EDUC7545 Portfolio & Journal

During primary and secondary school, visual art was a sporadic event throughout schooling experience. While it was always an enjoyable time, I feel that I may not have effectively learned appropriate skills and knowledge regarding visual arts.

In primary school, art lessons were painting workshops in which us students got excited to wear an art smock and get our fingers and faces covered in paint. Looking back, the only information I can remember them giving us was the knowledge of primary and secondary colours. However, this concept was taught on Playschool, so my interest was lost and I began to stray off-task due to being disengaged. 

In high school, this was much the same. As a compulsory subject in years 8 and 9, I enjoyed participating in the different varieties of art modes, sculpture, paining, drawing etc. However, as I reached year 10, this subject wasn’t an ‘OP’ subject, and therefore didn’t count towards my final OP score, forcing me to leave and choose another subject, such as Accounting or Legal Studies. 

Looking back, I wish I had been given the opportunity to continue with visual art, as I felt it pushed me past my comfort zone, and enabled me to think outside the box, into more abstract ways of thinking than I was used to. While I did require more assistance than most of my peers, my teachers were supportive and encouraging, which I feel also contributed to my engagement and enjoyment within my high schooling experience.

Resourcing - Digital Technology

This online resource creates lesson and learning sequences for beginning teachers when teaching digital technology studies. It is aligned with the Australian Curriculum, and provides possible lesson ideas with practical implementations and resources, as well as providing other school approaches for ideas on case studies, and provides effective teaching strategies that have been proven to work best within this learning area. 

Resourcing - Design Technologies

This website is an online resource that offers beginning teachers the ability to observe teaching ideas that are directly linked to the curriculum.

Engaging (Public Media) - Design Technologies

It is important that students develop knowledge and confidence to creatively respond to real-life problems and challenges. This is exactly what Nock Middle School 8th Grade students are doing. These students are making 3D printer artificial hands for children in need of artificial body parts. Their goal is to make 10 by the end of the school year for children around the world. 

The students’ teacher encouraged the project when he saw the students trying to engage in technology in a meaningful way, rather than simply being used as distraction. This program is giving free hands to people in need, and is creating real-world solutions to problems that the students identified.

Engaging (Public Media) - Digital Technologies

While the Victorian Government is making progress towards effectively implementing digital technologies into the classroom, as mandated by the curriculum, the problem lies in the fact that only one in three teachers are qualified to teach this subject.

The article states that, as part of the new compulsory curriculum to include digital technologies, students are expected to learn coding skills, gather and input data, as well as be able to solve real-life problems, and it is vital that teachers be qualified in supplying students with this knowledge and skill set. There were also issues regarding appropriate funding for schools, acknowledging the difficulty implementing new programs without the funding to support it. 

Resourcing - Visual Arts

Art 4 My Room is an online resource that helps beginning teachers create lesson plans for visual arts. It involves different forms of media, allows for community engagement, provides step-by-step instructions for teachers, as well as engaging students in a diverse range of skills.

Engaging (Public Media) - Visual Arts

This news article was written in response to the school districts in California, U.S.A. and the lack of funding provided for providing arts education within schools. A focal reason for this includes the fact that the arts in these school districts are simply a framework for the schools, and do not mandate any standardised testing, of which means the arts are put on the back burner, making way for more “important” subjects that will be tested, such as English, Mathematics, Science, and History.

The thing that caught my attention from this article, was the experience one 8th Grade Teacher experienced with one of his students. He explained that a new principal had come to his school and implemented a purchase of iPads for the students, and as a result, the teacher issued a task for his students to make a biographical documentary using this resource. While most students created documentaries looking at hobbies and interests, one student had chosen to be more vulnerable and open up about a disorder she had been living with. Because this student engaged so heavily with the content, she went above and beyond what was expected of her in this task.

Incorporating visual arts into the curriculum, as shown above, is a highly important aspect to educating students. It is through visual arts that students can communicate, challenge and express their representations and ideas, something that this student did quite well. She opened up and communicated her disorder with her peers through an insightful, engaging, and respectful way. She included a lot of stock footage of photographs that demonstrated others living with this disorder too, as well as supplying photographs of her as a child to give backstory to her art project.

