Creativity Express selected as Best Upper Elementary Art Education Website   

      The ComputED Gazette honored Creativity Express as a winner of its 16th Annual Education Software Review Awards. The EDDIE Awards target innovative and content-rich programs and websites that augment the classroom curriculum and improve teacher productivity, providing parents and teachers with the technology to foster educational excellence. Some selection criteria are academic content, potential for broad classroom use, technical merit, subject approach and management system. Winners are selected from titles submitted by publishers around the world.

      Creativity Express Online was additionally selected for a comprehensive product review. The award committee summed up the review with this excerpt:

“In a time when budgetary cutbacks are impacting the visual arts programs in schools, Creativity Express offers a reasonably priced, enriching outlet for parents, schools, after-school and home school programs, addressing this vital educational need. Clearly, this holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to art education will help develop the well-rounded student needed in our complex world.”

    Madcap Logic is pleased to add the EDDIE to our portfolio of Awards. “We have spent a this year focusing Creativity Express Online to address the needs of teachers through enhancements to the Account Center. Our teachers work extraordinarily hard, and class management is critical to their daily success. We want the teachers to have the resources they need to foster creativity and self-expression through the arts, without having to call the school technical director for assistance. The EDDIE Award proves that we are on track to provide an engaging and enriching curriculum through a simple web-based platform.” says CEO Elise Ruiz-Ramon.

      Tickles, Furnace, and Ruby celebrated with snow cones. “We’ve worked hard lately,” said Ruby, “Furnace tends to slouch, and I was continually telling him to stand up straight! Then he almost ate the award paperwork. Fortunately we were close to refrigerator, and I was able to save the forms.” Furnace was unable to comment, as his mouth was full. Tickles was tickled, and tweeted all her friends the good news.

Madcap Logic's “Creativity Express” is awarded ComputEd Gazette’s BESSIE award for

Best Upper Elementary Art Education Website.

The Best Educational Software Awards “target innovative and content-rich programs and websites that provide parents and teachers with the technology to foster educational excellence.

Winners are selected from titles submitted by publishers around the world.”

For a full list of winners, and more information about the ComputED Gazette and the BESSIE Awards visit:

http://computedgazette.com/page3.html

For a compete list of the Creativity Express portfolio of Awards, visit:

http://www.madcaplogic.com/awards.php 

In my research in art museums many parents tell me they don’t feel comfortable taking children to the art museum. Their reasons vary. Some don’t feel knowledgeable enough about art and fear looking stupid. Others perceive there is nothing for children to do there and are concerned that either the children will damage something or be bored.

Most art museums offer a variety of enjoyable family programs and that are a good way to become familiar with the museum. Check the museum’s website for the family events schedule. Hint: Sometimes museuum websites hide the family programs under the “Education” tab. In addition, many art museums have interactive family galleries where everyone can have a hands-on, minds-on experience with art. Admittedly some art museums are more “family-friendly” than others but here are a few tips for getting the most out of a visit to any art museum.

1. Be curious. Let go of the idea that you need to be an expert. Children don’t worry about this, they just follow their interests. Keep in mind that typical visitor behavior in art museums is more like haphazard grazing than eating a full meal from start to finish, so let children “graze” according to their interests. Some interests will be momentary and others will be more sustained. Rather than feel you have to answer children’s questions, help them follow up on their own questions, ponder possibilities, and seek answers from someone at the museum, if possible, in books, and online.

2. Visit frequently. A trip to the art museum is not like a vaccination – once you’ve seen it you don’t need it again. Every time you go you discover something else, even if you look at the same art each time. A family museum membership is a good value and allows you to make many short visits, avoiding fatigue, and children wishing they were somewhere else. Visit often enough to feel comfortable there and learn your way around. Children like to feel an ownership of public institutions.

3. Plan ahead and be picky. Many visitors try to see the entire art museum in one visit. If you take repeated shorter visits then each visit can be focused on one part of the museum. Check on the museum’s website for exhibitions and collections on view. Let children participate in planning what to do. Explore the website further because many art museums, such as the Walters Art Museum, have special child-friend interactive sites.

4. Seek inspiration. Even if an art museum has no special family gallery or family programs when you visit, experience the museum as an artist might. Bring along sketchbooks (adults need to do this too) and color pencils. Most museums allow sketching in the galleries with pencils but check the policy. When you tire of standing and looking, find a place to sit and sketch. Some museums even allow you to sit on the floor but check that too. If there is a sculpture garden and the weather is nice, that’s a great place to sketch and maybe even have a snack – but remember, no food or drink in the museum galleries.

These are just a few ideas to get you started but there are many more. For example, Australian researcher, Katrina Weier, has good ideas for taking young children to the art museum. as does Erica Loop and Abby Margolis Newman.

The most important thing is to go, relax, and have a good time. So take your inner artist to an art museum!

