Category Archives: Class Asignments

Posted on
by

So, it is finally here, the last day of class is tomorrow and I have finished my last project and written up my lesson plan. Funny that I keep going back to add details or change small things about my Scratch project, as though I can never come back to it after the assignment is due. I think this lesson plan may be something I actually use, at least the notebook part, I do not know how I would get that many laptops for a camp lesson. I really enjoyed working on this project and am glad to be able to have three full prototypes each Scratch program paired with a notebook. I had intended to only write out the prototype steps for two of the projects, developing and competent, but I went back to the different codes that I had made and decided to make all of the projects to represent the different levels of students who may attempt to do this activity in my future classroom. It may have been extra work and taken extra time, but I feel more confident in my Scratch abilities now that I believe I actually could teach this class and help students if they get stuck or the code stops working as was the problem I had in my previous Scratch project.

My final project represents the proficient student who wants to challenge themselves while also being aware of their abilities and not going so far as to over-complicate their project, I know the very opposite of me but I wanted to be realistic to the age group I was focusing on and knew that if I went overboard it would result in a college-level project and not actually represent the 5th-8th graders I was work-shopping the lesson for.

This project, as well as my prototypes, represents the different levels of work and ability my students may have as well as an understanding of how I may have to adapt my lesson plan based on the different levels of skill my students may have or the grade I will be teaching this project to. Below are the final images of my project and the other prototypes.

Developing Student: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/348251213

Competent Student: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/349492756

Final Project/Proficient Student: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/351883581

Prototype Breakdown:

 

Posted on
by

While I am enjoying designing a lesson of my own I am partially sad that this will be the last project of the semester as no matter how challenging any of the projects were I thoroughly enjoyed making them. Once again I have decided to put a lot of pressure on myself and challenge myself to make a project that would not only be beneficial to students but is something that I can use afterward.

My plan is to design a lesson that combines learning a language, in this case, Korean, with a student made Scratch game for them to practice anything that is challenging them about what they are learning in their class. I chose to focus on the basic vowels and consonants, there are combined ones that finish out the alphabet but I have not learned those yet, as those are characters and sounds that I know how to pronounce and write. This way students would have a guide during the beginning of their Level 1 Korean class while also getting to make an interactive notebook to use in class.

I chose to make my teacher examples reflect students who would be in different places of achievement in the class. Developing, competent, and proficient. This way I could always shape my expectations or lesson around the abilities of the students and directly reflect the level of work expected in my rubric section of the lesson. This way I would also be able to imagine and depict what students in different grades, with different levels of skill and maturity, would be able to do when presented with this project.

For me, the first step was designing the notebook(s), I had to go through the Design Thinking Process in order to figure out exactly what would be included in the project’s final design as well as which grades I was going to design this project for.

My first thought was to take simple circuits and then program light patterns through attinys on different pages of the notebook. I ended up going back to basic simple circuits afterward because not only would all of my programming have to be done on a computer that was not mine, limiting the amount of time I had to finesse the program, it would also be very complicated for students not in junior high or high school to do as well as potentially running into a budget problem. So I decided that I would focus on simple circuits, teaching students how to solder the LEDs in to the notebooks carefully and then figure out how the layout of the notebooks would be so when demonstrated to the class, people understood what was being covered not only in my art class but in the language class it was paired with.

Afterward, I went on to Scratch and began messing around with the codes and how to animate the letters I wanted. I tried using the codes that allowed one to work with Google Translate for access to Korean before realizing that that would not allow students to record themselves and actually practice the characters in the game. I drew the first prototype all in Scratch so that I could see what a student, who may face a lot of struggles in taking their hand-drawn images and bringing them into Photoshop might due in order to complete the project. Afterward, I worked at my house over the break and worked on computer drawing and hand-drawing all the characters very carefully so as to represent a mature, older student’s work or the work of a very careful student trying to copy the characters exactly as the teacher taught them. I began recording the sounds for the different characters but unfortunately got ill when coming back from Thanksgiving break and so have been unable to finish recording all the sounds so that they are clear and understandable.

Afterward, I moved on to designing the next two notebooks in class which is when I came up with the idea to make the different teacher examples represent different levels of student ability or success in the project. I ended up making one of the projects look very different from the others to exemplify going above and beyond in the project as if I was a student working on this project and wanted to be very neat and careful with my work.

