Midway

Class began with the Pedagogy of Listening (as per Reggio Emilia):

I have had many conversations with peers at Pratt that revolved around the idea that whomever I spoke with took as much away from the dialog with their classmates, as was offered by the professor during class-time. The concept of The Pedagogy of Listening is the concept of group learning. It also highlights the belief (that I have developed while at Pratt) that teaching is learning, and we are learning along with our students as much as they are learning from us, and/or each other.

This was somewhat helpful to me during our critique of the letter animations, despite or because I did not have one at class time. What we learned from each other were the different ways to approach the project and the different programs that could be used. I think we might have all walked away thinking that their needed to be a little more variation to individualize our final pieces. The model of cooperative learning groups that has been an ongoing tool in our classroom, kept the critique focused and moving, with the evolving delineations of: a timer who timed three minutes per person to talk about his/her work, along with a critique leader and a note taker..... although, there might have been more fruitful dialog if there were more profound differences in the pieces. I found myself defaulting to the noticing of-and-talking about-the technology, and not using "art" language to talk about the "art".

The idea of music integration is a HUGE interest of mine, HUGE! I would love to speak more about ideas of how to incorporate music into lessons, or how to use it effectively in the classroom as a tool. As I believe that children growing up now are so used to the integration of the visual and auditory in their art and entertainment. Maybe also in regard to our conversation about presentation, and how to present with intent!

We got further into the topic of Dystopia for our graphic novels. We also meditated on the real-time project, the example of a graphic novel created by a 7th grader. We discussed the merits of someone like this particular student having the outlet of portraying violence, ruin, fear, and uncertainty through his drawings, through a creative act. I am interested in the design behind a lesson that is a controlled expression of violence. Only because of some of the things that I have heard students talking about, and what goes on in their lives.