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)

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.

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!

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)