BP10_2010033_1minutemessage#2

Link to Collette's blog EDUblogs

BP9_2010033_Sketchfu

Sketchfu, At first it took me sometime to discover what the big deal was with Skecthfu. It had about 10% of the features of Sumo Paint, if that. It only had about 50% of what MyOats offered on its site. But it wasn’t until I when back out and Googled more on the site that I discovered how to navigate this really cute tool. I was looking for tutorials when I came across page after page of tutorials and many were created by elementary kids. Then I found a page that was created in a Wiki. Unfortunately, the tutorials on the main page weren’t available however a little tutorial with audio was accessible and so was a link for a lesson plan.

Sketchfu is a tool with many possibilities. What makes it unique is that it is recording as you are drawing and once you save your work a little video plays back every stroke you make. When it is played its at 16x the speed in which you drew it, however you do have the option to watch it in a slower speed. Once it is published others can view your work and vote on it in three different categories: funny, cute and impression. I am truly amazed at the creations that I have seen on this sight.

In the classroom I can see it being a great tool to demonstrate how to draw, shade, add detail and much more. I can also see it being used to add a little drama to a presentation such as drawing out words to emphasize them in a video. I was actually able to do this in a video that I created. I only wish I had a drawing pad to create with it. Using your finger on the built it pad on a laptop can be tiring, you don’t have any more control with a mouse, and I haven’t found a stylus that works on the pad yet. I’m just going to keep playing.

References:

Sketchfu: http://sketchfu.com/

Sketchfu tutorials: http://sketchfu.com/drawing/534100-chibi-tutorial-simple-chibi-s-that-are-easy-cute-watch-in-x4

Sketchfu Tips: http://sketchfu.com/drawing/542880-tips-ok-

BP8_2010032_One Minute Message - #1

bp6_2010032_linktoyourcommentonanothersblog

Click here to see My Comment on Eric's blog

bp7_2010032_linktoyourcommentonanothersblog

Click here to see my comment to Abby'sBlog

bp5_2010032_Web2.0Tools2

Myoats.com

This Web 2.0 tool is just as much fun as Sumo Paint but a lot less confusing. In other words, Myoats is a very similar application to Sumo Paint, but in a much simpler form. In took me far less time to explore Myoats .

This is a site for digital painting and design. This engine seems to have been created with symmetry in mind. One can create with up to 16 points of symmetry down to 2 points where the design is a perfect mirror image. Still another option is to create without symmetry, but I was not able to observe very many of these.
The tools tabs are simple and once you view the three tutorials offered on this site you pretty much have all you need. Sumo Paint could take a month or more to learn all features and tools, yet still you may not be able to duplicate your design.
This Web 2.0 tool makes recreation easier because there is far less guessing as to how something was done. Although my middle school students would enjoy this I think that even the lower grade levels could benefit from this fun little tool.
Important features for MyOasts include:
1. It’s totally free (I’m only looking at the free applications at this time)
2. It has a save-on-site feature, which is very helpful when students may be working in different computers in a lab over the course of a week or a quarter. Also, once saved the date is stamped with the piece. Great feature for looking back to see how one has improved through practice.
3. Myoats has several options for forums, discussion boards, and questions these include: announcements, introductions, suggestions, Help me!, and the Lounge.
4. One of my favorite features is that you can save your creation to a public gallery and then members can vote for your masterpieces and the vote goes up in real time. You can also comment to a piece and ask the artist questions.
As far as I can tell this is a safe site for all ages. Although I saw nothing on the site that was inappropriate, I did send a comment to the administrators to ask who monitors this site’s material. I’ll post the reply when it is returned.

http://www.myoats.com/

BP4_2010038_Web2.0tools

As a middle school art teacher I really have a challenging time getting my students interested in my class. Students still want art to be fun but they don’t want to do the work anymore. They want to express themselves but they are tired of drawing. I have found a few fun sites that might spark their interest and I think my newest attempt is to introduce some of these Web.2 Tools that I have found and use them as a reward for students who have shown effort in my class. I plan to introduce this first site by playing a very short animation that I have created at Me Moov.com.

