Course Re-Design Information



What is This Course? How Will It Be Taught?
This course is called Visual Art and Technology. This class is an introduction to digital art making. The class covers several adobe programs and the use of digital cameras and a many computer skills necessary to become a graphic designer, digital photographer and more. The class also focuses on design principles and thematic conceptualization. The class is taught 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week in a classroom with about 30 students.  The class is currently made up of 30% instructional time and 70% studio time to conceptualize, plan, produce, critique and so on.

Learners: Who are the learners? What do you know about them that might make a difference in what you design?  (Think about age, prior knowledge, familiarity with technology)
The learners are high school students. The learners will come to the class with a wide range of technical skills and conceptual knowledge. A majority of the students will have never used some of the computer programs that I will be teaching and most will not have taken much art previous to this course. Some students may lack computer skills and confidence to navigate and implement even the most basic technologies.  Therefore, my design must allow easy access to information, easy to use/navigate and include a differentiated approach to learning that will appeal to the wide variety of learning styles in the classroom.

Things that are working well in my course.  This can be related to what or how you teach, how students respond, or about the technology.  What do you like about teaching this course?
A majority of students leave the classroom feeling much more confident with technologies such as adobe programs, digital cameras, flash drives, smart phones, Google drive functions, and many basic windows operations. A good percentage of students are very engaged by the concepts explored in the class as well. So, I like the technical skills and conceptual lessons that make up the core content of this class. I love seeing student grow dramatically in their confidence to use technology, design and imagery to express their ideas.



Things  that I’d like to change about my course.  Again, what drags you down?  It could be technology, disinterested students, lack of discussion, etc.
I believe that the high school students need the structure of the face to face classroom environment. However, some students have really thrived from using online tools, and I would like to expand on this. I also see the potential for an increase of online methods to open up more time for me to help struggling students one on one during class time.  I would like to find a better balance of traditional teaching vs. online teaching through more thoughtful curriculum design.

The most frustrating or irritating aspect of my course as I am currently teaching it is:
Not having enough time to help students individually when needed.
Not having up to date equipment such as new adobe programs and computers that are powerful enough to explore animation and video. The current computers crash a lot and are not able to process animation and video.

The most time consuming aspect of my course as I am currently teaching it is:
Planning curriculum (researching techniques and ideas for projects)
Designing online tutorials and blogs
Giving feedback to students based on their performance

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