Section 001 and 002 Combined | AA 461B | 1:25-5:30 M W F | David Matthews and Merita Soini   

Office Hours: 10-12 M, F | Office: 204 Art and Architecture | 

Wednesday
Aug252010

Sample Story

Exhibit Story “Future Learning Scenario”

Please review the following story. This is an example of how a typical teacher may approach teaching in the future. The specific topics may change, but the general pedagogical themes would remain the same. This story is being used as part of the design process in the design of the Future Learning Environments Exhibit. 

Marcia Martinez is a teacher in a multi age group classroom of 9 and 10 year olds (traditionally 4th and 5th graders).  Marcia taught at an urban middle class school in a major metropolitan area.  Marcia is trying to apply the theories of Constructivism and Multiple Intelligences in her classroom along with using her understanding of learning styles.  To achieve this she is basing her curriculum development process on the Project Approach.

Marcia observed that her students were very interested in the different cultures of the people in the community in which the school was set.  There were many different delis and ethnic restaraunt as well as mayy diverse looking people and dress.  She decided to do a project that would let her students study the different cultural people places and things that they were encountering everyday.

Marcia talked to her students about this topic to get their ideas about what they wanted to know about the topic of “Diverse Cultures”.  By doing a KWL chart, she found that the children were very interested in the  1) visual differences between cultures (including architectural differences, personal/body differences, clothing/textile differences, cultural art). 2. Differences in cultural artifacts (art, food, religion, utensils) 3. Languages (letter forms, the sound of the language, meanings of words, cultural songs)  4. Music  5. History  - (oral histories/stories, personal histories, formal history).

Now that Marcia knew what the children wanted to know and what they were interested in learning about she set to the task of developing an initial experience to engage the children’s natural curiosity so that they would want to learn all that they could about their topic of “Cultures”.  Since the school was located in a diverse area of a major urban metropolitan area, Marcia decided that a walking tour of a 5 block area around the school would provide the perfect interaction with the sub-topics that she wanted the children to explore.  In that 5 block radius there were numerous ethnic restaurants, architecture, and people to allow the students to have significant interaction on the diverse cultures around them every day.

Before she took the children on the tour there were a few preparations that needed to be made.  Marcia had access to a digital camera and had planned on using that to document the children’s journey around the neighborhood.  However she also felt that she could give the children a richer experience if the children each had their own camera to use.  She wrote the children’s parents and asked them to purchase a 27 exposure disposable film camera (these are available for as little at $4.99) for their child.  The children would also take their palm devices to allow them to take notes on what they saw, a gps device (one per class) so they could mark the location of each interesting site and where they took the picture, a few small digital voice recorders, and a paper and pencil and a sketch pad to allow them to draw some of the things they saw (if a parent forgets to send a camera with a student Marcia had planned on making those children the designated sketchers so they don’t feel left out.

The week before the journey, Marcia had a group discussion with the children.  In this group the class came up with questions that they could ask different people on the street that they met (that would be recorded on the digital voice recorder).  She also discussed some of the things that they might want to specifically see or look for in the neighborhood.  She also went over the use of the cameras and discussed how to decide what was important to take pictures of. 

After this discussion she contacted some of the businesses in the neighborhood to see if they would be willing to allow the children to tour their building and talk to them.  She got a lot of positive response from the people she contacted and was especially intrigued by a photo processing business that agreed to give her a discount on the photo processing.  She asked if he could show them how film is developed and the owner gave her a resounding yes.  Marcia scheduled a time for the tour and demonstration 2 days after the general tour.

On the day of the tour, several parent volunteers accompanied the students as they photographed, interviewed, sketched, mapped, and took notes on their community.  The children saw and met many diverse peoples.  The last place they went to was the photo processing store where they dropped off their cameras for development.  Back in the classroom the students were brimming with excitement about all the data that they had collected.  Marcia discussed the experience with them and began to ask them what they could do next to learn more about cultures and how they could present that information to the rest of the class and to their parents.  The children decided that making a museum type exhibit that included different clothing, art, architecture, music, history and language.  The children also suggested that they make food from different cultures and serve those to the people coming to their museum.  They also wanted to study and present the many different ways that people look like.  For this they were going to make a photo montage of the many different types of skin color, hair styles, and other cultures.

The children decided that they would develop committees to work on the different exhibits in their museum.  Marcia and the students decided that each child should be on at least 3 committees and handed out a sheet to the children that asked for their preferences as to what committee they wanted to be on.  She collected this information and then had the student’s tally the information collected on the preference sheets and asked them to construct a way to assign people to committees using the data.  It took the children a while and a lot of debate, but they finally came up with an acceptable method of assigning children to the groups.

The committees were Clothing, Personal traits, Art, Architecture, Food, Music, History and Language.  Marcia spent the week developing a curriculum around their investigations.  She took the standards that were developed for her state and used those to guide the children’s discoveries and investigations. 

The children spent about 2 hours a day working on their projects and in their committees to develop their exhibits.  During this time Marcia made sure to emphasize reading, writing and math.  However the whole day was not consumed with the project work.  Mary had to plan for history/social studies, math, reading and science lessons.  However Marcia found that by incorporating aspects of the project into these lessons, the children were more interested because they actually could see how this applied to their learning.  Marcia used foods in her science lessons, she talked about the history of different cultures in America in her history lessons, and she had children read stories that helped them gain an understanding of diverse cultures.  The classroom topic helped to give these academic subjects more meaning to the children.

