Blog Post 4

After having taken a look at some standards on the CPalms website, I chose the standard “Enduring Understanding 2” which applies to high school students taking a visual art course.  This requires students to be reflective both on their art and other’s art.  This is the link to the standard: http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewIdea/Preview/1318.Students could utilize numerous web-based resources, but the most beneficial would be their own personal digital art making accounts and blogs where they post progress photos of their work, create art in an artist community, write reflections, connect with their classmates, and research other artists. They could websites such as blogger or wordpress and art software such as Adobe Illustrator. This would fit under graphic software. I would have the students familiarize themselves with digital art and traditional art using both Adobe Illustrator and traditional media. I will then photograph and upload these pieces along with progress shots. Once uploaded to their blog, they will write reflectively regarding their art-making process and comment on their fellow classmates work to facilitate an art community.  

The Internet is endlessly useful for student research. The time when the Web isn’t beneficial to pupils is when the information is faulty or incorrectly stated. The Internet does provide wonderful resources such as academic journals, peer-reviewed articles, and large databases. Research must also be age-appropriate and meaningful in the curriculum. It’s not appropriate to give elementary students full access to internet databases because of content issues. In addition, using information from the Internet also brings in the issue of copyright and citing sources.

In my academic career, I have used Google predominantly to research. I really liked using Britannica Encyclopedia because it provided me with valuable and reliable information. I realized a source wasn’t reliable if I didn’t contain any sort of citation when stating statistics or facts. I was often told by teacher what is and isn’t a valid source, like the Wikipedia isn’t a valid source. I would also go with the aesthetics of the site, which is not a sign credibility, but if looks nicer people tend to trust it. The podcast describes a much more systematic way of evaluating sources using the acronym ABCDT. This method analyzes websites based off author, bias, content, design, technical elements. Stability is also important.

The web hunt gave a few new skills as I searched for the various items on the list. For example, I learned how to restrict what results would come up by placing a minus sign in my inquiry. In addition, I learned how to prioritize search items. For example, I would put terms that aren’t as important toward the end of my search. I didn’t really encounter any surprises.

Web Challenges:

·         Find painting by Van Gogh

·         Find article pertaining to the Vietnam war and have it be of the time period