Thanks for the great photos to Johnnie Utah, hoyasmeg at the High Museum of Art’s Greene Family Gallery in Atlanta, and the Speed Art Museum, ArtSparks in Louisville KY.

This week we had the distinct pleasure of speaking withDr. Marianna Adams of Audience Focus, who has been heavily involved with designing the curriculum for Creativity Express.

Dr Adams was an arts teacher in a former life, and then moved into art, youth and education, finally working in evaluation and research for museums, primarily art museums and performing arts organizations. She works with free choice (voluntary, non sequential and learner centric) learning environments or learning when you don’t have to – where most of our learning takes place, by the way, to bring them into equal standing with formal education sites such as schools.

The arts have historically had a difficult time claiming their place in our lives, in terms of whether they should just be for the ‘talented’ or whether they complete the education of a whole person. It seems becoming an artist is almost a mythical experience in terms of career opportunities and as Dr Adams suggests, it is important to demonstrate particularly to kids in junior high, how to create a career in the arts. But this is not to say that our plumbers, doctors, teachers etc should be excluded from experiencing their own artistry. Indeed, it might be for the greater good if we were all reconnected with the role the arts play in our lives. Art is intrinsically good for us.

As the current economic crisis takes hold we may see a hard road for what remains of the arts in formal education. Many museums have stepped up in its place but can never replace an art teacher in your school. Family art programs at your museum work wonders if you can afford to go, but ultimately we as parents need to get in touch with our own creativity. If we remain curious about art, we encourage our children naturally to embrace it in a non-critical fashion. Young children take joy in simple forms of art, as we do.

So as Valentine’s Day approaches, take a Buddhist like simple view of the beauty around you and be curious about its form, shape and color in the moment. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you are doing, just slow down to appreciate all the art we have around us. We hope you enjoy this wonderful conversation with Marianna as much as we did!

Unleash your everyday genius!

With thanks to carf for their art!

In his discussions of the arts and education, Eliot Eisner in his book, “The arts and the creation of mind”, states that the arts teach us to make good judgments while suggesting that problems have more than one solution; they teach us to embrace multiple diverse perspectives and to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of work as it unfolds; they allow us to communicate in ways unlimited by language and numbers and about the foundation of chaos theory — that small acts can have large effects. The arts also teach us to think through and within a material while exploring what cannot be said; and provide us with experiences we cannot access through any other source. But perhaps most importantly, Eisner claims, the ways in which the arts relate to curriculum communicates to the young what it is that adults value. The arts socialize us.

So how do we begin to craft an artistic curriculum? In the most recent issue of the journal Edutopia, teachers from around the nation discuss how they have grounded and built art into their curricula across a variety of subjects. Some incorporate field trips into any topic under study; Sandy Riggle has her geometry students explore reflections, rotations, enlargements and dilations, not to mention symmetry in Escher’s work, alongside research into the mediums used and attributes of the works. In Kansas, students create song lyrics around famous people and dances for mathematical operations, while making mini movies using Windows about the Middle Ages. Other students, similar to our blog on sensazione, create pictures based on the music they hear. These artistic intersections allow students to work several areas of their brains at once as well as unlock their creativity by mixing up media. February is Black History Month = you could always do what one school does and use this as a theme for the month, exploring Black artists over the ages as well as traditionally Black art forms and theirhistories!

If you are looking for something different to do with your own budding artists or just want to expand your own repertoire and mix it up a little, a good place for inspiration is connected to this blog.

Go ahead! Let’s get started with Art!

With thanks to Whirling Phoenix for the beautiful photo!

“Art has been the means of keeping alive the sense of purposes that outrun evidence and of meanings that transcend indurated habit.” John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934).

An artistic or arts based education is well known to have wide reaching impacts on the development of character not to mention physical coordination and mental agility. While it can also be very challenging to integrate such a perspective and commitment in the classroom, the importance of developing a creative spirit and intelligence enables us, as Dewey says to sustain our purpose and meaning when evidence evades us. So how can we keep this spirit alive?

Sometimes it is about building creativity into the very environment and everyday life you inhabit through art on the walls, sculptures, photos, fabrics, and creative tools close at hand so when someone asks to work creatively, there is something for them to work with, be it crayons, clay, paint, feathers, dirt etc. Other times it is about visiting with artists in their studios, taking art lessons with others, going on art walks or visiting museums where you can be exposed to works of art and can engage in some yourself. There are also times to explore the arts alongside other lessons; for example, my students in intercultural communication may focus on a culture and the kinds of art or creative expression that culture uses to communicate its values. In Kenya, for example, the beads women make and wear communicate social status, age, community etc.

