AI Morning Pages at Mugs

Saturday Morning, cool breeze outside, coffee in hand, and we begin the AI again.
Its been a couple of months but we seem to be ready to dive in...
so don't bother testing the water... pinch your nose and jump...

It seems that it would be easiest for me to be the daily scribe…
So I will…
And I am.

This morning begins surprisingly on time… all present (except for our sickly Renee) who is probably reading this at some point. A circle of laptops and a search for plugs… Morning Pages has begun….

We look at bit dorky in a coffee shop… we either are sharing ideas with the world or we are battling to the death on an online videogame battlefield… maybe Halo or another shoot-em-up game. I imagine if that were the case that somehow Rebecca would win. She seems the most shrewd and tactical. Also I also think that she would secretly enjoy it.

The Morning Pages prompts…

“Where are you in terms of project, blogging?”
“What do you need to move forward (books, resources, friendly feedback)?
“What’s one thing your Inquiry Group could help you with today?”

Follow the links to the personal blogs (on the right hand bar of this page) to see morning pages from the AI fellows answering these questions.

As we move on past morning pages, we are jumping into inquiry groups… to focus on help each other focus on our issues and questions we have come up with. Based on reading the posts from everyone, it seems that everyone is moving forward but, not surprisingly, a little slow at the beginning of the years. All of us seem to be hoping for the same thing… for this meeting to jumpstart our work this year.

"Ideation" and the pursuit of writing...

Last Friday my pre-service Art Education students started their practicum at the Lab School. One observation I made as I walked from room to room was the number of students who included a pre-writing or writing activity in their initial lesson plan. I talked with Dr. Patrick Fahey (he teaches another methods class that students take at the same time as the one I teach) to see if he had noticed this as well. I was pleasantly surprized to discover his observation had been the same as mine - we both observe our students in their practicum, they write the lesson plan for his class. He has long talked about the concept of "ideation" where students engage in brainstorming activities prior to the art-making process. Many times "ideation" is a writing or pre-writing activity which makes sense because we're talking about narratives in both applications, it just happens that one is literary and one is visual. His feeling was that the inclusion of the "ideation" process was a result of my reinforcing the writing in my class, which reinforces the same concept in his class. Interesting....

Also, I've posted the 50 word session description as well as the presentation outline on my blog.

Ya gotta love sticky note data!

Hellooooooo - hmmm, I hear a big echo out there. Not sure anyone is listening but I've always managed to do a pretty good job talking to myself, so here I go again.

Well I'm onto stage three in my project. Completing the pre-writing critical analysis hands-on activity was exciting. My students were fully engaged and seemed to do a good job. I haven't had time to sort through the data, but in completing the process I realize that this is a valuable art activity with easy accountability and opportunity for good group interaction. So far it appears to be a success - and one student got excited just because she loved the idea of using sticky notes!

Between one research geek and another

How exciting is this - actual students creating my research! Okay I admit it, I'm a research geek. This insight is based on the extraordinary rush I felt watching students complete my pre-assessment (more on this on my own blog). How goofy is that! Hopefully this excitement will carry over as I begin the arduous process of plowing through my data.

Preliminary sifting of data has unearthed little gems of information that pique my interest. Some of my favorite, and perhaps most inane bits of data that SURELY I'll be able to use SOMEWHERE include: how many minutes each student spent on the pre-assessment writing activity, the length of each writing sample (which doesn't necessarily reflect time), how many students I observed engaging in some type of pre-writing activity, and whether or not they completed a spell-check on their own. Can't wait to correlate this data with the student's self-evaluation of their writing skill, the number of college classes they listed that included a strong writing component and how well they 'perform' on the pre-assessment scoring rubric. Not to even mention the writing samples themselves.

So much data for just the pre-assessment, and the project itself doesn't start until next week! EEK! And I was concerned that I wouldn't have enough data!

Food for thought

Okay, I avoided blogging on Monday in the hope that any visitors to the blog would comment on the earlier blog to help me out in getting ready for school to start - but alas, that was not the case. Anyway in preparation for my fall class I've been reviewing back issues of Art Education to see which articles I need to assign students. I came across an article that needed a reread because it seemed so relevant. "Living the Questions: Technology-Infused Action Research in Art Education." How appropriate is this! At any rate it brought back vivid memories of the AI with several specific quotes - these made me think perhaps I'm not as far out of the loop as I've been thinking. Sara Wilson McKay made some of the same insights we/I did this summer...

"...what looks like learning in one context may not be the same learning in another."
"...live the questions of art education, particularly in designing a technology-infused action research project addressing these questions, because it is in such shared efforts that our endeavors can become meaningful."
"Art asks us to revise our view of the world"
"Question: are we all talking about the same thing?"
"...joining together to really overcome isolation in our work. Whether it is the perpetual state of being in the service of others, or simply the sheer numbers of student we see in a day, we rarely are afforded the opportunity to connect with each other."

The last quote is most significant for me. My greatest enthusiasm for the CSUWPAI came from thinking about no longer working in isolation - hopefully fall will return structure to bring everyone together again and our network of teacher researchers will reconnect.

Okay, time for step one

Well it seems that time is winding down and our projects are really on the horizon. I feel like my head is in the clouds but I'd like to know my feet are firmly on the ground. Although there is a pre-conference meeting on Saturday, September 19th, I'm still feeling a little shaky on my pre-assessment evaluation and would love to get together with anyone else interested in checking for a firm foundation that will help get the research off on the right foot.

So - if you're out there and interested please let me know - I'm up for any input I can get.

And the insights continue

Oh my gosh – what a revelation! This morning I completed the research project writing activity, and boy did I learn volumes! First I know I need to collect data on how long students write. My “hunch” is that less time will be spent doing the pre-assessment writing than the final writing. I was surprized at how much writing I wanted to do. Most of the time it seems students are at a loss for information to include (at least the junior high kiddos). But I had soooo much information that it was a real struggle to condense everything into the 60 minutes I allotted for the activity.

When I do this with my students I will make note of how much time each of them spend writing both the pre-assessment and final. I found I could have gone many different directions with what I had to say, so the organization may suffer at the expense of details and inference (I’ll get to this in a minute). I’d REALLY appreciate if you have time to do a quick read on the critical analysis I completed and let me know if it seems organized, you can find it on my blog (it is rather lengthy, sorry).

What excites me about the process is the way it made me THINK ABOUT THE ART WORK! Wow. There were numerous ideas that I was able to infer from my pre-writing. Things about the artist and artwork that I’m intrigued with and wanted to address more fully. Ways in which the artist “might” have been going that I hadn’t thought of before. My hope now is that my students will come to the same conclusion. Because if they do, then this writing activity is about MORE THAN JUST WRITING. It will be about the process of looking at art. Hmmmm, it’s been a busy morning at my desk and in my brain.