Whoo-hoo! My graduation!

This weekend was a big one for me--I graduated with my Masters of Arts in Teaching from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire!! Whoo-hoo! I've been diligently working on my Masters for the past couple of years and, I ain't gonna lie--it wasn't always easy with four kiddos and working part time. The hardest part, I think, was having to stop teaching the after school art classes I loved so that I could devote more time to my studies. Having to stop teaching so that I could eventually be able to teach was a hard thing for my brain (and heart) to rationalize. This degree is really significant to me since it unlocks the door to becoming an art teacher--a dream I have had since I was around 9 or 10. I cannot believe it!

Here I am with two of my four kiddos.  That would be #1 and #3.

And, of course, I could not have tackled any of this without the love and support of my family, especially:

• My husband (who, among other things, patiently listened to educational theory on our "date nights," was awoken countless times at night while I taught art lessons in my sleep, and encouraged me when I hysterically sobbed in our driveway because I just didn't think I could make it through finals and get my second portfolio done). 

Here's that good-looking guy! Twenty-six years together, what a wild ride!

• My children (who patiently--pretty much--endured mom at the computer in her p.j.'s mumbling about art at all hours of the day and night and who told me they were proud of me for working so hard instead of pointing out that we were having frozen pizza for dinner (again).
• My mom (who always said yes to watching my kids and who is my original cheerleader, and I think, the President of my fan club. I think this may have been a bigger deal for her than for me, and that's saying something!).

And here I am with my mom who was going to go to my graduation. No. Matter. What.
I'm surprised she isn't wearing her "Brandie Pettus Fan Club" t-shirt...

• My sister (my behind-the-scenes gal, who watched my children--even when she wasn't expecting it, fed them healthy meals and played countless board games with them, played outside and went bike riding--all with a smile on her face).

And the amazing people who taught me so well! Namely, Jason Swift, my advisor at PSU who put up with my lengthy phone calls and my enthusiastic, quirkiness! Marianne True, for giving me a chance as a Program Associate at PSU. That job was the reason I was able to attend PSU and her guidance was truly amazing. Trish Lindberg, for your positive attitude and belief that I am "a star." For my cooperating teachers, Meagan Read and Martha Rives--every day I learn from you and you are both such patient teachers. To Porter Dodge and Rachel Rouillard for believing in me and giving me the opportunity to be the long-term art sub at AMS. You opened doors for me.

All of my friends and family, thank you for encouraging me to follow my dreams, letting me be myself and encouraging such high standards of excellence.

There are a WHOLE BUNCH of other family members, friends and colleagues not mentioned here and that doesn't mean I am not thankful for their help and love and support along the way. It really has taken a village for me to be able to reach this milestone in my life and I am humbled by the kindness of those I am surrounded by. Truly, thank you.

Stop Motion and KOMA KOMA

Hey there!

I had a wonderful time Friday at the Integrated Arts Conference at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, NH. It is so fun to connect with other teachers and create. In case you didn't get a chance to check it out, a colleague and I presented about digital storytelling and shared a TON of info and links to get started (check out the post here).

The attendees only had about 15 minutes to play with stop motion animation, but had fun with clay, Lego, and drawing as they created their masterpieces.

I wanted to do a little post about the stop motion APP I chose to use on Friday. KOMA KOMA is a neat stop motion app I was introduced to about a year or so ago. It's an easy-to-use app that only has four buttons. Yep, FOUR. So it is easy to use and a great introduction to animation for even your youngest kiddos (or hesitant grown-ups).

Never done stop motion animation before? No problem! No money for software and digital cameras? No problem! KOMA KOMA is free and uses the digital camera in the iPad! The KOMA KOMA website is fascinating--those folks are designing some very cool things! 

How To Use It:
Just do it! Here's a quick screen shot from the KOMA KOMA website that explains how to use the APP. Click here to see it larger and to get additional tips on the KOMA KOMA website.

Image Source: KOMA KOMA
(http://komakoma.org/en/?page_id=671)

Some Examples:
Check out the Digital Storytelling folder on my GoogleDrive to see what the attendees created. Remember, we didn't have much time, but you'll get the idea. The sky's the limit here! This is what grown-ups did with only about 15 minutes of time and no prior experience with KOMA KOMA. With more time and scaffolding, your students could really excel! So, check out KOMA KOMA and see what you come up with.

Another feature I LOVE about KOMA KOMA is that you have the option to create a printable flip book from your animation--instantly! That is really cool as a takeaway for the students since animation doesn't always give you a lasting product for the students to take home to share. Just print out the flip book on card stock, cut out and assemble--the pages are already numbered (hint: use a binder clip to hold the sturdy pages together for flipping).

