Day 4: Interviews and Themes

Today we conducted mini group interviews and got a lot of great information from all the students.
Their job was to decide on a final topic for their Thematic Album.

Requirements for Thematic Album: This album represents a topic of your choice. Choose something you are passionate about. There must be 10 photos for the final album, but please take more pictures during the process. It will be better to have more to choose from for your presentation. Each student will develop an artist statement describing their album and what it means to them. Presentations will be quick, no more than 3 minutes each. Think of a way that will make your presentation unique and representing of your album. Students are free to create presentation using any form of media (iMovie, PowerPoint, Poster with printed images, display board, mixed media...etc)

1.    Create a set

a.     Click the YOU tab

b.     Scroll down and click ORGANIZE

c.      Click the SET tab

d.     Click CREATE YOUR OWN SET

e.     Title the album and start adding photos

2.    Upload your thematic album photos to this SET

·      Each photo should have at least 3 tags

3.     Begin developing an artist statement for your album

Questions to help get you started:

·  Why did you choose this topic?

·      What do the photos have in common?

·      Do you focus on anything specific you want the photos to convey?

4.    Presentation

Questions to help get you started:

·      How do you want to present your photos to the class?

·      How will your presentation stand out?

·      What will be the best way to organize the photos for your class to understand theme?

5.    Find more inspiration

Do your thematic album photos seem repetitive? Are the subjects in your photo very similar?

a.     Search through Flickr for photos with the same tags

b.     Find inspiration from other artists

c.      Take more photos for your album. Experiment by finding different subjects to photograph. Find similar textures, compositions, colors to photograph. Develop a diverse thematic album.

Please come into class ready to present. If you are presenting and need the computer/projector have a flash drive or file of sorts ready to open in class. 

Save the file as "DJart(title of thematic album)"

Have an artist statement (around 150 words)

Due to confusion, students were also given an extension for the Linked Inspiration Assignment

Requirements: This assignment allows students to connect their photos through tags. You share photos on Flickr, the next step is to connect two people together. Take inspiration from a photo in the group tagged “linkedinspiration.” After taking a new photo post to the group and tag the person that inspired you as well as “linkedinspiration” and 3 other words that relate to the photo. 

1. Go to the group DJart

2. Search "linkedinspiration"

3. Choose one photo as inspiration

4. Go out and take a photograph

5. Come back and upload it to the group. Tag this photo "linkedinspiration" and at least 2 other tags/words

    Add the artist of the original photo that inspired you

6. Repeat steps 1-5 two more times. 

You will have uploaded only 3 pictures for this project. 

Survey

In class survey. Please copy and paste this link into the address bar.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HMMLNR8

Day 3: Linking Photographs

In today's session, students practiced linking images together through tags and found inspiration from one another. Some students had difficulties understanding how to tag photos or properly upload, but it is important to understand that with technology, comes challenges. We need to adapt to new situations such as this study and try to grow as learners.  Here's how our linking went today!

Inspiration Photo
Tagged: Venice-Nature-Sea

Tagged: Italy-vespa-mountains-seaside

Tagged: Mountains

Tagged:yellow-sun-scooter-summer

Tagged: sun-sea-sunrise-Indonesia

Do you see the connections made between the tags and these photos? The main point of Flickr as a social media is to share photos and experiences. By uploading photos and linking images with similar tags and each others names, artists are able to see the results of people they inspire. It can be a rewarding experience knowing someone took a beautiful picture and you had given them the idea.

Homework for this FRIDAY:

1. Linked Inspiration Assignment

     a. Go to the group pool photos. Search "linkedinspiration"

This will show you the photos the class has posted for this weeks assignment. 

     b. Take a look and see which photos inspire you. Based off the photo you choose, go out and take a    picture. 

     c. Upload picture to the group. Tag "linkedinspiration" and create other tags of your own. Add the name of the person who inspired you to the photo as well. 

     d. See if there are new pictures posted and repeat steps b and c. You should upload at least 2 different photos.

2. Thematic Album 

     a. Think of a theme you want to explore for your thematic album. 

     b. Take at least 3 photos that can be used for your album.
     c. Create a SET on your Flickr account. This is a folder for specific photos.

         TO DO THIS:

• Click the YOU tab
• Scroll down and click ORGANIZE
• Click the SET tab
• Click CREATE YOUR OWN SET
• Title the album and start adding photos

Day 2: Changing to Flickr

NOTICE FOR STUDENTS:Please log into your email used to sign up for Flickr and verify your email. Once you've done this you should be able to find me (melindadigiovanna@gmail.com) and add me as a contact. This will also allow me to add you to the group (DJart) 

After being informed Instagrille (a PC version of Instagram) was not allowed on school computers, the study had to take a turn to use a more accessible site Flickr.
This gives students the same opportunities to share photos, but they are allowed to use it in the classroom.
Today, we all created accounts and began the next stage of the study. Students started searching on Flickr for images linked together with "tags." By tagging images, artists allow other members of the site to find their photo by searching tagged phrases.
Logging onto computers and creating accounts ended up being a bit time consuming than expected. But, students successfully started creating Photo Clusters of tags of their choice.

How do you make a Photo Cluster?
1. Students began by searching a word of their choice (ex. love, connect, nature)
2. After finding an image they liked, students would save this image to photoshop, word document, or powerpoint. They would continue to search this tag until they found at least 4 related photographs.
3. All photos found from the first tag are joined together on one document and flattened to create one final image. This is to be saved as the tag name (love, connect, nature)
4. When conducting a search for these images, photos can be tagged with multiple words or phrases. It is the students job to then find new tags that spark interest. They will often be related to the first tag (ex. heart, share, forest). After finding a second tag, students repeat steps 2 and 3.

After compiling images for 3 different tagged phrases, students will save their clusters and share them to the group on Flickr.

Here they can like each others work by leaving comments, starring images as their favorites, or adding new tags.

Homework:
1. Finish 3 clusters and upload to Flickr
2. Verify account and add melindadigiovanna@gmail.com as a contact
3. Take multiple photos of nature and tag appropriately. Add photos to group and respond to classmates work if any

Day One: Instagram Activities

This study is taking place to observe students working with social media website Instagram. We will see how using social media in the art room can relate to a participatory culture. Each week will build upon themes from the last and participants will be asked to take photographs to depict these topics.

On our first day, the project was introduced. Students came into a rearranged classroom and participated in a series of activities. We began with photos on Instagram taken from users across the world. Students were presented with the photos below.

#culture

#connect

After seeing the clusters of images, they were asked to write down any hashtags  they could think of relating to these photos. We found consistency in the theme when multiple students recorded similar hashtags. 

This activity allowed students to see how hashtags can link images together and can be represented differently by users with various backgrounds. Instagram and this form of social media can connect people from all over the world. It is a special application that can be accessed on many different smart phones and tablets.

The next activity involved a more hands on approach. Students with access to Instagram shared their phones with classmates to search the site for images. We began with the concept of connection. After searching #connect, one student drew a symbol inspiring others to search for different #hashtags. In the end, there were similar symbols and you could see the path of inspiration taken from the original drawing. 

Final drawings

You can see students working with charcoal attached to a bamboo stick. This allowed all participants to be on the same level. No student was at an advantage having more drawing abilities than their peers. This gave them the opportunity to share their thoughts through drawing, something they may have not done before. 

We move into next week with the theme Nature. Students will take photos and experiment with what Instagram has to offer.

Welcome

Welcome to our class blog!
I will be updating this blog after we meet each week. You can check in on our progress and comment with ideas or remarks on the study.
Enjoy