Public Domain Videos for imovie practice

Here is a list of websites that have free download-able videos:

Internet Archive


Free Media Guide An additional list can be found on this website.

Happy viewing!

wiki sketch

In the spirit of this weeks techno-teach in I found some cool interactive arts websites that are wikis. It started when I found this website: Swarmsketch Swarmsketch allow viewers to add lines to a collective drawing. Viewers can also subtract lines. I mined the links of this page for some other cool stuff.

The Smaller Picture: lets the user add a white or black pixel to create a collective image.

PixelFest: Similar to the smaller picture, you can add a pixel as well as determine the color to create a collective image.

Pixel Group: Click anywhere to invert the color of a pixel. Others are doing the same, at the same time.

Global Mosaic: Create a mosaic with other folks.

cause you don't have enough blogs to read

20 top teacher blogs according to Scholastic Instructor...[for what its worth]



Scholastic Instructor Top 20

Art Room Showcase 2010: Space Organizing

I've spent a lot of time in art classrooms this semester. The thought of having my own classroom/art space makes me kind of anxious. I'm not much of a organizer/space designer (there will probably be some space aesthetic books on my summer reading list)which makes seeing different art classroom really important for me. I'm really liking this blog post on The Teaching Palette showcasing different art classrooms! Also, this totally feeds my renewed love affair with flikr. Plus the blog post has this really cool interactive photo widget that is fun to play with!

Art Room Showcase

Flickr as an aid to thesis

I was doing some searching on Flickr around mapping memory/cartography stuff and came across some really cool images. It was cool to link some classroom discussions to some thoughts on my thesis. I never really thought of flickr as an image research tool, but its just as an important tool for images as Art21 or other art search engines for teachers as well as for artist. Consequently, I don't assume to say that this is new info, there are a lot of folks out there that already know this stuff!

I really dig these three photos of maps. They were found in a group called Memory Maps.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com



connecting dots......

Maxine Greene and the Common Curriculum

It really is a great occurrence when connections are made totally by accident. I reading an article in the New York Times about a bipartisan push for a Common Curriculum. A common curriculum would basically ensure that students are learning the exact same things and the exact same times. Regardless of the state/communities local issues and needs.

The article states:

“We are well aware that this will require a sea change in the way that education in America is structured,” says a statement the group intends to release on Monday. But, it adds, attaining the goals laid out in the new common core standards “requires a clear road map in the form of rich, common curriculum content.”

“By ‘curriculum’ we mean a coherent, sequential set of guidelines in the core academic disciplines, specifying the content knowledge and skills that all students are expected to learn,” the statement said. “We do not mean performance standards, textbook offerings, daily lesson plans or rigid pedagogical prescriptions.”

The curricular guides “would account for about 50 to 60 percent of a school’s available academic time,” the statement says, with the rest added by local communities, districts and states.

While doing some research for my thesis I came across this quote in Maxine Greene's Releasing the Imagination: "Young people may have to deal with ecological disasters, floods, pollution, and unprecedented storms; they may have to cope some day with chemotherapy and life support decisions. Literacy in more than one medium will be required if people are to deal critically and intelligently with demagogues, call-in shows, mystifying ads, and new programs blended with varying degrees of entertainment"(Greene p.13).

First it should be said that I LOVE Maxine Greene. I think everything the woman says is profound! What she does in the quote about is to subtract the job/career/performance aspect out of education. And instead asks the question, who will young people learn to think about the shit life will throw at them? Are we preparing young people to be thinkers? To think for themselves? Are we preparing them to tackle the problems that will inevitably come with future life?