Resourcing - Music

While this is a U.K. online resource, the concepts of music are universal, and are able to be applied within Australian primary schools.

This resource offers ideas on how to introduce concepts of rhythm, pitch and tone, instruments, reading music, as well as activities that encourage confidence, concentration, and coordination.

Engaging (Public Media) - Music

Country star group, Little Big Town, were recently welcomed into a U.S.A. high school to promote and celebrate music education. The group advocated the importance of including music education within the curriculum and schooling programs, stating that “music [education] isn’t optional”. 

This should be a shared common goal for all schools as it celebrates emotive responses from music, a shared cultural or diverse cultural contexts emerging from music, and it also celebrates individuality and creativity.

Resourcing - Media Arts

This is an online resource for teachers that provides strategies and resources for class room learning and implementing media arts education throughout community settings. 

Engaging (Public Media) - Media Arts

Media arts is an important element to include within Australia education, as it is necessary that students be educated in creating their own responses and content in digital and non-digital forms within their worlds. This article seems to be a hot topic, as it appears to be the most prominent article written regarding media arts and the Australia Curriculum. It discusses the importance of including media arts education in the curriculum at a time when content is giving way to English, Mathematics, Science, Health, and ICT. Media arts gives students the skills they nee to investigate the impact and influence of media artworks, inspiring them to engage and participate in their own world through media works.    

Resourcing - Drama

This online resource offers various drama games, drama courses for teachers, access to online resources, including apps, books and articles, as well as drama strategies and lesson plans to follow.

Using this resource would allow teachers, with limited knowledge of drama concepts, the opportunity to educate themselves on methods, strategies and activities to teach drama to students.

Engaging (Research Literature) - Drama

This article discusses the usefulness of implementing a drama pedagogy within classroom practices. It mentions that the use of drama within everyday classroom activities allows students the opportunity to experience cultural, ethnic, religious, and social holistic bonds, that have the capability to ‘close the gap’ between cultural differences.

Engaging (Public Media) - Drama

This article looks at the benefits of incorporating drama into pedagogical practices when teaching writing. There are many arguments over students loosing their creativeness due to the over packed curriculum, and this article offers a solution.

The idea of incorporating drama into teaching writing is a beneficial idea for classroom teachers, as it would foster creativeness, imagination, expression and self exploration. It would also give the students more confidence to challenge themselves and force themselves to engage in unfamiliar worlds. 

Enabling students to be imaginative and creative are very important aspects of education, as students engage, participate, explore, collaborate, take risks, empathise, and understand other points of view. In allowing students the opportunity to creatively explore new worlds, imaginative or real, it enables them to think resourcefully and explore new perspectives.

Responding - Dance

This video was posted online by ‘Crockett Tex-Anns’ (YouTube Channel) in 2014, demonstrating a dance performed by the teachers of Crockett High School in Austin, TX.

The elements of this dance were mostly simple movements that allowed a unity to be created among the staff. The black uniform and the in-time movements appeared to be well rehearsed and choreographed.

Resourcing - Dance

This is an in-class activity that is a free resource for both educators and parents. This website facilitates active dancing through fun and engaging music videos that interact with the students.

Some of the videos support curriculum learning content and create custom videos that link with content that is taught in order to engage older students, however it is a highly useful resource to teach choreography and dance to students.

Dance - Engaging (Public Media)

This article focuses on the response to the traditional Indigenous war dance performed by Adam Goodes in 2015. 

Aboriginal communities and football players displayed respect over Goodes’ controversial act after a win in 2015, by performing the Indigenous war dance after the first goal of the game was made.

In teaching dance within primary schools in Australia, students would be exposed to cultural practices, such as traditional Indigenous dances, in ways that celebrate and educate students’ understandings of diverse cultures and contexts.

Dance is a crucial element to teach in schools, as it engages and inspires students, as well as motives them to experience personal, social, and emotional communication.