• Tell a story about your experience using a combination of words and images.
• What did you learn? Describe your learning process. What was most challenging?  What was most fun?
• How did this activity connect (or not) to your prior knowledge of art and art education? How might you use and/or adapt this activity in an art classroom?

Our moving picture design replicated an earthquake. A landscape was depicted around the strawberry carton, while a small town sat on top of the carton.  Little did the towns people know, that a massive earthquake was going to struck their quaint town.  To create the earthquake, we taped a motor inside the carton.  Then, attached a glue stick to the motor to make the carton move more violently. This shook the town and its citizens! Later, they found out the earthquake was a 6.0 on the magnitude scale.

From this experience, I learned more about working with hands on materials.  I have never build a project like this that involved so much trail and error.  My group and I spend the full hour and a half trying to make the motion mimic an earthquake.  After a while, we figured out attaching a glue stick to the motor would create a strong enough movement.  Therefore, we taped the motor on the instead of the strawberry carton to make the buildings shake on top.  This task was challenging because the motor made the buildings vibrate. However, we wanted a bigger shaking motion to create a “realistic” earthquake.  Even though we did not have time to fix this issue, overall I definitely enjoyed designing a unique storyline for our moving picture activity.

IMG_6706-2c3fgeh(video of moving pictures)

The moving picture activity connected to my prior knowledge of art education because I remember creating a similar motion project in high school. We had to design cars that moved when an attached balloon was deflated; the air released would push the car in the opposite direction.  It was difficult attaching the balloon in a perfect position and also making the car visual appealing. The car ballon activity and the moving picture activity both had different concepts, but overall challenged my skill building techniques and creativity.  Living in a world surrounded by digital media, it is great to get adolescents familiar with hands on materials.