If you are a parent or teacher who is completely overwhelmed when you search for “education” apps on the iTunes app store, then appoLearning is the perfect antidote.

You can learn more about appoLearning here.

 

Some More Activities for the End of the School Year

Here are a couple more technology integration ideas for the end of the school year:

QR Code Year-End Reflection – You can read more about this tic-tac-toe reflection activity in my post from last year around this time.  It isn’t anything showy, but a nice way to round out the year, and the students always love the added mystery of scanning QR codes.

Thinglink Favorite Memories – I have been meaning to use Thinglink with my students all year, and finally got around to trying it – right when they are about to leave.  I’m not sure this idea is original, but my brain seemed to think it was a great idea at one o’clock Monday morning.  I took a class photo of my 2nd grade gifted students, and then asked them to each share a favorite memory from their years in GT so far.  Then I uploaded the pic to Thinglink and uploaded the videos to my Google account.  I tagged each of the kids in the pic with their video.   I embedded it into our class blog, and now the parents have a nice, interactive photo that won’t take up any closet space.  Here is a link to the post.

Below is a neat Thinglink example I found of suggested iPad apps.

The Orangutan and the Hound

Since this is my Fun Friday post for the week, I will not go into all of the ways you could connect this to classroom learning.  Just watch, and enjoy!

Creating Silhouette Art with the iPad

I would be the first to raise my hand in a Superdome full of people if the following question was asked, “Who is the worst art teacher out there?”  But if I can find a way to integrate art and technology, my lessons are sometimes fairly successful.  This was one of those activities.

To complete this project we used the iPad camera, Tracing Paper Lite (free), and TypeDrawing ($2.99).  There is a web site, Texter, that performs like TypeDrawing, and is free.  However it does not have the font choices and the ability to import a picture as a background.

The students took pictures of each other in profile on the iPads.  Then they opened Tracing Paper Lite, imported their pictures, and traced their silhouettes.  If traced so that the silhouette has no openings, the students can then fill it with black paint.  Because they were using Tracing Paper Lite, which did not have an easy way to export their silhouettes, I had them take screen shots (be sure to get rid of the grid in the background first), and crop them in the Photo Album.  Then they opened TypeDrawing (here is a SnapGuide to using this app), imported the silhouettes, and added the traits that they felt characterized them.

I have seen this done without the use of technology, but the students enjoyed the freedom TypeDrawing gave to personalize the fonts, the colors, and even the direction of the words.  Does anyone else have ideas for how this could be used?

How to Stay Creative

I found “29 Ways to Stay Creative”, created by TO-FU Designs, on the Innovation Excellence blog.  I’m not sure about the advice to “Drink coffee”, but I am definitely on board with the other 28.  I already sing in the shower, so at least I’m taking a step in the right direction.  My favorite one is, “Stop trying to be someone else’s perfect.”  I think I’m going to print that one out and post it in my classroom.

The Art of Kyle Bean

“What Came First?” by Kyle Bean

Joe Hanson featured Kyle Bean’s “Brains” on It’s Okay to Be Smart – not his actual brains, of course – and I knew it would make a great Fun Friday post.  When I visited Bean’s website, however, I found so many other works of art that I could tie into my curriculum, I had to take notes.  Here are some of the links and my ideas…

Brains – what other objects could you use? (that’s toothpaste in the first one!!!)

Stick Insects - make matchstick art of their own

Mobile Evolution (this is a fabulous graphic representation of Kaplan’s “Change over Time”!)

Interconnected Senses - what other systems could be represented this way?

The Sea of Time - assign students to represent an idiom with 3d objects

The Future of Books - have students design other futuristic hybrids

Paper Plane – they will just think this is cool!

The Science of Play - I think this is cool!

10 Ideas - great graphic to show when you want students to make a “Top 10″ list – like “Top 10 List of Top 10 Lists”

Pencil Shaving Portraits - make your own (maybe a Mother’s Day gift?)

What Came First - what else can we sculpture with eggshells (thoroughly sanitized, of course)?

 

Why It’s Awesome to Be a Nerd

I love it when a Fun Friday post just falls into my lap as it did this week.  I found this video on It’s Okay to Be Smart.  I am definitely going to be adding this to my Pinterest Board of Inspirational Videos for Students.  It is a film of Wil Wheaton (you know – of Star Trek, Stand By Me, and Big Bang Theory fame) giving advice to a mother’s newborn daughter about why it’s awesome to be a nerd.  He might have just become my favorite nerd of all time…

If you like this message, you might also want to check out my post, “It’s a Nerd’s World“, featuring a great article on this topic.

Illuminating Lessons on Creativity

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams (1957 – ____) US cartoonist, author
The Dilbert Principle

There are many misconceptions about creativity, I’ve found, and one of them is that creativity can only result in perfection.  The article, “9 Illuminating Lessons on Creativity”, by Margarita Tartakovsky at PsychCentral.com, dispels this myth and a few other common ones.  I often talk about creativity with my students, but I don’t recall having an in-depth conversation with them about the process – other than the importance of brainstorming and trying to be “different”.  It would be interesting to initiate a Socratic Dialogue with my older students about some of these statements, such as, “Everyone is creative.”  Is creativity an inherent talent in a select few, or a potential in all of us?  This article may make you question your own perception of creativity.

by Sean MacEntee

Mystery Skype

Tammy Egesdal’s 4th grade, Forest City, Iowa

Here is a great site that gives an awesome description of how to conduct a “Mystery Skype” session with another class, preferably in a very different part of the world.  Why would you want to plan a “Mystery Skype”?  Here are the goals as listed on the site:

• Students will use map skills to find the location of the mystery classroom
• Students will use communication and critical thinking skills to ask questions to help them find the mystery location.
• Classes communicate with other classrooms via Skype or Google+ Hangouts.
• Students will learn to respect and appreciate the cultures and customs of others.
• Students will be able to see the differences and similarities between themselves and others around the world.

This fabulous resource offers suggestions for student roles, questions to ask, and clues to give to the other class. Mystery Skype also gives links to: a spreadsheet of teachers interested in participating in this project, a meeting planner so you can figure out the best time for your Skype call, and some other helpful links.

I can’t wait to sign my class up!