Ugly Sweater Skating Party!

Phoenix winters do not include snow, so I try to give kids a little taste of building a snowman, ice skating, and ugly sweaters. Sure, the building task is the main skill, but we do it in a fun way. Most of the kids were able to line up the spheres easily, but the face is actually quite difficult to assemble. (See Animoto below)

DoubleView Silhouette Portraits

Jr. High students created a double view portrait by first taking a front view and a side view of each other. They cleared out the backgrounds, resized the images, and tried to line up the features on the side view with the front view. They selected a specific portion of the side view and deleted the silhouette from the front view creating the bizarre look of the portrait. After that they added a layer with either a gradient or photo as a background for their portrait. Many digital tools and skills were used to create these pieces. (See Animoto below)

Adding Warhol Projects to Mini Galleries

Apologies for the audio. My students get very enthusiastic as they are working on the grid. As they complete their Warhol projects in Gimp, they will upload them to the Jokaydia Grid and place them in their galleries.
They are still struggling with the design principle of unity and some of the galleries look more like mini garage sales, but in time they will become more unified in style.
At the Jr. High age, you need to give students some flexibility in working so they can play around with textures and shapes. An aesthetic sensibility is years in the making and these students are really just beginning to form their own artistic choices.

More Mini Gallery Work

Some of the students have a small sitting area for their gallery while others have not been as productive.

Mini Galleries

Students put their names on the gallery of their choice and are now creating seating for their space. They are to put any digital or photos of real work into the galleries such as Wordles or Warhol projects.

Newbies 2012!

A new batch of avatars is the first class to be using the Jokaydia Grid. Their first ojective on the grid was to create a prim with the Bling texture they created using Gimp and placing it in the outer corner of their room as a name plate. They are wearing t-shirts created from a Gimp template to which they applied a layer with their name design. They will also upload their WORDLE and create furniture for their mini gallery/lounge area. This video was recorded using SMART Recorder.

Gearing up for a Great School Year!

School starts soon and I can't wait for my students to explore the Jokaydia Grid!

Starting Over...Again

This coming school year will find me starting over for the 3rd time since I began working in the virtual world. This time I am moving to the Jokaydia Grid and looking forward to continuing life on the grid. Chris Hart has been so helpful and I spent my summer with another blank island. I built a two story house from scratch and while I was in Wisconsin, I built a small gallery to house all my mother's paintings. I even got her to try out an avatar and she's 85! I am happy that even though the Reaction Grid is no longer available, I have a place to take my students. It meant setting up yet another class of avatars, but by now I was used to it!

Learning Art History Virtually

This was another group of younger children using the avatars. One of the reasons I enjoyed the Reaction Grid so much is because it allowed for much younger students. The teen grid was 13 to 17, which was fine for most 8th graders, but here even primary students could experience the virtual world. They knew a few artists and you can see them run over to the Mondrian. (See video below)
 

Artistopoly on the RG

Kindergarten through 2nd Grade got a chance to use the student avatars decked out in artwork t-shirts and play recognition games using the Artistopoly gameboard I modified from Monopoly. They had an excellent time running to find "The Scream" or "The Mona Lisa." (See Animoto below)

Working in the Math Nets Sandbox

Third and fourth grade students need to work on math nets as part of their math curriculum and since I teach form and shape in art, I was asked to help teach this concept. I created special interactive SMART Notebook activities and we also did some color theory related paper/pencil activities. Today the kids got an introduction to the Reaction Grid and the sandbox I created for them. Next time we will create prims to match the nets on the building platforms.Virtual world building tools are perfect for these spatial concepts. (See video below)

 

Ugly Sweater Party on the Reaction Grid!

For our last class of the semester all avatars got a set of 4 ugly holiday sweaters, a Santa hat, and a pair of skates with a skating animation. Students had to use the snipping tool, save pics to their folder and then put them on their Prezis. Here are the photos that got taken. Our sim crashed mid-party, but Reaction Grid gurus Chris Hart and Kyle Gomboy were ready to help us out. We love working and playing on the Reaction Grid! (See video below)

Getting in the Holiday Mood on the Reaction Grid

Junior High Students in Ms. Strehlow's Digital Art Elective continue to work on final Reaction Grid projects but with a twist. Holiday textures and Gingerbread Houses are making an appearance along with the houses and rooms being designed. One student is working hard on a replica of a WWII bomber plane. (See video below)

Beach Umbrella Challenge

This was a very tricky engineering project in the guise of a beach umbrella. Very few students were capable of following all the directions and creating the umbrella, but those who did showed me that they could go on to high school and college with some major building skills.

Chair Building Challenge

Students in some classes needed much more structure for many logistical reasons. I created building areas that were large but contained with invisible barriers to prevent students from wandering off. The chair challenge would show me who could be trusted to stay focused and given more privileges. (See video below) 

Getting Started on the Grid Again

Every new school year I have the fun of teaching newbies how to rez prims (create primitive shapes from their avatar building menu) and turn those into furniture, houses, and more. It is a slightly chaotic but fun experience for everyone. I go in after class to clean up the mess, but I love having an environment like this where kids can build to their hearts content. It's like a never ending set of Legos! (See video below)

The Chess Challenge

Here are some of the more completed assignments done by Jr. High but also including some of the latest pieces done by a small group of 5th graders

Jacob's Chess Set

Jacob is doing independent work on the Reaction Grid because he was in band and could not sign up for the regular Reaction Grid class and completed the chess set in less than two class periods! Way to go Jacob! He doesn't have the company of other avatars so he is very focused on the work. Working in a virtual world is also a social environment. Luckily Jacob had a chance to experience that in a previous class.

Chess Set Challenge

Students are now working with Rokuro to create a sculpted prim chess set on the Reaction Grid after finishing their new t-shirt designs. Rokuro is a virtual lathe, so the students also learned what a lathe does in real life. (See video below)

Rokuro and Tokoroten = Lathe and Extruder for Sculpted Prims

We have been so busy creating sculpted prims using the open source programs Rokuro and Tokoroten that I haven't captured any of the progress on the floor plans. Now we are using Gimp to create graphics with transparent backgrounds to create plants and animals. After that we are going to design t-shirts for our avatars using Robin Wood's templates. (See video below)