The Design Thinking Process, while not at the forefront of my thinking when approaching this project has popped up multiple times as I work on, then scrap, edit and remake aspects of my project. Additionally, every time I talk with one of my classmates I am able to share my project and get feedback that has helped me find different resources and ways of designing my project.

Below are some of the resources I have used so far and will continue to refer to as I finalize this project:

https://scratch.mit.edu/ideas

https://scratch.mit.edu/

http://www.nexmap.org/light-emitting-diode-led

Simple Circuit Tutorial

Posted on
by

This project was so much fun to work on, hugely because it was very nostalgic it was to be using a program I was very familiar with and enjoyed using in middle school. However, the last day of the project, the night before it was due became one of the most stressful times of my semester. For some reason, my project stopped working and no matter how I reprogrammed or reorganized the program I was unable to get the final part of the code to work correctly. In the end, I resigned myself to completely reworking the project and making a whole new one from scratch. While I am happy with the final result to a certain extent there is more that I had planned out and fleshed out in my original Scratch program that I wish could have been seen through to fruition and I believe that if I had another day I would have been able to figure it out but as it was I created a new program in order to showcase a complete game that I do enjoy the outcome of for the class to play.

The final game can be played here: Scratch Final Version

The original Scratch game can be played here: Scratch Version 1

The Scratch trial/prototype can be played here: Scratch Prototype

The Scratch preliminary  experiment can be viewed here: Experimentation Day 1

Despite the struggles I faced, in the end,  I immensely enjoyed working on this project especially in a class where I was able to get the most out of the Design Thinking Process. As each class involved a period of sharing our work and progress I was able to rethink my project at each turn, come up with new questions about what I was trying to achieve (Ask) and re-edit and design pieces of my project to refine it. At the end that helped me when I had to redo my project as I was able to use many aspects from the original project in the final version.

Working on this project I was able to relearn and refine many skills and tools that I had in the back of my mind from middle school. I had never used Scratch as an online program before and had used it to program lego robots in an app so making a game also provided a new way to experience an old program that I was familiar with. I have always enjoyed working with Scratch and I can see this being a tool that can be used in a lesson plan for students of all ages due to the flexibility of the program. I would teach the class similar to how it was carried out in class and have students pick stories or characters they are passionate about and write an interactive story that showcases their ability to combine storytelling, characters, and game mechanics. For younger students from grades K-2, I would most likely have them use the pre-created sprites and backgrounds and as the students got older I would have them design and draw, by hand or on the computer, their backgrounds, and sprites.

This activity highlighted for me the ability of art projects and assignments to be connected to other classes and skills that are crucial for student development. Students need to be able to understand where everything fits in a landscape both 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional and mapping out their project in Scratch would do just that. Additionally, it is important in education to strengthen art not only as its own subject but as a subject that can re-enforce lessons from other subjects. Scratch projects that showcase animals in their habitats, the solar system, a game about a country in the world and much more can all be tied back to other classes that students are taking which will enforce their understanding not only of the program but what they are learning interdisciplinarily.

 

Posted on
by

This project was extremely fun to work on. I sincerely enjoyed using Adobe Illustrator to enhance my original sketches and then watch the template be transformed into puzzle pieces that once put together created a 3-dimensional lantern. While there were frustrations that popped up during my work on the assignment it was one of the most enjoyable so far as I cannot help but be overjoyed with the final version of my project.

It was slightly challenging at first to figure out what would be cut and what would be etched while trying to keep in mind any bridges I would have to make in order to ensure that the entire image did not fall out once it was cut by the laser. Having the ability to work on a paper sketch and then cut those images out really enabled me to see how my finished product would look long before I even considered transferring my sketches into Photoshop and Illustrator. Additionally, by having Illustrator on my personal laptop enabled me to take the project home for the weekend and come back to class the second day of the assignment with my completed sketches all ready moved into Illustrator with different layers for etching and carving. While it was challenging at first to find online instructions in regards to what each stroke width should be as well as the color of each line, having a weekend in between the first and second class time allowed me to research on my own and test my own abilities in figuring out how to create the template. Despite my first iteration being complete before the start of the second class, I ended up changing the layout of my lantern due to the first one looking too plain and wanting to challenge myself further to make a more difficult lantern that contained etchings and carvings on almost every side. As such I believe I am far more satisfied with my final product than I ever would have been if I went forward with the first version of my project even if it took more time to work out.

