ARE316 FINAL

1. The most significant show and tell in my opinion was Hali's Coding Academy show and tell.  I have no experience whatsoever in coding and it was not really offered at my high school.  I feel as though this is something vital that we need to learn in this day and age and it helped me understand the idea of "digital literacy" better.  The sites Hali provided seemed fun and easy to use and I plan to explore them and try to learn from them over the summer.  I have seen so many of my former teachers assigned courses that they have no idea how to teach, so I hope that in becoming more fluent in digital literacy, I might be able to better prepare myself for anything to come.  I believe that it could be fun to try to do a coding project in the classroom and after exploring these sites more, I hope I will have a better understanding of the limitations of coding and the possibilities of what we can do with it.  I believe knowing how to code is necessary for children today and it is better for them to learn it earlier rather than later.  I wish that I was taught a little about it in my required computer science classes in middle school instead of merely learning how to type faster.

2. Two readings that I think were important to this course were Gill 2009 and Kellner & Share 2005.  In Gill's essay he wrote:  "Games Generation workers rarely even think of reading a manual.  They'll just play with the software, hitting every key if necessary, until they figure it out."  This quote really made me evaluate what I wanted my teaching style to be like.  I realized that my lessons were too instructional based and did not contain enough free thinking and exploration for students to discover solutions on their own.  It also made me look at my own life and my stubborn refusal to look at instructions or manuals when I try to fix things or put them back together.  I also have to say that I loved this reading's positive look at how video games effect children's digital literacy.  Everything in the news always seems to discuss how violent video games are and how violent our children are becoming as a result of this exposure.  For Gill to actually say that scholars believe video games skills and abilities can transfer to other computer skills, I couldn't be happier.  This brings me back to this idea of skill acquired knowledge that I want my future classrooms to based around instead of lectures and demos.  This reading inspired me to make my 3D prosthetic project based on a design I saw in Assassin's Creed.  I modeled my design off of the hidden blade worn by Ezio Auditore in AC2 because I liked the sturdy design and I thought that it had the potential to be a very sleek and elegant design.  I also thought that the arm attachment offered more control than a finger attachment and the user would be able to put more pressure on it that one tiny little finger.

The second reading, Kellner & Share 2005, was equally important in its message to us as future educators.  In the reading it said, "Further, a student-centered, bottom-up approach is necessary for a standpoint analysis to come from the student's own culture, knowledge, and experiences."  I have seen this concept in effect in this course since day one.  All of the projects were centered around us coming up with our own solutions and working off of our past experiences.  Most projects were left very open ended for this particular reason as well.  This course was not about a professor lecturing us for hours on end.  Instead it focused on the students and how we can improve as artists, students, and future educators.  I have always worked off of my own knowledge, culture and experiences in this course - as evident in all of my projects and designs.  As said previously, I designed my prosthetic based on my favorite video game and I also designed my 3D lesson plan (the 3D CO2 race cars) based on a lesson I was taught in my middle school woodshop class.  My videos featured my roommates and their phone/technology addictions, my love for oil pastels (which I use in the majority of my artwork), and an awesome Irish Dance video since that is the culture I most strongly connect to and identify with.  For my last project, I helped come up with the kiosk design - which was based off of my Girl Scout Silver Award project (2 posts down if you haven't read about it already) and my experiences as flier designer and PR person for my dance/art/music team, FOCUS.  My final lesson plan, as said in other posts as well, was created because of all of the problems I see in my own community and my desire to fix them.  I think that by using this student-based approach, it helped us become more engaged in the class and its curriculum and I cannot wait to create more projects, videos, and lesson plans like the ones I made in this class.  This reading stressed students' need to desconstruct media and learn how to create their own and I hope I have become better able to do so as a result of this course.

3.  I absolutely loved every project we did in this class, so it's impossible for me to pick a favorite.  I loved working collaboratively in a group and think of ways to improve campus life for the community.  I also enjoyed learning about and using 3D printers and I think they are the coolest things ever.  I hope to take a digital design and fabrication course in the future here just so I can learn more.  However, if I had to choose the most influential project, it would have to be the video cluster.  That project introduced me to the laid-back atmosphere in this class, which was the complete opposite of the graphic design course I took last semester.  That class had such specific instructions that when I first walked in this class, I felt lost.  I went from having no options and no say in the projects we did to having free reign in everything we did in this class.  The first project cluster helped me get used to this kind of class format again and helped me make decisions for myself instead of blindly following the instructor's suggestions and decisions.  The videos also made me realize how much talent the people on Youtube really have since it took so many tries for me to make the least awkward video possible.  I never knew it would be so hard to talk to a camera until I made my instructional 10 minute video.  Looking back, there are so many things I would have done differently in that and my documentary.  I would have made them more eye-catching and attention grabbing if I could.  I would also change the formats around so they told a story more clearly.  I follow a few teachers who make instructional art videos on youtube for their students and everyone else, and I watched AP Calculus and Chemistry videos religiously when preparing for my exams.  I found them to be a great help in bridging the gap between classroom learning and my time at home.  These videos are essential in today's society as a way to take learning outside of the classroom and make it a continuous project.  This skill is definitely one I should work on for the future as it could help me in my career and just my overall sense of confidence.  For being such a horrible instructional video, I never imagined it would get so many comments and views on youtube.   While my Irish dance video only has 82 views to date, my oil pastel tutorial has 1,069 views and 21 likes.  I even received one comment giving me advice on other brands of oil pastels to try.  I think this is a great way for artists to connect to one another and give each other support and advice, so I hope to use my channel more for these types of tutorials (and maybe a few dance videos) in the future.