Here's a screenshot of one of the flip books the attendees created from their animation
(it was a short animation, so the flip book is short as well).

A Student's Perspective:
I usually teach stop motion animation with another app called StopMotion Studio by Cateater, LLC. It's also easy to use and students like the fact they can add sound to their movies. I thought KOMA KOMA might be a better solution for us, since it was easier to use. Here's what one student said:

"I like Stop Motion better since you can add sound. I don't think it's that hard to use [Stop Motion]. It just does more than KOMA KOMA."

SO, perhaps KOMA KOMA would be good for younger students or students who are new to using APPs and doing stop motion.

How do you do animation?
Do you do stop motion animation with your students? What programs do you use, or are you old school and use a digital camera? I'd love to hear about it! Comment below or email me!

"This is Our Story:" An Intro to Digital Storytelling

I'm so excited to be be co-leading a session at the Integrated Arts Conference at Plymouth State University. My colleague, Tiffany Dube, and I will be talking about Digital Storytelling. Tiffany is sharing a bunch of (mostly) free and fabulous tools educators can use with their students to create comic strips,  audio files, books and more. I am going to talk about using stop motion animation and give attendees some time to play around with a couple different APPs I've used with students. It should be fun!

Here's the Thinglink clickable image I've created with all of our resources and links--check it out!

Integrating the Arts and Technology: A Few of OUR Favorite Things!

"Touch this image!"

That's the phrase Thinglink uses whenever someone shares a clickable image created using this amazing website! Try our Thinglink image above entitled "Integrating With Technology: A Few of OUR Favorite Things" and leave a comment at the bottom of this post with any ideas YOU come up with for integrating this piece of technology in your classroom!!

What's Going On Here?
Well, this image contains all of the resources and links for a conference session I am leading with my colleague, Tiffany Dube. We placed this image here so that participants could access it easily. You get to see it too! We structured our session to be an exploration of tech tools by having participants use a choice board. No matter how YOU learn (or what type of art you are trying to integrate), there's a tech tool for that!

About www.Thinglink.com:
Thinglink allows you to upload an image (from the web or from your desktop) and add clickable "tags" to it. These tags can be text, videos, or websites. The sky's the limit for this resource! Use it to flip your classroom, organize a presentation, have students create one for a project (either by themselves or as a group). You can sign up for a free thinglink account. Also, check out their website and click the "browse" tab to see how others are using this resource.

I do not receive any compensation from Thinglink for posts like this. I just use it myself and think others would like to as well! :-)

What I've Been Up To: Ceramics Fall 2014 Slideshow

Hello!

I was a busy lady this fall taking a ceramics course up at Plymouth State University. I hadn't taken ceramics since high school so, at first, I felt pretty overwhelmed! The course was offered during the day and I was the oldest student by 20 years or so :-)

My classmates were sweet and fun to be around and very helpful to me--some of them were ceramics majors and/or had taken ceramics all through high school so they were full of great info and project ideas. There were also a bunch of future art educators in the class and it was interesting to hear what they were learning as undergrads versus what I'm learning in the grad program I am enrolled in.

Anyhow, I thought I'd try a bit of technology and tried to make a slideshow using PhotoSnack. Let's see how it goes!

Enjoy!

Integrated Arts: Postcard Activity

The undergrad teaching students I work with at Plymouth State University had a week-long practicum experience in elementary and middle school a few weeks ago. When they came back, their professor advised me that they'd be bursting with anecdotes and stories about their week. Their professor had a field trip with another class their first day back, so I substituted for her. Of course, because I'm an art teacher, I had to put a twist on the lesson!

When I am presenting any sort of lesson to the future K-8 teachers, I try to have them learn using a lesson they could adapt in their own classrooms later on. This is a perfect example! This lesson allowed them to share with their professor the following:

• One success
• One thing they learned
• One thing they need to work on

This allowed them to analyze, summarize, and "tell" their professor about their experience. A part of this was also learning about the parts of a postcard--such as address, stamp, greeting, closing, and signature--a skill they all knew, but something that is valuable for younger students to learn. They used the free postcard generator on www.ReadWriteThink.org--a wonderful website I wanted them to be aware of.

Then, they needed to "show" their practicum experience. They could bring photos printed in color, or they could use the lab to search and print photos. I suggested the following images:

• Photos of the school they were at (they could take the photos themselves or pull them from the school's website)
• Photos of any projects they did

We only had a black and white printer in the lab, so I showed them how they could colorize the b&w photos using colored pencils. They needed to mount the finished front and back of their postcards onto a 9x12" piece of construction paper and then they were allowed to embellish their pieces. I had brought colored pencils, stickers, scrapbook page borders, and colored pieces of paper along with fancy-edged scissors.