One of the other enjoyable facts of this project was working in class when I could bounce my own problems off of other students and hear what they thought I could do and offering my own help when asked. I believe that this led to a lot of the work not feeling so hard because I felt comfortable asking my friends for help whenever I needed it. This was a huge part of my Design Process (Build and Evaluate) as I was able to show my work to others earlier than the final day of the project (Share) and get more feedback on my project than I have been able to on any other assignment. While I started the project by figuring out what I wanted to make (Ask) and then writing out ideas in my star-book (Imagine) I was able to fully experience the cyclical nature of the Design Thinking Process by bringing a new part of my project to class each day and getting feedback and then rebuilding or redesigning the project and going back through the Design Thinking Process once again. I believe that this allowed me to create the best version of my project possible as well as grow more confident in asking my fellow students for help.

I can absolutely see myself using this project in a lesson plan. I believe that this is a project that could be used across multiple age ranges as long as there were enough funds allotted to buying and maintaining a laser printer. I believe even younger kids in grades 3-6 would be able to complete this project and learn how to use Photoshop and Illustrator as well as give them the experience of taking hand-drawn images and transferring them into the computer and turn the image into a 3-dimensional sculpture. I would consider doing this entire project in Illustrator as I believe it may be slightly easier to simply bring in an image, lock the layer and then make different layers for tracing the parts meant to be cut out and the parts meant to be etched into the wood. I believe that it would be easier for younger students to understand and grasp especially if they only have to learn how to master one Adobe application. Otherwise, I believe I would keep the assignment the same as the one I completed in class.

While I had never done a project like this before, I believe this assignment exemplifies how art projects can teach artists how to use multiple mediums that stretch between handheld tools and digital programs. I wish I had had projects like this in my school art classes when I was younger but I also recognize the immense amount of money it costs to do projects like this. However, projects like this remind me of why it is so important for art classes to highlight to future artists how accessible the arts are through the multitude of mediums they can use both on and offline.

Due to the number of pictures and videos, I took over the course of the project the rest of the images and videos are broken down in a gallery post under the Arduino/Attiny category tab at the bottom of my blog page and can also be reached via the following link: Gallery

Posted on
by

 

First Template Sketches and Second Version:

Attiny Trials and Working Lights

Cut out Tiles:

Posted on
by

In all honesty, I am very surprised I managed to get my project to work both in regards to having the programmed LEDs light up and having the switch be able to turn on and off. Getting the project to work was extremely stressful and while I am pretty sure almost every project blog post has involved me mentioning how stressful or difficult the assignment was, I can truthfully say that I underestimated how complex and hard the final part of this project was. There were also challenges throughout the project, such as; not being able to work on my PC due to complications in downloading the required software, and figuring out how to program more than three or four lights to the attiny. Afterward, because I chose to use all the available prongs on the attiny I struggled to get the copper tape thin enough so that it did not overlap while also touching each metal prong that was programmed to the different lights. Additionally, I spent a lot of time wondering how I would connect everything without overlapping or needing bridges as this project I wanted to focus on programming and the number of lights and the next time we use the attiny I will try to incorporate bridges. This came from how complicated I made my circuit card as I kept adding details and lights, this time I wanted to pick one focus, improve my skill with it and present what I could accomplish with the chosen skill.

When it came to the artwork chosen to light up, I had originally planned to use a painting from last semester from my Norse Mythology painting series, this would light up the multiple planets on Yggdrasil, the world tree, and would involve multiple lights being connected to the same prong on the attiny. However, once I began sketching out the layout of the copper tape and lights, I realized that I was setting myself up for a project that I would not have completed or well looking by the time the presentation date rolled around. Perhaps if I had known from the start that the project due date would get prolonged I would have stuck to the original plan but it also included many bridges and lights to work I was still struggling at that time to program the attiny and so I focused on another art piece that held a great deal of meaning to me instead.

