Using my iPad and some of my favorite apps so far!

Last week I finally went to Best Buy and bought a VGA adapter for my iPad.  Since the iPad I have is an iPad 2, I had to buy the 30-pin to VGA adapter (this is a different adapter than what you need for the newer ones).  It's a very short cord, but it's not as much of a disaster as you might think.  

In order to hook it up to my Smartboard, I need to disconnect the Smartboard from the back of my computer and plug is into the big end of the adapter.  Then, the smaller end obviously hooks up to the iPad.  Then, the iPad screen will project onto the Smartboard and it will also show on the computer screen.  This does NOT allow me to control the iPad on the Smartboard.  The only way I'd be able to do that is if I had a wireless set-up with my computer.  The computer and iPad would have to sync via a special app downloaded onto both.  Since my computer does not have wireless, I can't be set up that way.

Regardless, I'm happy that it can be projected onto the Smartboard for everyone to see.  Now this means I can hopefully start using it during instruction. It's a bit of a pain to have to plug and unplug stuff from my computer, but I'll live with it for now until I can get a splitter box.  

I've downloaded a few cool apps that I can't wait to try.  Some of these are apps that I downloaded that are a one-player app that would work well in a classroom that has access to multiple iPads.  Some seem like they'll be good apps for instruction

1. Pottery
I LOVE playing this app at home!  This is a one-player app, but if you had multiple iPads, it would be cool to have a competition to see who could make and sell the most expensive piece of pottery!  There is a free version of the app, but I ended up paying the $5.99 for the full version.  You can free-throw pottery or you can play the game and make pottery for the commissions you receive.

2. Crazy Photo Booth
This app is a cool app, especially if you are doing pop art! You take a photo of yourself, or someone else, and you can alter it using lots of different effects, including the pop art effect, which makes your photo turn into an Andy Warhol inspired artwork!  I think that I will be using this with my 4th graders as we finish up the portrait unit.




3.  Art HD
This app is pretty cool for information.  If you wanted your students to research artists, this would be a great source to use.  The app comes with 15 artists on it, including Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, Sargent, Turner, Rivera, Franz Marc, Klimt Frida Kahlo, Homer, Gauguin, Degas, Da Vinci, Cezanne and Bouguereau.  There is a write-up powered by Wikipedia and a huge gallery of artwork by each artist.  When I was in college, Wikipedia was deemed a place that was not a good place for sources...has that changed now?  Do you accept Wikipedia as a source in the Elementary and/or high school level?


4. 3-D Art Gallery
This app is really cool.  It would be great for instruction before visiting an actual art gallery.  This isn't an actual representation of a real art gallery.  There are rooms of famous paintings (and lots of Van Gogh's).  You use the two screen buttons to "walk" through the gallery.  When you get up close to a painting, you can click on it and it will give you some information about the artist and the artwork.




5.  Art Museum (Timeline)
This app is pretty cool.  It gives you a timeline of artists from about 1300-the 1980's.  You can click on the artists to see a short biography and a short series of artworks by the artist.  The layout is nice for visual learners because you actually scroll a long a timeline to see the artists in order that they created art.





6. Masterpiece!  This is a fun app that has a series of 16 paintings.   Eight are for girls, eight for boys.  You photograph yourself with the iPad and then maneuver your face into the cutouts of the paintings.  Some include American Gothic, a self-portrait by Van Gogh, and the Mona Lisa.  

7.  Van Gogh and the Sunflowers
You can purchase this book as an app.  The app will read the story page by page with some nice moving illustrations.  I haven't downloaded the full version yet to know if it comes with more.  It is kind of funny though, because the reader pronounces VanGogh's name "Van Goff".


8.  Van Gogh
This app, powered by Timeline, is a nice Van Gogh app.  You can take tours of VanGogh (you can do a walk-thru of each time period in his life or through his self-portraits).   It also has a short overview of VanGogh.

9.  Art History (Lite)
I downloaded the lite version of this powered by Virtual Flashcards.  This app has various cultures in history, such as Ancient Greece, Rome, Byzantine, etc.  There are 1-2 artworks that come with the app per category.  You can choose which categories to be "tested" on and then the app will run through the flash cards for you.  I haven't played with it too much but I believe you can add your own categories and artworks to the app.  If you get any cards wrong, you can "study" them.   There isn't any information that accompanies the cards...that's the only downfall.