The results are colorful and fun and it was nice to chat with the students about their experiences in the classrooms. Like the proud art teacher, I posted them all over the door and tiny bulletin boards I have on either side at the college.

Before we left, I had the students brainstorm ways they could use a lesson like this in their own classrooms and they had a ton of great ideas such as writing a friend about a math or science concept, writing a postcard from the point of view of a character in a book they've read, or even writing to a penpal in another class (or state or country)! Such great ideas!

So many great projects, but here are a few...ENJOY!

Ten Things This Art Teacher Learned From a Tech Conference

Yesterday I attended one day of the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Manchester, NH. I was lucky enough to have recived a one day scholarship to the event and I joined one of my colleagues from Plymouth State University and five Undergrads from Plymouth's Department of Elementary Education & Childhood Studies for a day of technological fun! 

A bit of info about the conference:

From the nhcmtc.org site: "Christa McAuliffe was our New Hampshire "teacher in space" astronaut who died in the Challenger shuttle launch on January 28th, 1986.

In Christa's memory and in keeping with her spirit this conference is designed to highlight the sharing of successful technology practices among educators. The conference serves as a forum for exchanging technology-based success stories, integration tips, instructional strategies, technical solutions, and management techniques, that really work in the learning environment."

Christa McAuliffe Experiences Weightlessness During KC-135 Flight
(image from wikipedia)

A bit of info about technology and me:

OK, so, I have to tell you--I'm not techy. I mean, I have to have my 11-year-old do all the tech work on my iPad, computer, and cell phone (which isn't even a Smartphone!). SIGH. But I'm learning! I attended so that I could learn how to include technology in my classroom as well as help the Undergrad students I work with at Plymouth State incorporate technology into their lessons.

But I have to say, I was a bit nervous about attending this conference. I'm not sure why--it isn't as though someone was going to stop me and ask me to reprogram their computer or something!

So here are the Top 10 things This Art Teacher Learned From a Tech Conference:

10. I'm not alone. Look, I cannot even get my remote start on my van to work (I stand outside the car door clicking the switch and locking and relocking the car over and over). And I don't run into many artists and art teachers during my day. But, I was surprised when the keynote speaker for the day, Kevin Honeycutt (Hi Kevin!), started off his lively presentation by sharing that for thirteen years, he was an art teacher! This conference is for educators, no matter what they teach! Not only was I not the only art teacher in attendance, I was surrounded by other educators who want to find a way to include technology in their lessons. If I want to make sure art is kept in the schools--I need to make sure I'm at as much stuff as possible, talking with people, sharing ideas, and KNOWING that all subjects need art to bring it all together!

9. Don't wait until you're perfect. This one is also from Kevin Honeycutt. Imagine if people didn't do anything unless they'd be perfect right away! Is that what I teach my students? Is that what I teach my own kids? NOPE! I cringe at the first posts on my blog and I still drool over blogs where people have professional-looking photos, but I'm here and sharing my stuff. I didn't wait until I had made tons of claymation movies to teach a class on animation--I fooled around for a few seconds with the program, showed my students a couple of short animations, and then set my kids loose on it! They taught me and taught each other. Seriously, if I wait until I KNOW what I'm doing, I'll be left behind. I can always ask a student to teach me! :-)

8. Keep track of what's important to you. Kevin Honeycutt might check out this blogpost. Am I so cool that a person with 21,000 Twitter followers would check out my humble blog? No, but he uses Google Alerts to track the things on the web that are important to him. So, whenever anyone mentions his name, his son's name, etc., he's receiving an alert. I could do this if I was interested in claymation, or 3D printing, or iPads in the art classroom. I'll have to experiment to make sure I'm not receiving a million unnecessary emails, but I could always do alerts on myself and my school. Let's see what people are saying. 

7. Every student is a person. Again, thanks, Kevin. I mean, I KNOW that the students I teach are people, obviously, but am I really treating them--all of them--with respect and showing them that I am glad they are in my class (I think so, but now I'm going to be watching). How am I reacting to students? Even the little things make a difference. If I sigh whenever a student asks me a question or don't try to reach a student who just sits there, head down, I may be missing out. What if I am the only one who ever shows a student that have worth, just by being who they are? This works with my own kids too.

6. If I wanted an easy job (and wanted to be rich)--I shouldn't have chosen teaching. This teaching business is a lot of work, both in and out, of the classroom--YOU KNOW THAT. And even when I am done my degree, I'm not done learning. It isn't like I think of 100 lessons and I teach those until I retire. Every day I am going to be thinking and changing and learning something new for myself and my students. But if I want to teach my students to be lifelong learners, I need to model that!

