Art teachers provide engaging opportunities for students to explore the world of media arts. Elementary students contribute 3D-printed prototypes and mini robots to a collaborative CAD sculpture garden, middle-school students apply the elements and principles while designing donuts in Microsoft Paint 3D, high-school students combine digitally altered photographs of hands to create a powerful narrative, and more.
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After using my first digital camera, I immediately realized that it wouldn’t negate the need to learn how to plan and execute an aesthetically pleasing image. It certainly couldn’t create intrigue, balance, and personal style. My job was to tell it what to do and how to do it. Learning to be adaptive is one of the greatest lessons I can share with my students.
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How can art teachers strengthen resilience in young learners? The following lesson was taught in a public elementary school to help young students learn basic ceramic techniques as well as resilience. Integrating children’s literature provided an example of how a nest of baby sea turtles used their resources, social supports, and problem-solving skills to survive.
When we think of traditional art projects in upper elementary art classrooms, visions of clay, watercolor paint, and construction paper come to mind. If you’re looking for an alternative, using Chromebooks to create hexagon compositions has proven to be an engaging option for my students. This project allows them to demonstrate their understanding of how artists layer shapes on top of shapes.
Engaging your students in a design project that incorporates creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and real-world applications can inspire them to think innovatively while igniting curiosity and empathy in their artistic process. I love giving my fifth-grade classes a collaborative, design-centered challenge to solve. My goal in creating this unit was to encourage risk-taking and coming up with solutions to the challenges of creating a prototype.
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As a media arts teacher, I am always on the lookout for interesting, immersive, and inspirational projects for my students. While perusing my social media feed one day, I came across the work of Finnish photographer Christoffer Relander. His series We Are Nature caught my attention immediately. The dazzling display of multiple exposure photographs blurs the line between the natural world and the human form to create stunning images.
Let’s be honest—donuts are delicious, and designing one is a fun way for students to express themselves artistically. There are many different approaches to creating donut designs, ranging from the culinary arts to 3D modeling and, of course, striking designs created with conventional art materials. My sixth-grade students created donut designs using the free program Microsoft Paint 3D. The results were stunning, and each design was a unique piece of art.
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The symbolism of hands and touch became even more relevant during the pandemic; in particular, in the context of virtual versus “real” or in-person relationships and interactions. That’s when I decided to find space in my AP Photo class to combine photographs of hands interacting with a virtual feature. The resulting images were powerful examples of the use of line as a visual agent of emotion and story.
Students decided to go in the opposite direction from the enormity of space to explore the world of microbiology. Based on this decision, I introduced them to the paper sculptures of Rogan Brown. The challenge was to find a way for each student to contribute to a collaborative art project based on Brown’s work. The solution was for each student to create an imaginary paper microbe inspired by an actual microorganism.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force. I developed this AI-infused unit to help students learn about the technology while sharpening their creative skills. In this ever-changing digital age, it is the educator’s responsibility to prepare students for the issues and boundless possibilities AI has to offer, especially in artistic expression. I pose two questions to students: How can AI support us as creative people, and how can we use it ethically and responsibly?
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Dan Welden, artist, master printmaker, educator, and author, has been making art for more than sixty years. At the forefront of the alternative health and safety-oriented printmaking movement, he originated an etching technique called Solarplate and he co-authored the definitive manual on the process with Pauline Muir titled Printmaking in the Sun (Watson-Guptill, 2001).
