I am working with Sean for the final project. We are making a functional record player using, copper vinyl, simple circuits with LED lights and motors, and sound module musical boxes. Sean came up with the concept and had asked me questions about the music box I used in one of my previous projects. Since I was considering working with a music box again we joined forces to do it together. Based on what we have prototyped so far, I think this will be a fairly ambitious project. We are aiming to create our record out of copper, which will spin with a motor, and will conduct to start the sound. This record will also have a funky Side A and Side B, triggering two different original songs, by the hit new group “Viking Funeral”. I am really excited for this project because I think Sean and I both have different strengths that will work well for this project: his developed knowledge of circuits, and of course humor, and my background in music, recording and understanding of the sound boxes.

This project builds on pervious knowledge of things focused on in an academic year. Our project is designed for a final project for students, where they would be challenged to develop an idea using multiple things we learned from different projects. I think it would be worthwhile because it is student led, allowing them to explore alternate project uses for what they learned, as well as explore ways these materials/ projects could be tied together.

As of right now for our project we have been looking at different types of sound boxes and our current idea involves one from the same company that I used, but rather than using the pull tab one we are using one that is activated by light. We did some experimentation in class to see if LED lights could activate it. We are also really excited to write some music together. I think it will be really fun to collaborate on that. Since there are other options students can pick from, I may need to have a deeper background in some of the materials they can pick from in order to be a better resource.

Hailey and I worked together on this project together. It took us some time to come up with an idea that we were both interested in. We decided on basing our game on someone who is interested in art deciding on a major. I feel like a lot of people who want to focus on visual arts struggle to make that decision because they are constantly told they won’t make it in life. It is something I questioned earlier on, but ultimately I am really excited to become a teacher and I know that I can still work as an artist too. We wanted to reflect on how people always have something to say on life decisions.

We started with compiling ideas for our decisions and then Hailey began drawing each of our sprites as I started to prototype some coding. Initially the sprites were drawn out for planning purposes because our original planning page was fairly messy, but we liked the designs and tried to figure our the best way to upload them. We tried using Photoshop, but we both had a hard time with it and decided to use Scratch. Hailey and I had both spent a while using the design features for our sprites for our last project so it made things a lot easier. As she uploaded those I had time to work on the background drawings since we could not be in Scratch at the same time. Hailey also did some prototyping by filling in the backgrounds as different colors to sort out the coding before the backgrounds were finished.

I feel that often people second guess their decisions in life, especially when deciding on a major, because you are essentially guiding yourself towards a career that you are expected to hold for the rest of your life. It is not an easy decision to be made. With every choice their was an option to rethink and go back. However, there were consequences in that if you went back and switched your major, you would end up with less money at the end. We wanted to make sure that each outcome involved art somehow to show that your decisions do not have to limit the things you enjoy.

I added a song that I recorded on my guitar. Then I added my voice over top as the comments coming from outsiders. I tried to keep them as accurate as possible to how people often respond. I also really wanted to apply our GIF project to this and so I tried adding that but ended up having to add the backdrops and code them to look like GIFS because scratch does not allow that.

Something I learned by working with a partner, was timing our work to meet the limitations of Scratch. It was also interesting to learn how other people went about picking their major.

1. How does this relate (or not) to your prior experience of art and art ed?
2. How might you apply this in your classroom?

I don’t feel like in terms of technology aspects this related to prior experiences. STEAM was not something at all used when I was in high school. I also think it is interested that I have had prior experience learning Scratch in middle school, but was never asked to use my own art or create my own sounds. I think it would have been fun to be able to expand this way.

I don’t feel I would use this in my classroom, at least not as a partner project because of the way Scratch is set up. I think also the way we were forced to distribute the work gave all of us different experiences. I think Scratch also came with more limitations among that, but I do think it was worthwhile to learn basic coding.

Creative (and Squishy) Circuits (pg. 125)

I chose this chapter because I have a bit of a background in ceramics and I find the idea of clay/ dough as a material that is malleable really cool. When it comes to ceramics many peoples goal is to push past that quality of the material and be as controlled as possible. It would be fun to explore malleability of art with students. I was fascinated by the dough being either insulating and conductive. I initially thought the project was using regular play dough and using normal circuit supplies. I would love to learn how the dough is created and works.

Confessions of a Maker Educator (pg. 96)

I liked this chapter because it was about a teacher teaching about technology without having an education background in STEAM or even art.  I like this class, but I sometimes wonder if these are all things I would be comfortable teaching about. It was interesting to read about this teachers experiences of wanting to try new things and the excitement the kids had from it. This chapter also included how parents and administration responded to the ideas as well. I think something worthwhile she wrote too was “If I’m bored, my students have to be feeling similarly.” In the times I have worked with kids and even adults, if you are not excited about the things you are talking about, they will usually have the same energy you do and it makes it much harder to engage students. You have to be able to give them a reason to care.

Biomimicry (pg. 166)

I picked this chapter because I personally love nature and I think it is something good to base assignments on since everyone has access to nature. It relates to art education in that it applies the design thinking process. Students are asked to brainstorm, prototype and execute their projects considering aesthetics for their invention. This is a project that can be very open ended that students can really explore ideas with nature and can be expanded to include more complicated ideas for older students. I am not sure about the kind of inventions I would expect to see, but I think this project would be a good way to talk about sculptures and form. My senior year of high school I made a multimedia tree out of ceramics, wire and glass. I think it would be fun to focus more in a sculptural direction and look into light systems, 3D printing or any other STEM related materials.