The drawing that I printed out from my portfolio is based on a photo of myself from the summer before my senior year in high school. At the time the photo was taken, I had come out as bisexual for the first time to a group of my peers I considered close friends and began to feel comfortable telling people that I was religiously Wiccan. As such, the image to me depicts myself at a time where I was finally beginning to feel comfortable and welcome in the community and society I had found myself in and was much happier than I had been in a long time. The time was so important to me that looking at the drawing I can remember exactly where I was, who was with me and why the photo was being taken which was just to try out a new eyeliner my friend bought. The braids in my hair had the same color rubber bands as the lights that I chose to use. I selected colors often tied to the four elements (red, yellow, white, blue and green), and the soul (purple) because it was what I had been studying in the books I had about Wicca and was one of the ways I had begun to express my identity. As such, deciding to use this image in my final project ended up meaning more to me than I believe any message I could have constructed using the Yggdrassil painting would.

In regards to my creation process, I believe there are very strong relations between how I approached the project to the Design Thinking Process. Most of the first part of my creating process was focused on coming up with questions and possible answers for what I wanted to make (Ask and Imagine), how I wanted to make it and how I thought the programming would need to be designed to function as planned. Also, I found myself constantly in a state of editing my work and doing trial run after trial run as I tested my ability to use the Arduino program and how to connect as many lights as possible without overwhelming myself and overcomplicating the project (Evaluate). Additionally, throughout the entire process, from learning about the materials to creating my program on Arduino and how to plug it all in I diagramed and photographed everything so that I could look back to it when I eventually removed the attiny from the USB and placed it on my chosen image (Build). Finally, tomorrow in class I will be able to talk about my project and display it in front of the class and hear about other people’s projects and see all of the other final versions of what everyone has been working on for that past couple of weeks (Share). As such, much of the journey involved in working on this assignment was closely tied to the methods used in the Design Thinking Process.

This is one of the few projects I believe would only be possible for older students starting in high school. This assignment was extremely complex, and while I think it can be adapted into a lesson plan for an art class, I believe it requires the skills of an older child or teenager who has some experience with computers and other similar tools. The amount of stress and challenges that one faces when working on this project as well as the amount of time required to complete the assignment, makes me feel as though it would be better scaled towards a high school art class. In planning my lesson I would probably frame it within a segment on Arduino where there would end up being two different projects to share at the end. The final project would be the same as the one we were assigned in class but the first project would come after the first couple days of class. Students would be given an image and asked to light up just two LEDs and use one bridge in their project so that before they moved onto the final assignment, everyone would have a chance to practice and explore how to use all of the skills they learned and make mistakes on an image they were not as invested in or worried about messing up.

Overall, I am very pleased with the final results of my project while also thinking about how I could improve it for a future assignment. In the future, I believe I would do more research into getting Arduino to work on my computer easily so I could work on my program outside of class instead of just working on the image and copper tape layout. Additionally, because of how thin and close together the metal prongs of the attiny are I would use copper wire instead of tape. Even though it would require more soldering, it would be slightly easier to lay down next to each other without overlapping near the attiny.

Due to the number of pictures and videos, I took over the course of the project the rest of the images and videos are broken down in a gallery post under the Arduino/Attiny category tab at the bottom of my blog page and can also be reached via the following link: Gallery

Posted on
by

Starbook/Zine:

Day 1:

Day 1 Videos:

Day 2:

Day 2 Videos:

Fall Break:

Day 3:

Day 3 Video:

Posted on
by

This had to be the hardest project I have worked on in the semester so far. Not because I struggled to understand how to make the LEDs light up or to make a switch with the battery and the copper tape, though both were challenging in their own right. No, the assignment was the most difficult because it caused me to share my personal and emotional feelings about someone I cared about with the class, something I often struggle to do. While I believe I put so much effort into this project because of who I dedicated it to, it was very difficult to start working on the card because I knew that eventually, I would have to share it with the class.

If I were to use this in a future lesson plan, I think I would make it an option to make it for someone the students’ love so that if they were uncomfortable with sharing such a personal message they could make a generic card. Or I might allow them to place a sticky note on top of their card informing me that they do not want to share it with the class so that I would be able to see that the circuit works, the card lights up but I would not read the messages inside. This way I would still be able to assess a student’s understanding of the material without making it mandatory for students to share something personal that may be uncomfortable. I believe this project is better suited for junior high and high school students as combining serious emotional feelings behind a card and using a soldering iron should only be used by older students who may be more mature enough to handle both the tools and the topics of the assignment.

