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    Explore Art history in curious fashion with The Country Dog Gentlemen Travel to Extraordinary Worlds

    June 16, 2010

    BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

    Okay, when I first saw this website (and got a look at its name), I was thinking to myself, “wait…what?” But after taking the time to explore The Country Dog Gentlemen Travel to Extraordinary Worlds, I saw it offers a nice exploration of art history through the use of technology.

    In a nutshell, the site looks at famous works of art and the artists who created them through the lens of two really surreal-looking dogs. After you explore the artwork, there is an interactive area where you can create your own artworks based on the famous piece you just explored. It’s easy to navigate and would be appropriate for younger students to self explore.

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    Instructifeature — Digital posters: Composing with an online canvas

    April 12, 2010

    BY KEVIN HODGSON

    This article is also posted on LEARN NC.

    “Are we Glogging today?”

    It’s a typical New England morning and our sixth grade students are all dutifully lined up in the fading autumn sunshine beneath the trees. Most schools typically have a series of fire drills toward the start of the year, and my school is no exception. I keep an eye on my class and chat quietly with my colleague who teaches science down the hall. She is eyeing the truck of the fire chief warily.

    “I hope he doesn’t come through my room,” she whispers. I imagine a Bunsen burner left on or something. The fire officials come through random classrooms during fire drills, making sure that there are clear escape routes.

    “Why?”

    “The posters,” she says, “for the Scientific Method Fair. My room is covered with posters. Posters everywhere.”

    Luckily, the fire chief doesn’t come into our wing of the school. On the way back in, I glance into my colleague’s room. Sure enough, there are three-paneled cardboard posters everywhere as our 80 sixth-graders prepare for the upcoming science fair for our school and families. I wouldn’t want to see the look on the fire chief’s face if he came in there, but what could she do? Posters of student work have been part of classrooms for a long time and few things have the potential to make learning so visible as a well-constructed poster of information.

    What could she do? Well, she could move the entire project online, as I did a few weeks later, when each day, I was greeted at the door by students asking, “Are we Glogging today?”

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    Waybe: Bring your Google SketchUp creations to life

    March 25, 2010

    BY GRETCHEN SCHAEFER

    When it comes to students building models in class, why should they make the same old sugar cube igloo as everyone else when they can create paper replicas of the Capitol building? Creating a 3D model on the computer can be fun for aspiring architects and designers, but the fun doesn’t have to stop at the screen. Waybe is a program to bring your digital models to life using plain paper, tape, scissors, and Google.

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    Making movies with Stopmotion Animator

    March 15, 2010

    BY KEVIN HODGSON

    Stopmotion Animator is a freeware download that allows users of PC computers to use a webcam to easily and quickly create stop-motion movies. The software is set up to “grab” frames off the webcam, then gather them together into a single .AVI video file. Stopmotion Animator allows you to tweak some settings as well. For example, you can set the number of frames you want shot with each mouse click (a single frame per shot will make the video more fluid in motion but will take a lot longer to make, so I suggest that the setting be placed at three to five frames per shot).

    Image-editor Aviary now completely free

    February 15, 2010

    BY BILL FERRIS

    Aviary, the web-based image-editing suite, used to charge for some premium features like saving private files and allowing access to tutorials. I say “used to” because they’ve stopped charging money for it.

    This is a great development for art and design teachers looking for a viable alternative to Adobe Creative Suite. Aviary gives schools the ability to start graphic- and web-design classes without spending a fortune on the software.

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    Doodle 4 Google competition lets kids design Google logo

    February 9, 2010

    BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

    Looking to harness your student’s creative energy and possible have them win a college scholarship at the same time? Google is once again staging their Doodle 4 Google competition, letting K-12 students across the country take a crack at redesigning the iconic Google logo. We’ve plugged this competition in the past, but it’s worthy of a re-mention. The theme for this year’s competition is “If I Could Do Anything, I Would …” All of the details about how to register your school and submit entries can be found here.

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    Instructify’s top 10 posts of 2009

    December 22, 2009

    BY BILL FERRIS

    It’s that time of year again when lazy bloggers rehash old material under the guise of “Best of” lists rather than come up with new stuff. Instructify is no exception.

    Below are the top 10 Instructify posts of 2009. The rankings were determined via a combination of Google Analytics, retweets, and the capricious and arbitrary whims of the editor.

