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Don't Drop Art: Redesign curiculum with web resources and technology by Marcia Meale [|Don't Drop Art]

The first slide talks about Losing Ground, and is that ever true with budget cuts and everything going on these days. Our school doesn't have an art teacher so we teach it ourselves. I do enjoy doing it, but I don't do real art enough justice. Organizing the instruction had some neat ideas of what to do to get some art and different art into each of the grade levels, such as discussing an artist or different themed projects. This would take a little time, but getting together on an inservice could align somewhat of an art curriculum. We have a neat book that we use to follow along with some art techniques. I also include crafty idea around the holidays. I never thought of doing artsy thing through the use of computers like this site also mentioned.

[|Practical Projects for Elementary Students] by Diane Taylor

These were some really awesome ideas that would really get the students motivated. On the second slide, it said that she does work with K-6 and as I was going through this I was thinking that these were some pretty tough assignments. Not until after I was doing viewing this slideshow did I see page 1 again and noticed that she's a gifted teacher. This was a site that had some activites to do that were project based learning. It talked about the different reasons for doing these projects and how beneficial these could be and the skills they would be using. One of the focuses was tapping into students interests, which is especially key to getting the most out of each student. This way students are free to choose from different topics to go in different ways that will motivate them. There were ideas of designing things from a toy store to a newspaper to an amusement park. Whichever way they wanted to go. For the older grades, which would be fun if I move up someday, they talked about designing a newspaper, creating a budget, a floor plan, an invention or a business. It would be awesome to see the thinking that could go into these projects, but like I said earlier, this may only work for a gifted program to get to that next level of thinking for all students to succeed.