Blogging In the classroom.

I could use my blog to have students research and discuss Art Aesthetics, Art History, Creativity, Culture and Production. My blog could provide a means for an open discussion with a variety of opinions in regards to all aspects of the subject Art. Through the use of the blog students could discuss and learn what other students think about a piece of Art. As the instructor I could post the name of a piece of Art and the artist who created the Art. I could post the first blog ask the students to respond, describing first the physical aspects of the Art how the Art makes them feel and also why the students think the artist created the art. Was it shock factor? Does the Art have a message? Did the artist create the Art for his or her own pleasure?

When teaching the production of Art--hands on where the students are actually creating Art a blog would not fit. Computers in production Art rooms are difficult to manage, let alone keep clean. Students would spend more time on the computer than creating a piece of Art that is not in the digital form.

I can see the use of blogs to help in converting a part of the Art curriculum that is many times left out because of time. When time is short, the parts of the Art curriculum that are always left out are the Art History and Aesthetics. Students could be given the name of a piece of Art and look at it on the Internet. Then they could trace the history and discuss the aesthetics of that Art in a blog. This could be done during that down time when they are finished with an assignment in class or when they are in their Advisories. Responding to a blog could be a form of a pre-arranged homework assignment when students would be out of school for an extended period of time.

Sometimes it is not the technology that imposes the limitations but our own imaginations and ability to adapt technology to fit our needs.

A form of Art that does not easily support Web 2.0:

Teaching a variety of types of Art, it is difficult to focus on one specific area that would not lend itself to the use of blogging. However, I have students who do not like to ask questions in class about how to do things when creating any form of Art. I could post the Assignment in a blog, and students could ask questions throught the blog about how to use the materials or about how to do the assignment when it is not clear. In the classroom the procedure is that once I give the instructions, a student needs to ask three other students for the answer to a question before asking me in hopes that the other students will know the answer as well and that I have fully explained what it is they need to be doing. In a blog I could wait and let other students answer first and then reply to the blog to clear up any misconceptions.