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    Teach history with these comic collections

    December 7, 2009

    BY BILL FERRIS

    Today we’ve got two resources dealing with comics for you:

    Before political cartoons devolved into crude drawings depicting a guy wearing a T-shirt labeled “TAXES” and smashing something with a hammer, they were elaborately drawn works of art, and often featured more text than some of today’s news stories. The Hale Scrapbook from The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library maintains an extensive collection of editorial cartoons from Gregorian England. Your students will be able to see the issues of the era as seen through the lenses of the doodlers of the day. Some seem kinda weird. Others show that times really haven’t changed that much.

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    Build an online portfolio with Carbonmade

    December 4, 2009

    BY BILL FERRIS

    You can use portfolios for everything from exhibiting student projects to creating a teaching portfolio. Back in my day, though, building a portfolio meant shelling out a few bucks for a three-ring binder and those plastic pageholders — and then I had to spend way more time than I budgeted for stuffing and organizing my work in the binder. Carbonmade takes the hassle out of the portfolio process by letting you or your students set up free, simple portfolios online.

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    Build Flash-based websites for free with Wix

    November 24, 2009

    BY BILL FERRIS

    Just because you don’t know web design doesn’t mean you can’t have a nice-looking website. Wix lets you create a Flash-based website from one of their many templates, or build a site from scratch. Here’s a sample site I made in about five minutes. Wix templates allow you to create sub-pages, upload photos, and incorporate animations into your design.

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    Build your own typefaces with FontStruct

    November 12, 2009

    BY BILL FERRIS

    As the perpetrator of some of the worst handwriting in a fifty mile radius, I’ve grown to love choosing the right font. The right typeface can produce the sort of artful lettering my hands can’t. Or so I thought. FontStruct lets me use my hands (by way of my mouse) to create my own fonts that I can download and use. Oh, okay, so it’s not exactly handwriting, but it’s the most legible thing my hands have ever produced.

    FontStruct works via a grid method. Simply fill in the grid with blocks of various shapes to form each letter. Some of the existing fonts on the site allow you to clone them, so you can get a better look at how the magic happens. There are a lot of shapes to try out on the grid, and creating an entire alphabet will take some time, but isn’t it worth it to have your own custom-built typeface?

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    ToonDoo makes creating comic strips easy

    October 6, 2009

    BY BILL FERRIS

    Just because all your students aren’t artists, that doesn’t mean they can’t create their own comic strips. ToonDoo makes it easy to create a comic by using stock characters and scenes. If kids would rather provide their own protagonists, ToonDoo makes that a snap, too.

    Students can choose from a variety of characters and locales. They can also create their own characters with the TraitR function (the name refers to character traits, as in “trait-er” rather than someone who will tattle on kids for cutting in the lunch line). For more options, kids can use the DoodleR tool to draw directly on the comic panels, or import and manipulate images with the ImagineR function.

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    Kids can create movies, drawings and more with Kerpoof

    September 25, 2009

    BY BILL FERRIS

    Many years ago, Walt Disney drew a little cartoon mouse who in turn built a theme park with his own four-fingered hands. Or something. Today, your elementary students can create cartoons of their own, as well as stories, drawings, cards and more at Kerpoof, an online creativity site brought to you by Disney.

    Kerpoof gets kids creating with a simple interface that has a surprising amount of options. The movie section is particularly impressive — you can have several characters onscreen at once, and direct their movement, actions and speech. Compared to online animation tool Xtranormal, Kerpoof gives you far more control over your characters — Xtranormal’s free version only allows two characters, and they can’t walk around. However, Kerpoof doesn’t allow you to switch camera angles, nor do the characters have voice simulation (which may be a positive, depending on your point of view). (more…)

    Five great online tools for art teachers

    August 6, 2009

    BY BILL FERRIS

    As school budgets dwindle and schools focus on high-stakes testing in core subjects, some schools see art programs as the go-to budgets to slash. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools and projects out there for art teachers that don’t cost a dime. The following are five of Instructify’s favorite free tools for art teachers.

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    Grant watch: Apply for these upcoming educational grants

    July 22, 2009

    Grant Wrangler logoBY BILL FERRIS

    Check out these upcoming educational grants, as listed on Grant Wrangler.

    Last minute:

    Gladys Marinelli Coccia Awards — Deadline August 1
    This award recognizes young (14 to 17-year-old) female social entrepreneurs who start enterprises for the common good. The winner receives $2,000 for the enterprise, travel, and access to social enterprise resources from Youth Service America.

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