The children worked for 6 weeks on this project.  When they toured the photo plant they learned a lot about photo processing (which Marcia also incorporated into her science lessons).  They were all impressed with their pictures and put them to good use.  During their tour the children had collected names, email, and phone numbers of some people and had created a database on the classroom computer they now recontacted them to ask them more questions via email to ask them more questions about their culture.  The more the children learned, the more they wanted to learn.

When their exhibit was completed it contained digital materials, audio stories from many of their contacts, pictures of art and architecture, maps of their community with pictures and locations of different establishments, and the food was exceptional.  When it was all done, Marcia realized that many of the skills that the students demonstrated were above their grade level.  She was able to identify not only the grade level standards but also benchmarks from 6th and 7th grade standards that the children had achieved.

Monday
Aug232010

Research Assignment

This post has been edited to indicate a better order of the tasks. Complete the story boards as the final task of the assignment.

Based on the discussion from Monday we have put together the Research Assignment for phase one of studio. Please work in your teams to complete this assignment.

1. List of Annotated Web Based Resources

Each team is to create  and post of list of helpful resources for the design of the school. The resources should cover two distinct catagories.

Educational Mission of the School 

Constructivism, Multiple Intelligence, etc... see the project overview entry. 

Cultural Context of Finland

Important cultural issues, forests, light, music, arts, modern design, city life, rural life, festivals, sauna, summer cottages

Each team is to create a minimum of 36 entries. 

  • Link to Original Source
  • Describe the relevance to the project (2 paragraphs)
  • Have a minimum of 15 video resources and 15 text and image resources. 

2. Interviews of Experts 

Each team it to interview their experts and post audio files and transcrips of each interview. The team is to create a list of questions and then meet with the faculty to review and assist in editing the questions prior to the interview. The team is to receive permission from the person they are interviewing prior to posting any transcripts or audio files. If permission is not provided then you will need to take steps to limit access to the information. 

3. List of ideas (brainstorming of tangible ideas). 

Each team is to generate a list of ideas for their school during the research assignment. These ideas are to be represented in the form of tangible, implementable proposals. Each idea must be supported by two paragraphs and an image or video. 

  • Provide a list of tangible, implementable, buildable ideas as you conduct your research
  • Describe how the idea supports specific curricular objectives and/or cultural context
  • Each idea is to be a combination of words and text

Although the ideas are to be tangible, be very creative and do not worry about appropriateness, crazy ideas are encouraged. 

4. Create a "A Day in the Life of Finnish School Children" Story Board for three students at the proposed school. 

Each team is to create three user storyboards that represent the day in the life of the following students. 

Maija is 8 years old and comes from a family with a single mom. She is interested in dance and music and is constantly moving and expresive with her body. She lives in a small apartment in the center of the city and must spend a lot of time on her own. The family has very limited economic means and often struggles to pay the bills. She communicates with her father every day using text and video conferencing. The class that she is in is currently studding the the Forests of Finland as the big picture topic that spans all traditional subjects. 

Timo is 10 years old and comes from family with a with a mother, father and older sister. He was born with a disability that limits his ability to use his legs from his waste down. He is generally confined to a wheel chair, but prefers to be out of his chair when ever possible. Timo loves to build models, make drawings, and solve math problems. Using his hands to make "stuff" is very important to him. He love's to show off his work to others and often brings his latest creations to school. He can be a bit messy and is involved with many projects at the same time. The class that he is in is currently studding photography as the big picture topic that spans all traditional subjects. 

Liisa is 12 years old and comes from family with an older sister and younger brother. She is very social and loves to be in groups and talk with others. She is very well organized and puts emphasis on her relationships with her friends and family. She is very active during the day maintaining her friendships both face to face and on the computer. She comes from an affluent family, but they have often struggled to find time to spend together. Both her mother and father spend a lot of time traveling as part of their work. She is studding Light in Finland in her class as the big picture topic that spans all traditional subjects. (Or you can choose your own Finland cultural topic of your choice in consultation with Merita.)

When creating the story boards use the following guidelines

Use a narrative format -- Tell a story from the child's point of view. Use images to illustrate concepts. Be detailed in words and images to make a clear story with a beginning, middle, and end. You may want to approach this project as if you were a team of film makers ideating about how to make a documentary or film about your school through the eyes of the child. 

Each child should have 12-15 boards to tell the complete story. Each board is to have illustrations, photos, or other visual information to support the story and a written narrative of 2-3 paragraphs. 

The story should emphasize the educational experience through the child's eyes and the cultural context of Finland. Weave together home, educational projects from the big picture and traditional subjects (math,science, language, etc...), and cultural aspects of Finland when telling your story.

You team is to select a specific location in Finland and assume the children listed above attend the same school. 

Final Format

This entry will be updated in the near future in regards to the final outcome format for all of the above requirements. Technical specifications and other information will be discussed in class on Friday during the squarespace workshop and posted by the beginning of class Monday, August 30. 

Be prepared to submit your work in two formats, both digital, one on squarespace and one in PDF. This is not to dictate the use of the computer to generate work, please hand sketch and use other non-digital means when you feel it is appropriate, but make sure you can scan, photograph, or transform the information into a digital format for final presentation and submission. 

 

Friday
Aug202010

web pages to look

National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2004

http://www.oph.fi/english/publications/2009/national_core_curricula_for_basic_education

Education, Finnish National Board of Education

http://www.oph.fi/english/education

This is Finland / facts about Finland

http://finland.fi/public/default.aspx?nodeid=41807&contentlan=2&culture=en-US

to me this a a description of how to process design work:

Google: A Technique for Producing Ideas, James Webb Young