Bett show 2015

If you are really keen on putting more technology into your classroom this is the week for you.  Starting today at the international exhibition and conference centre ExCel, London. 

The website claims that bett is the world's biggest learning technology event, with 35,000 visitors and 30 years experience. As for me, I will be giving it a miss,  I need to come to terms with the teaching and technology I already have in front of me.

Teachers not gadgets

To follow on from my earlier blogposts 'The value of mobile technology...' and 'Barriers to the effective use of technology...'

"Spend on teachers not gadgets, says heads chief" (Garner, 2015: 17), reads today's education headline today in the Independent's bite-size newspaper 'I'.  It follows the blogpost of Russell Hobby, the National Association of Head Teachers general secretary. 

The central idea that Hobby puts forward is that with the current funding crisis there is insufficient funds to pay for teachers and all the latest technology.  Hobby goes on to make the point "Technology has no value in itself, only in relation to the problem it solves.  We need a reason, a goal, not a glossy brochure or shiny gadget." (Garner, 2015: 17).  

To find out more about Hobbies opinions go to his blog:

http://www.naht.org.uk/welcome/news-and-media/blogs/russell-hobby-general-secretary/

References

Garner, R. (2015) 'Spend on teachers not gadgets, says heads chief' p.17

Bibiography

Hobby, R. (2015) 'Tomorrows world looking ahead to the bett technology expo'.  Available at:

http://www.naht.org.uk/welcome/news-and-media/blogs/russell-hobby-general-secretary/tomorrows-world-looking-ahead-to-the-bett-technology-expo/ [Accessed: 20th January 2015]

Building a museum of museums on the web

Last week on my teaching placement I delivered the lesson: 'Painting Techniques - Impressionism and Post Impressionism'.  Within this I delivered a PowerPoint I had put together, to aid my explanation of these art movements and the major artists and artworks associated with them.  
The class was engaged, enjoyed the presentation, were able to discuss the art movement with me and name additional artists and artworks within the movement.

This was all fine but it had its limits.  When I gave a demonstration on the painting techniques of Monet and Van Gogh I was not able to show on the PowerPoint nor on bing, clear images of the brushstrokes of the artists featured in my lesson.  I have since found the Amit Sood TED talk 'Building a museum of museums on the web'.

This TED talk has inspired me to use the Google Art Project in future lessons https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project and to look for on-line art education resources.  Perhaps Amit's point that this is to supplement the experience of going to a museum rather than replicate the experience is true (Sood, 2011).  It could be a way of engaging young people into visiting museums and galleries. As for the point I made earlier about wanting to see brushstrokes of Impressionist artists, Amit has the answer: 
"What if you want to see the brushstrokes?  And what if you want to see how Van Gogh actually created a masterpiece? You zoom in. You really go in." (Sood, 2011). While this would not be possible on web images with thousands of pixels on Google Art Project with around 10 billion pixels you can

These images are of Van Gogh's famous 'The Starry Night', they are screenshots of zooming further and further into the painting.  This is amazing, new, unique and go further into the painting than what we would be able to see in a museum, further than we would ever see. This is a really brilliant teaching aid and one I will be definitely using with my class soon.

Reference

Sood, A. (2011) 'Building a museum of museums on the web'. From transcript available at: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/amit_sood_building_a_museum_of_museums_on_the_web/transcript?language=en. [Accessed: 2nd December 2014]

Bibliography

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project.