Ms. Gerrard's  Classroom

Today we learned about the proportions of the body (adult humans are typically 8 heads tall) and practiced blind contour, contour, and gesture drawings. Everyone took turns posing, which is always lots of fun. Then I rolled out our new skeleton - students named it Alex - and our manikins and womanikins (my made-up word for the female forms) and we practiced drawing the human body by breaking it down into basic shapes. It was amazing to see students' growth in just one class. We even had time to watch a quick blurb on Cirque De Soleil performers and understand through MRI scans how contortionists' bodies differ from the average humans.

Before I learned about Arduinos I had read about Makey-Makey boards.  I had read about this project in SchoolArts magazine.  It was the lightbulb moment that, for me, made me think we could create interactive art at Warman High.  I loaned a kit from the Saskatoon Public Library to try out with my daughter so I could better understand how it works (they have awesome tech kits that they loan for 3 weeks at a time).  The library kit came with a starter "how to" guide that led us to this website so that we could make our own piano out of celery sticks.  We had to do a little bit of trouble shooting (the tinfoil needed to be tighter against her wrist to ensure contact) but what I loved was that she naturally problem-solved and figured out solutions as we went.  After the celery experiment we tried the same thing but with pencil around the edges of a paper.  We found that we had to draw pretty dark lines with a pencil (a 6B would probably create a much stronger connection than our household HB pencil).  We also experimented with silver and gold sharpie, but there was no conductivity with those mediums.  

Up for a challenge?  Try downloading the Scratch program developed by users at MIT, and navigate to this pre-coded Piano.  Follow step-by-step instructions from project 12 in 20 Make Makey Projects for the Evil Genius.

These are some of the key STEAM projects we will be focusing on this year: 

• Purchasing a 3D printer for the school so we can bring designs to life using TinkerCAD
• Students in a science class will test Warman water using the Safe Drinking Water Foundation's kits and report their findings to students in an art class; the art class will respond to their findings using art
• Purchasing model skeletons to study anatomy
• Purchasing lenses to transform our cell phones into microscopes and create abstract artworks from photographs of various textures that have been magnified (see this tutorial)
• Purchasing either Makey-Makey boards or Arduinos to create interactive artworks
• Creating canvas artworks that light up with LEDs to create artworks that comment on global warming
• Purchasing a blacklight and UV markers to create artwork that light up with UV light
• Purchasing refurbished IPads so students can use apps to create artwork; for example: the sketch club app allows students to draw digitally, the stop motion app facilitates the creation of animated art, and the HP reveal app allows students to create interactive artworks.