After playing for a while I found that the commands were actually quite simple. An editor has many choices to make as he/she begins to create. I will ask students to come up with a simple theme, a question or a joke that they can create into a short animation. Once they have chosen a theme students will find the editing choices already narrowed for them. They can choose the gender of their characters, what they look like, color and style of hair, clothes, shoes, factual expression. Next students choose bodily expression and movement to fit their characters dialogue. Once they have completed that students (or editors) can choose to use word bubbles, signs, floating text or actual audio to express words.

As you work with this free tool, which by the way no need for downloading AND you can save your work on the site, you can edit as you go. With each movement you can return to the beginning and play back your animation to check for timing and fluidity. I plan to use this fun tool to also create some eye-catching tutorials or even just to introduce the 5minute drawing word for the day.

I’m going to keep exploring this site. If anyone has any other suggestions on uses let me know. I am all-ears.

Memoov (2008) Retrieved on March 8, 2010 from http://memoov.com/index.aspx

bp3_2010033_google reader

So far I have chosen 6 RSS feeds to follow on my Google reader. I have chosen all of them to gather information to help me begin to create a module in digital art education. My goal is to research as many different on-line applications as I can and explore them. For my first week of class in my Action Research Cycle I would like to have 5 programs to begin with. As I researched these blogs, I found that there was a great deal of information that will be useful to my quest. The information not only included web sites, applications, tutorials on how to use some of these tools., but also interesting lessons to follow in this media. I have a feeling that I will be following much more in the very soon. The following sites are the ones that I have chosen so far.

http://blogs.everettsd.org/cgaub

http://digitalartbytes.blogspot.com/

http://digitalarted.blogspot.com/

http://digitalharold.blogspot.com/

http://artjunction.org/blog

http://www.youtube.com/results?search=related&search_query=how%20to%20art%20tutorial%20coloring%20randis%20digital%20wacom%20photoshop%20concept%20painting%20nge%20software%20tablet%20free%20gits%20awesome%20imagine%20artist%20fx%20drawing%20manga%20anime%20cartoon%20comic%20learning%203.0%202.0%20doujin%20lernen%20malen%20zeichnen%20ms%20ps%20painter%20OC&v=466lBz0KadI

BP2_2010033_edublogs

In a survey that I conducted in January 2010 I found that most of my students and their parents in my rural school district did not know what a blog was, understandably so. I didn’t even really understand what it was before November 2009. Many of my students now have a better understanding for this form communication, however they have not participated in one yet. According to Flierl and Fowler ,(2007) both blogs and Wikis “can be used by educators to engage students in digital discussions and create a workspace for collaborative projects.” I n this article the authors site eight different URLs that they found would be beneficial to educators of all different disciplines.
One of the sites that interested me the most was Edublogs. This site was very easy to navigate. I was able to create two independent blogs. One was under the student option the other under the pro option. Both were free and once opened there was plenty of information to guide you through the process of beginning your own blog for educational purposes. Once I signed in on the student site blog site, it immediately offered suggestions on getting your blog started with “weekly tasks for class blogs”. I was excited to see that one of the first items on the list was to add the blog to the Google Reader. Since I am becoming more and more comfortable with Google accounts I was glad to see something familiar in the maze of new technology.
Another feature on the site was Sue’s Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours? She had some excellent suggestions for how to get started. Like use short paragraphs and make sure that you have a heading. Both of these ideas will incise readings.






FLIERL, R., & FOWLER, H. (2007). Educational Uses of Blogs and Wikis. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(3), C3. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

The Edubloger (2010) Retrieved on March 3,20101 from http://theedublogger.com/

bp1_2010033_igooglescreenshot

these are my screenshots for igoogle page.