BIRTHDAYS

From "Sweet 16" to 68, we've celebrated birthdays among friends and family this week. I'm thinking about the celebrations of life, age, and change.

Birthday Cakes

One theory about the origin of the birthday cake is that it originated with the Greeks, who baked round cakes representing the full moon for their moon goddess, Artemis. They placed candles on the cake to make it glow, like the moon.
The Germans are also credited with the first cakes and candles. They used a sweet, layered cake and they put a large candle in the center of the cake to represent "the light of life." Some people believe the smoke from extinguished candles carries their birthday wishes up to heaven.

Music Motivates: If Everyone Cared ~ Every Day

Nickelbacks's song as student motivation for thinking, writing, drawing, acting?
Rascal Flatts song to inspire a character education writing actvity dealing with citizenship, empathy and social responsibility?

What's your passion? What do you CARE about? What would you change? How can you help?
(Great ideas from Johnathon Chase's Classroom 2.0 Page)

"I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do... Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performance of understanding that try matters are the ones we carry out as human beings in an imperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill." (Howard Gardner 1999: 180-181)

E-Learning

I'm thinking about the differences between online and traditional classes these days. I teach both...more to come.

Learning the Wiki Way: What is a Wiki?

I"ve created several wikis which focus on the integration of art education with other content areas. Viewing the You Tube is a great way to grasp the basic idea of what makes a wiki different from blogs or traditional web sites. The challenge is that most school systems block the wiki sites (and many other 21st Century Learning Tools). So that is a whole new post...using technology responsibly.
Meanwhile, get wiki with it...add your two cents...

ART TALK
http://arttalk.wetpaint.com/

ART at the HeART of Social Studies
http://artandsocialstudies.wetpaint.com/

The Art & Science Connection
http://artscience.wetpaint.com/

The Intersection of Art & Math
http://artmath.wetpaint.com/

Technology & Teachers

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
21st Century Learning
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is among my top 5 favorite bloggers. Check out her blog "used to explore, and create ideas around 21st century collaborative learning and virtual learning communities and how these communities can be used to help teachers and families become lifelong learners."

Networking

One of my many places to learn...

View all the resources on the "Main" page tab!

Reading blogs and creating your own blog: a great way to network.
You ask, "how do I do this?"

The Top 100 Photography Blogs (click here)

How I want a new SLR digital camera...let me count the ways. Which one? Any suggestions?

Collections

As I child, I collected. I still do. I remember the excitement of receiving stamps which were postmarked and from far away places; countries I may never physically be, but knew the stamp was there and the image gave me a sense of the place. I collected shells, rocks and beautiful stationery (of all things). I guess aesthetics and writing were early passions.

As a newly married woman, I collected cookbooks; as an elementary teacher, children's ABC books were collected from various states. My daughter collected snow globes.

As I move away from the importance of material things (running out of room for "stuff") and toward the value of experiences, I find myself looking for new adventures to add to my collection. I still like the tangible documentation though...a photograph for my blog will do.

So I was reminded of my stamp collection as I viewed the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum’s award-winning Web site Arago's featured collection titled “American Art on Postage Stamps: Telling the Story of a Nation,” which can be viewed at http://npm.si.edu/AragoAmericanArt.

From the first stamps issued by the United States in 1847 to the present day, many American postage stamps have featured important fine art produced by famous American artists.

What do you collect?

Ladders

I began my fascination with the symbolism of ladders when I viewed a picture of Martin Puryear's sculpture "Ladder for Booker T. Washington" shared by a friend and colleague for a presentation. We then coincidentally saw an exhibition of Puryear's work at the National Gallery of Art, during a workshop we attended in Washington D.C. The 36-foot-long ash and maple sculpture (Puryear's ladder) was riveting.

No, it was earlier; as a child, I really rebelled against the superstition of walking under ladders. I reversed this for myself, believing it was good luck to walk under a ladder (creating my own superstition).

Now I see the symbol as it relates to the "climb" in so many areas of my life. Symbols such as Puryear's sculpture do not represent a "top" or plateau. So what does this mean? For me there's always more; never an end to the journey, until the END, I guess. But then I believe I just start climbing a new ladder. What do you think?

"Colours of the Night"

How I wish I could visit the Van Gogh Museum.
Vincent Van Gogh once said: “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” I think I agree, at times...spoken like a true night owl.
Amsterdam, NL - From 13 February to 7 June 2009 the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will present the exhibition Van Gogh and the colours of the night, the first show to be devoted exclusively to the evening and night-time scenes by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). The Van Gogh Museum will be the only European venue for this unique exhibition. Van Gogh imbued his twilight and nocturnal scenes with a wealth of associations, heartfelt emotions and a poetic sense of ambience.