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| Ideas
from Chicago and Detroit: |
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Murray-Wright
High School language teacher integrates assessment into
the French Culture Project. |
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Renaissance
High School art students develop design principles as
they iterate projects. |
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Chicago teacher assesses perspective drawing on paper and on the computer. |
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| Provide feedback during
projects
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In
the French Culture Web Page Project at Murray-Wright High
School, students research and present different aspects
of French culture using the Internet. The project helps
students learn about French language and culture by giving
them the opportunity to gather, analyze, and interpret
data; prepare a final product; and revise and edit their
work. |
| Assessment is embedded
in that students receive feedback and grades at the end
of each step. Students develop technology skills, including
Web-based research and presentation skills over the entire
spring semester. Teacher Gabriella Gui thought this would
be a fun project for students, so she purchased Adobe
PageMill software. Gui started using templates provided
through the IBM Reinventing Education project that support
posting quizzes, assignments, and grades. Gui would also
like the page to serve as a tool for communicating with
parents and keeping them up-to-date about what students
are working on. |
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| Help students
construct a sense of quality
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Renaissance
High School computer art teacher Oni Akilah teaches technology
skills within the context of overarching principles of
design. Students complete projects that not only demonstrate
mastery of Photoshop skills, but illustrate big ideas
of aesthetic design, as well. |
Students work toward developing
a "best design" that incorporates their own images and
demonstrates their skill in using the Photoshop functions
they've learned so far into an integrated design. For
example, they scan five photographs of themselves and
five photographs of different kinds of environments, and
use the layering and filtering tools to create their own
representation of the concept of "wilderness."
Akilah commented that technology allows students to create
more sophisticated works of art as they learn how to combine
different tools. At first, when they are using only the
layering tools, students' images are fairly simple, but
with each assignment, Akilah says she sees a "big jump"
in the quality of student work. For their final project,
she has students do three "final" versions of projects,
by having them complete a draft, scan it, and "take it
to the next level" three different times.
By April, each student has completed and matted both a
self-portrait and a piece that represents "wilderness."
In a recent year, Akilah entered nine of her students'
pieces in the Detroit Institute for the Arts annual student
art competition, and one student's self-portrait, depicting
four layers of identity, won an award. A second student
won an award for a documentary video about a trip that
33 history, English, and art students from Renaissance
had taken to retrace the march from Selma to Montgomery.
A part of this video aired on Black Entertainment Television
in the summer of 2000. |
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| Use technology as another way to assess student learning
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At
Best Practice High School, art teacher Aiko Boyce teaches
perspective drawing using both pencil and paper and computers.
She begins the unit with one-point perspective drawing
using pencil and paper for instruction and for the first
perspective drawing assignment. |
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two-point perspective drawing, Boyce assesses student
learning using both pencil and paper and computer assignments.
She schedules several class sessions in the computer lab
for students to complete a perspective drawing assignment
using ClarisWorks Paint software. Boyce says that the
use of the computer gives students who did not do well
on the first assignment a chance to show that the difficulty
was with the mechanics of drawing by hand; when they are
able to use the software to help them draw, some of these
students demonstrate that they do understand the concepts
of perspective drawing. Boyce says: "For some kids, I
think that they will find it is definitely easier and
faster to draw things on the computer, and that is fine
because these are the kids who need to have the sense
of being able to complete a task using either a computer
or paper and pencil." |
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