In this project, my creative process dealt heavily with the Ask and Imagine parts of the Design Thinking Process. I spent a lot of time considering how I wanted to portray my ideas, what exact ideas I wanted to portray in the card. Additionally, much of my time then led to the Build portion of the process as I drew and redrew countless sketches of my card before I was satisfied with a possible final idea. The Evaluate part of the Design Thinking Process was very long and arduous as many times the LEDs would work and then I would place them all down temporarily with tape and attach the battery holder, which I chose to use as a switch, and they would not light up causing me to rework the order of the lights or the battery itself. Afterward, I talked about my project (Share) with the class multiple times throughout the process. As such, this is the first time I have truly felt like the Design Thinking Process is a cycle and strongly felt a close connection between the assignment and the creative process. As there were multiple times that we shared our projects in class I was able to start the process all over again and add more to my card making my final version the best one I believe I could have made.

Even though it was not originally the intention to have the project due as late as it was I think this amount of time is necessary. As this project is very challenging and the solder was not working originally, nor would the iron cool down after a long time; the extra time allotted to the project allowed me to complete the assignment and have a finished project that I could present in class. Additionally, everytime I got one LED to work I was interested in adding more as I was inspired by the project from an older student who got many LEDs to work on one battery to work that I kept adding more and more pages to my card that I was adding batteries and lights up until the night before it was due. This allowed me to practice and expand my skills as well as make the best card I could in my grandfather’s memory.

Despite the struggles, I faced while working on this project it allowed me a chance to open up about feelings and memories I had not thought about in a very long time. Additionally, I did enjoy learning how to solder the LEDs to the copper tape and make a circuit card that I could give to someone that could last for a long time. While it was hard at times to feel comfortable working those into my art, I am glad that I was able to make a card in honor of my grandfather whose stories continue to inspire me to this day.

-Unfortunately, there were no good pictures of the front cover as they all came out exceedingly blurry every time but it did work during the presentation so I am glad that all the switches turned on and off by opening and closing the flaps and everyone was able to see the lights work.

Posted on
by

This project was extremely fun to create and test because I never knew what would happen. Every time we added something new or changed the way the image was supported the motor may not unbalance everything. I believe that one of the reasons I was so excited to begin this activity was because the minute I heard moving pictures I was reminded of Harry Potter and wanted to make something that was as interesting as the portraits had been both in the books and on the movie screens to me as a child. Once my Marla and I understood how to get the motor and battery to stay connected to each other after the prototype session in class, the difficult part was not the creating part of the project. Much of the issues came later on when putting the final project altogether.

Working with Marla was great as we were able to bounce many ideas off of each other and divide up the work so that we were able to finish in time. I do not believe this project would have been possible in one day if the project was designed to be completed individually. Even so, I do believe it would have benefited from a second day, at least half of the second class period to work on the project taking the entire first day to prototype. As previously stated, the issues truly arose once we attempted to attach a spinning flower to the back of our woman who would turn in a circle on a base made out of black and white words. As it took most of the time to construct the final products and get motors and batteries balanced underneath the weight of the pictures and the stands they rested on, there was not enough time to work out new ways of attaching the flower once our main two ideas did not pan out. As such we were unable to attach the flower to the lady. On Saturday, the two of us discussed that setting up a second stand for the flower close enough so that it looked like it was attached to the woman while spinning on its own may have worked, but that would have required more time for the project.

Our theme came about from a conversation where we mentioned Adam and Eve and religion and how often times Eve is blamed for all that went wrong negating that Adam told her she would die from touching the tree, which the snake used as a counterpoint showing that perhaps nothing bad would happen, and Adam did not have to eat the apple himself and that sometimes religious figures go against the rules of the faith they claim to follow if it benefits them. We happened to be looking at an image of a woman standing in a powerful pose with lines across her body that almost seemed topographical and we proposed that perhaps she was her own Garden of Eden and that she created life as well and wanted to represent her strength and symbolize that with a flower, like those of Georgia O’Keefe.