But nourishing the creative spirit doesn’t always have to focus on work. Studies now show that recess or play times for children in and out of school prove valuable as this is their time to experiment with creativity and imagination in social interaction with others. Then there are the ‘toys’ or any objects with which we play — and the simpler they are, the more creativity is used in constructing them in multiple forms! Building blocks made of old pieces of off cast wood (even better if the kids have painted them or worked the wood and oiled them up); felt toys sewn by small hands or even handmade felt where kids can see just how wool, soap and hot water do their magic then craft their own special something for someone; or how about creating your own musical instruments, with pots, pans, strings, cardboard and don’t forget the plastic comb wrapped in paper? Chances are good that if you cast your mind back to your own childhood, you will find some very imaginative ways to keep your own creative spirit alive. If you run out of ideas, check out the Invention Playhouse. It’s a true treasure trove for curious and creative minds!

So go ahead, take some time out to create a creative environment to sustain your creative spirit and play…….!

With thanks as always to our artists — Today is a good day, and spinnerin

As promised last week, welcome to Madcap Logic’s second podcast, and this time with our special guest, Dr.Rhonda Robinson from Northern Illinois University. Dr Robinson works with educational technology and assessment as well as teacher training for technology and has spent her career working around ideas of visual learning and literacy.

Originally an English teacher in middle school, Rhonda was very interested in media literacy and language arts and began to pursue media production in

her masters and doctorate degree. Beginning with ‘old media’, Rhonda’s techniques now span into the digital realm, encouraging students to analyze imagery from newspapers and also video, tapping into kids’ (and their teachers’) natural creative abilities.

Rhonda has used our Creativity Express program to teach her masters students color and composition, expanding their practical orientation to consider the aesthetic dimensions of the images they and their students create. Rhonda believes that we learn first through vision but the verbal orientation of schools has privileged verbal learners. Whether or not we have natural inclinations towards art, these skills can be developed over time. Images provide us with an easy door to learning, and it may be that we learn more through them than more literary or verbal texts because we have a reduced resistance to them.

Dr Robinson therefore, believes that visual literacy should complement and supplement other forms of literacy in education to aid diverse learners in the classroom. Teachers of reading in particular, have embraced this entire collection of literacies, as have teachers of science and mathematics. Integrating technology into the classroom, as opposed to having it shut out of the lesson or considered something different, is critical as visual literacy involves not only encoding or the creation of the image but also decoding, that is, how we select meanings for the same image and messages. This is increasingly important in a digital age with our ability to manipulate images!

We hope you enjoy our conversation with Rhonda! There is much to be learned from this fascinating conversation around the renewed importance of art and visual literacy in our contemporary times and its contribution to citizenship.

With thanks to lakewentworth for his art!

As discussed earlier this week, one of the 7 Da Vincian principles put forward by Michael Gelb in his book, “How to think like Leonardo da Vinci” is the principle of Sensazione or the refinement and development of sensory intelligence, especially sight as a way of enlivening experience.Recently, I was working with medical students and my colleague was discussing how different visual and auditory learners were in terms of the ways in which they approached the classroom, whether they took notes and even how they paraphrased what someone was saying. In this digital age, what kinds of learners exist and where does learning occur? How can we provide them with the necessary literacy tools to make sense of the sheer volume of information coming at them?

We recently had the opportunity to pose such questions to Dr Rhonda Robinson, a renowned educator and trainer of teachers and an international expert in visual literacy (look for her podcast coming to this blog next week!). In the realm of the mash-up where any image can be modified using photo shop, Dr Robinson has spent years encouraging children, young adults and graduate students to consider the ways in which images are produced, interpreted and consumed. Whether cutting up comic strips from newspapers as she did with middle school students or using Creativity Express to encourage the artists within her masters level graduate students, Dr Robinson has been a strong advocate for improving visual literacy, media literacy and now also digital literacy.

So what is visual literacy? The term “Visual Literacy” was first coined in 1969 by John Debes, one of the most important figures in the history of International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA). Debes’ offered (1969b, 27) the following definition of the term:

“Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he encounters in his environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, he is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication.”

In an environment where “learning occurs everywhere” because of our access to technologies such as the television and the Internet, it would seem that improving Sensazione by paying attention to the images presented to us on a daily basis, asking questions about how they got to be the way they are, de-constructing them to see the alternative ways they could be put together and appreciating the perspectives different ‘readers’ of these images bring to bear might open up some interesting conversations about the world around us. It can be as simple as clipping out a newspaper cartoon or two and having your children rearrange them; or taking a variety of images and creating a collage; even buying a disposable camera and allowing children to take pictures of their daily lives (I did this once and it was so enlightening) a la Born into Brothels, a film sponsored by the organization Kids with Cameras. And just in case you think it is only children who appreciate such activities, click here to expand your own Sensazione (you have to love the way that word sounds – what image comes to mind?)!

With thanks to Mzelle Biscotte for their wonderful work!