Well, I'm not sure exactly where to begin with this post. And it has the potential to be a tad long! For quite some time I have been wanting to find a way to use art and technology together in a meaningful way, not just using some new app to yet again skew someone's face a certain way, but in a way that has long standing value. I thought about it for a couple of years and one day the idea just came. It's the Crazy Colorful Colorwheel Project. The project partners school students in one country with students in another country. It's in its infancy, but who knows where it might go! The point of the project is to communicate with another country, people group, or culture via technology and apps such as Skype and Drop Box, while using art as the exchange point. The color wheel is fundamental to art, and science for that matter. The idea is that students in one country either do a group project, team projects, or individual projects where they use the color wheel for inspiration and make a piece of ART, not a teaching poster about the colorwheel. The projects the students make will hopefully reveal something about their culture. Between Skyping, sharing of images and videos, and sharing art, hopefully students will be given a vehicle to learn more about each other. Young elementary school students can learn about life in another country. Extensions for this project are endless. That's another great aspect of the project. So that is a summary.
My students' projects just flat out amazed me. They were all so different. Several did posters with different themes and designs. Some did projects that were very creative and didn't involve any financial expenditure, or hardly any. For example, one girl filled water bottles with water and food coloring and displayed them in a circle. One girl crocheted a huge, beautiful flower all by herself. Another girl took photos of herself in various positions of a cartwheel, cut them out, and then colored the black and white photos in color wheel order, and then placed them on a poster board in order with a fun border. Very cute! Quite a few did interesting paintings-one that stands out in my memory was a zebra with color wheel stripes. There were ball caps, and baseball bases, tutus, cupcakes, painted lightbulbs on a spinning wheel, a giant origami bird with color wheel feathers, umbrellas, birdhouses, and so, so, so much more. You'll have to see the slide show below. There is a photo of every student project. A couple aren't represented in the slide show. Two girls made wonderful Power Points and a boy did an amazing video. It's on the Crazy Colorful Color Wheel website. We gave several awards including Grand and Reserve Champion Overall, and then there were categories for awards including most colorful, neat and tidy, most unique, best use of technology, and a few others. Grand Champion went to an incredible bicycle wheel with paint chips attached to it in color wheel order. It could easily be a piece of art that someone hangs on their wall. Second place was a gorgeous handmade tissue paper flower. The girl who made all the flowers, very tedious, taught several of my students how to make the flower petals using a golf ball as a base to wrap the pieces around. Very clever.
Now, the first exchange happened between my third graders at Folsom Elementary School in Prosper, Texas and a The American School of Monterrey, Mexico (an English speaking school) this past April and May. I met a young art teacher, Barbara Martinez, at the NAEA National Convention when she came to a session I led on the C.A.R.E. Project which is the umbrella I have created over some of these projects which have the intent of teaching my students about the greater world and the people they share the world with. My students completed their projects, Barbara and I emailed a LOT, then we had a day at school when we Skyped together, with the help of our wonderful technology departments. Students shared significant things about their community, my students shared their art projects, and we will soon have images of the school in Mexico's projects. It really was an amazing moment. Of course, this kind of thing is becoming fairly normal in this day and age, but it certainly didn't happen in the two room country school house I went to in elementary school where everyone looked alike and had the same cultural interests. I'm very curious to see how this project blossoms and blooms and how the "color wheel spins," so to speak.
For more information on the project you can go to: www.tinyurl.com/crazycolorfulcolorwheelproject
Here is a slide show of my student's individual projects, remember they were third graders:
Here is a picture of us Skyping with Mexico: (This pic is coming soon! I have to find them!)