By breaking up the assignment in class, which in turn broke up the Design Thinking Process, I think I was able to more thoroughly consider how I wanted to approach the project. During the prototype stage by focusing only on Ask, Imagine and Build; Marla and I were able to cement the ideas we wanted to showcase in our final project as well as try out which battery and motor type we wanted to use and experiment with the setup. By doing this, we were able to figure out what we did not want to place the motor on a piece of cardboard as well as other details that may have slowed down the creative process if we had not had so much time to focus solely on Ask, Imagine and Build. As such, we were able to ask questions and pose possible solutions so that we could create enough hypotheses regarding what would happen once we moved on to the final version of our project.

Additionally, by then solely being able to focus on our final rendition of the assignment in the second part of class our Design Thinking Process was very different from our earlier one. As we had devoted time to run through certain scenarios we were able to get right to work and though there were some complications our problems (Ask), solutions (Imagine), prototypes (Build), testing (Evaluate), and demos (Share) were only about the final rendition and not about learning how any of the tools worked together. This meant that we were able to work a little bit faster in putting the creation together as we were slightly more confident in our abilities to create a moving picture.

I think a project like this is an assignment that is better left for junior high or high school as it requires a little more patience than some of the other projects we have done in the past. Even so, I would be interested in adapting this to a lesson plan, I may use the technique we used in the Drawing Bot assignment and have students in pairs and then have them come up with several themes before picking them out of a hat. I think it may be an interesting twist on the idea and if the project were to remain a one-day assignment may allow for it to go slightly faster. Otherwise, my only chance would be to make the activity a two-day assignment as I believe the final part of the project requires a little more time than was provided in our class.

Posted on
by

Out of all the activities so far in class this semester, I believe this one may have been the most stressful but also the most rewarding. The motor would constantly falter, work and then once taped break the wires would fall out or the battery would suddenly need to be switched out halting the creative process in its spot. However, once Corina and I were able to work through the struggles, rework the design issues and test out both the prototype bot and the final version for the competition. However, because of the struggles we faced in building the Drawing Bots once it continuously made a pattern on the paper and did not fall the feeling of success was much stronger than it had been in any other creation because of the effort put into this project.

As part of the stressful yet rewarding process of making the Drawing Bot I believe that the Design Thinking Process was very closely related to how my group approached the assignment. We started by wondering how, for the final project, we were going to make the project reflect the word we were given (Ask). Additionally, we looked on google for other examples of Drawing Bots to see what other people have done for ideas. Then we had to think about the materials available in class and the time we had and how that may limit what we could or could not do. Next we figured out basic ideas for what we wanted to see for the word joyous and how we would express it in motion and how we would place the motor and battery to balance out the different sized cup (Imagine). Afterwards we moved onto experimenting with the layout which is where the struggles really began (Build and Evaluate). The motor would constantly stop working or the wires would break and we would have to figure out how to place the sensitive motor on top of the cup gently without to much pressure and without hot gluing the wires down as well. We finally worked out most of the kinks before moving on to the final step of the Design Thinking Process by competing with the rest of the class and then expanded on our project during the debrief afterwards (Share).

I believe that this is a really interesting project to do with students because it allows them to explore how to create their own robots outside of a STEM program and in a way that involves them thinking about a theme to tie their robot into. The idea of having the project be one day however only works with students who are older as I believe students in the lower half of middle school may need one class to work on understanding on how to work on the first test run bot and then the next day can be working towards and on the final bot and competition allowing them to go home and think about the theme and come to class with some ideas so they have a little more prep time. Other wise I think this project is very beneficial and adaptable to any art classroom as it helps bring affordable 3-D materials and electronics into an art curriculum that in elementary and middle schools can often times be strictly 2-D due to costs.

An additional bonus to this project is that it involves working in groups. When there were issues and something went wrong or broke it was easier to solve the problem and feel like there was a solution and reach when I could bounce an idea off of my partner. Often times when doing projects like these alone when “failure” occurs the weight of the problem falls solely on the one creator and makes it hard for success to shine through after defeat. When working in a group however, everyone supports each other so no one is truly left to solve a problem completely on their own. As such if I were to incorporate this into a future lesson plan I would also make sure that this was a group project so that students could support each other through both ups and downs during the activity.