10. Caricatures
This app is pretty cool and would be great for use in a classroom that has multiple apps.  I haven't paid for the full version so it is a little limited.  In this app, there are presets  for the ears, eyes, face, mouth etc.  This would be great for a cartooning unit.  Students could observe each other and then go through the app to pick the pre-sets that best match their partner's features and essentially, create a digital caricature!




Well, that's what I have to share for now.  I'm finally just starting to dive into all of the art apps I downloaded.  I went on a downloading spree and now I'm going through them and deciding which ones are keepers and which ones are not.

Eric Carle's Mr. Seahorse: Part Deux

 Today we worked on our Mr. Seahorse mixed media projects in Kindergarten "class C" and my 12:1:1 class.  We're not quite finished yet, but I'll share what we did today.  My finished seahorse project is on the right.  (If you didn't see my previous post about these and how we painted everything to get ready for the construction portion, check it out here!)

Our first step today was to cut out long, skinny triangles from the green paper to make the seaweed. This was the easy cutting part!  This was also a time when I had the students not following the gluing rules.  I showed them how to put a bunch of glue at the bottom of the plate to stick the seaweed to.  In the past, I've done similar projects and when they put dots of glue on the seaweed, it just didn't stick very well.

 The next step was to trace 3 seahorses on the back of the red paper.  I'm only having them do 3 sea horses on their projects, but this way, there are extra seahorses for people who were absent or for students who might have cut off the tails.  The seahorse was tricky for some students to cut out, but good practice for advanced cutting skills.

That's about as far the kids got today on their projects.  Here is the rest of how we are going to finish this mixed media art:

The seahorses get glued like this: two on the big plate and one on the outside.

 Next, I'll have the students paint on some glue on the bottom of the outside ring.  We'll sprinkle some yellow sand on it.

If they have any extra green paper, they can add some seaweed to the outside too.

I've already hot-glued the cellophane onto the frame plates for the students.

Next class, we'll finish the frame part of our project, add the sand, and some small seashells.  I'll hot glue the plates together, as they hold better.  When I did this project before, I had the kids use regular glue and a lot of them fell apart.

YAM: 3rd Grade Picasso

Third grade teachers really jumped on board for my YAM activities.  They created a two week unit in their classroom about art!  Last week, they spent time studying different styles and mediums of art.  This week they're talking about Picasso!  They made some really awesome packets for students to use in the classroom and they've really impressed me!  So, my connecting Picasso project is to make slab Picasso faces! (Pinterest influence found here.)

Here are my two examples that I made during my demonstrations.

One third grade teacher asked if they could come down and do the clay Picasso project with the students (during their free period..gasp! ;) )

Last week I started this mini Picasso unit off by having the students draw a quick, 20 minute self-portrait using oil pastels.  I had them cut them up and glue them down all "wonky" onto black construction paper.  I didn't really give them much information to go off of...this was a sort of "filler" project I did while I had no voice and had a substitute.

My example is on the left here...

Because they are covering Picasso so in depth in the classroom, I'm not really doing a full unit on Picasso.  I also cheated a little bit.  I'm not making the students roll out their own slabs for this.  I recently bought this really nice mini slab roller.  I've used it during the after school program because it's quicker, but I haven't used it in class before.

I argued with myself quite a bit as to whether or not to use it, but I decided to use it only because I wanted to give the students two days with the wet clay.  I've been waiting to have a full kiln to fire (for the rest of the Egyptian artifacts).  Both classes will be finished with these by Friday, so that means they will be dry enough to fire by Monday...  I ended up rolling out 5 slabs for each class.  It was enough for everyone to cut out what they needed to start.  I kept all of the extra rolled out slabs stacked in between canvas so we can use it next time instead of wasting it.

I pulled out the texture rollers so that they could give their faces some interesting texture.  We also poked some holes so that we can later add some pipe cleaner curls for hair.  I concentrated on making sure the students knew how to score and slip really well, especially since they didn't roll out their own slabs.

The first step we took was to cut out an interesting, organic shape for the head.  Then, we made a long snake coil and made a profile line of a face down the center, like Picasso usually has in his artwork.  Then I asked them to start cutting out different shapes to make the eyes, nose, mouth, etc.