5. You need to make time to try technology, but you don't have to do it alone. Kathy and Laura from Antioch University spoke about that. There's a lot of technology out there. It's overwhelming, I know. But, baby steps! I need to talk to others, see what they've tried, try a few APPs, websites, and programs and share what I've learned. I can also have the students review things and share their findings--I don't have to go it alone! I can ask for help!

4. We need to teach students HOW to behave on their "digital playgrounds" and be open to change. I know students are using technology, but it can be used for so much more that social media! They know how to use the devices, but I'm going to teach them how to use these devices for so much more! Think of all the teachable moments that will arise when students are experiencing this new way of working. Those teachable moments can BE the lesson! Also, I need to not be so worried about what software or APPs I'm using, APPs come and go, what I am teaching my students is bigger--how  to be LEARNERS, no matter what the tools.

3. Make it relevant for the students--projects and technology can help! Kathleen McClaskey from Ed Tech Assoc. spoke about that. I'm trying to give my students more choice--I know, it's scary! But when I personalize learning to the students, I allow them to make the learning relevant to them and take ownership of their learning. I'm starting small by having students choose the subject matter (while I choose the media) and vise versa! Also making technology one of the tool choices in a project or two. Some students won't choose it, but some will--maybe even those students who "don't like art."

2. Grad credit can be found in surprising places! Ok, so this one may not interest you, but it was pretty neat to me! As I've said before, I'm going to Grad school at Plymouth State University. At this conference, I noticed THREE different ways to earn grad credit--just for learning things I wanted to know already! If you decide to go back to school, check out the options your school offers for alternative options for earning credits--you can customize your learning to suit your needs and interests. Thank you PSU!

1. There's so much to learn! And learning can be fun! Attitude, attitude, attitude! Do I want my students to be overwhelmed by all of the stuff they need to know? Trust me, some of them are already! And sometimes I feel this way about all the stuff I need to know to include technology in my classroom. But learning can be fun! Hopefully my students don't think I know everything--'cause I most certainly do not! But *hopefully* they are seeing me be interested in learning and trying new things. Sure, not everything I do is successful, but that's OK, and it's OK for them too.

Of course, I learned so much more! I learned about all sorts of APPs and websites and techy things to check out. Did I need to go to a Tech Conference to learn the things above? Probably not, but If I hadn't gone to this conference I wouldn't have met the amazing people I did and get all jazzed up by learning all of these wonderful things all in one day!

ENJOY!

My Bear Mask With Plaster Gauze

I'm going to Grad School at Plymouth State University in NH to become certified to teach art. I'm having a great time and learning so much!

This is meant to have the face be vertical,
but my background wasn't big enough! Sorry!

The class I'm taking this semester is Art Methods and Materials For Elementary Education and it is SO FUN! We get to make art! Oh yeah, and write lesson plans and research papers...BUT, MAKE ART!

As a mom of four and doing all sorts of other things over the years, I don't make time for my own art--I'm not sure what my own art even is after all this time. But, I've been enjoying making art for this class. The last project we did was create a mask using plaster gauze. I had done this about a million years ago when I was in high school, so I was excited to think about possibilities for my grown-up mask.

We were challenged to create a mask that represents us in some way and it needed to have some sort of extension of some kind (we could use Cellu-clay, plaster gauze, cardboard, etc. to make the extensions).

Ahhh...the possibilities! I started to think about what I would be known for at the end of my life and I thought, "Well, people would say I was a mom." Of course, this is among other things, but I take my mom job very seriously :-)

I thought about creating a totem pole on my mask of all of the totem animals of my children, husband, and I, but as I designed it, I didn't really like how it was going. Then I focused on me. My totem animal, right now, is the bear. So here I am wearing a bear mask over a human mask, because there's always a part of me that I keep private.

I love constellations, so I have Ursa Major and Minor in the night sky. I love silhouettes too, so on the left, under Ursa Minor, you'll see my four little cubs. My daughter's the last cub scurrying to catch up to her brothers. My oldest son is turning back and watching over his siblings (just like in real life). And, on the right, there's mom, under the constellation of Ursa Major.

I'm happy with the way the mask came out--I had wanted to incorporate twigs and beads and such, but I stopped here to rest for a bit and think. I really enjoyed making this project and I could see making a series of masks: a marriage mask, a Mrs. P-only mask, an artist mask...I think it would be interesting to see all of the masks I wear.

So what are you making lately? Are you inspired by the projects you teach your students?