One final update on my Tinkercad 3D printing prosthetic

I know I finished my Tinkercad project a long time ago, but I still want to give you one final update.  Since I have to move out of my room tomorrow, I'm afraid my final project is already at my house, probably in storage.  So sadly, all I can show you is my final design:

https://tinkercad.com/things/bwhxApZD3iR

As you can see, I made the base of the design taller to better accommodate pens and eventually, I got rid of the rods altogether since they weren't printing out properly.  Instead, I used metal rods of about the same size that I took from an old car set my brother had.  I attached it to my arm with velcro wraps that I bought in A.C.Moore and I took the spring from my pen and attached it to the switch.  Sadly, I still needed to make adjustments for it to work properly, but it printed out in this awesome bright red color, so I can't be too disappointed in the way it turned out.

I could have printed it out a final time, but instead of that, I asked my little brother, who's a high school junior, what he wanted me to print for him.  I showed him Thingiverse and eventually, after hours of looking, he decided he wanted this:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:22115

A Squirrel Guardian that he only picked because it had a cool name and he hoped it would bring him luck on his AP exams.  So despite my confusion, I printed it anyway.  Surprisingly, it turned out far better than I could have possibly imagined.  We had it printed in his favorite color: blue, and it stands at about 3 inches high.  Here's a picture of the finished product- the perfect guardian squirrel:

Lesson Plan Possibilities- Turning Plans into Realities

So I've been thinking about ways my lesson plan described previously could extend outward and actually effect the community and I think I've found a possible solution.  I think that since it is supposed to be taught at the high school level, it would be a perfect way to get any boy scouts or girl scouts to start thinking about their Eagle Project/Gold/Silver Award Projects.  Sadly, I never received my Gold Award due to some unforeseen circumstances in my troop during my senior year, but I did manage to get my silver and bronze awards.   For my silver award project, my troop and I updated and redesigned part of Bower Park:
http://pleasantvalley-ny.gov/community/parks/bower-park/

I was responsible for mapping out the entire park and trails and the rest of my troop made trail signs and a kiosk for the map and information about the trails.  I lived near this park for years and never even knew it existed until we started this project.  It helped me look at my community with a more critical eye of how we can make the most out of what we already have.  The park when we first visited was spacious enough and had plenty of trails, but they were hard to follow and left hikers confused on what direction to go.  After plenty of town hall meetings and setbacks, we were finally able to make our vision a reality and our project brought attention to the park.  Though it is highly unlikely my student's projects will ever come to fruition, I still want to open up the conversation of how to make the community better and maybe someday, we can make that happen.

Lesson Plan Background

So today I posted my final lesson plan for the class (Hooray!) For my lesson, I decided to do a 3D digital design project in which students choose a space within their community they think needs improvements and then redesign it to better serve their community.

My initial inspiration for this project came from a recent trip back home (30 minutes away).  I went to the Poughkeepsie Galleria and then went to the Christmas Tree Shop in the South Hills Mall Plaza.  I have so many fond memories of the South Hills Mall, but now it resembles something closer to a ghost town.  The parking lot for it is almost as big as the mall itself, yet there are lots that have not been filled in 10 years or more.  Whenever I visit the plaza, I always think of what that parking lot could be changed into - like a park or a garden for the community.  I think of the same thing when I pass this one site on my way home from Red Oaks Mill.  It used to be a lawn and garden center, like Adams, and every Christmas they would put a giant inflatable snowman on top of the roof so you could see it from the road as you passed by.  It's probably been abandoned for at least 10 years now and through the years, I've watched the building collapse and all of the other businesses in that area seemed to disappear along with it. The overgrown lot is still for sale, but no one wants it.  I would love to see something done with it and I believe this is a growing problem in cities around the world, not just here.

Finally Wrapping Things Up

I'm so glad to be finally done with that group project!  I wish we did it earlier in the semester, but my group managed to finish strong and come up with a great idea and a fantastic presentation.  I also have to say that I grew to like my role in the project as well.  I started out thinking Research Director was just a filler role with little importance, but I think the work I did really helped shape our project.  I experimented with the kiosk in the welcome center to get an idea of how it worked, and that changed our orientation of the Corkboard from a vertical plane to an inclined one.  I also did my own "user testing" experiments on my roommates.  They gave me a lot of useful feedback, but were mainly disappointed that the project was not intended for actual use.  Looking around now, I really do wish we could have something, if not a kiosk than at least an app to tell us what's going on.  I passed two concerts/festivals at my school in the past week and not one of my friends knew about them ahead of time.
As the PR person and newly elected Art Coordinator of FOCUS (my awesome club), I realize the difficulty in advertising for an event.  I designed the FOCUS posters seen across campus and tried to make them as eye-catching and colorful as possible.  Sadly, as seen in our video presentation, that was not enough to make them noticeable.  The wind kept blowing and tearing our fliers and it curled them up so no one could read them.  Also, some sorority kept putting their fliers over ours.  Our app/kiosk would stop those incidents and interferences from happening altogether, which is why I believe it is so necessary.  My team ended up going door to door handing out fliers and we even stood outside of Oscars the night before our show to pass out more.  Luckily, our show was a success and it had a great turnout, but think of how easy it would have been if we could just send a jpeg to the SA and they could put it up on the Corkboard.  An app/kiosk like that would make our lives so much easier, and I could focus on making the flier look pretty instead of trying to jam as much information as possible on it.

Overall, I'm glad that this was our final project.  I liked working in a group and I am so thankful I was put in an excellent group with amazing people.  I am generally a quiet person, so I'm glad I wasn't paired with someone loud and bossy who would drown out me and my ideas.  I did try to speak up more with this project and I think that became easier as I got to know everyone in the group.  This was a great opportunity to see how the graphic design BFA students work and I loved seeing how they could push our ideas into physical designs.