KIndergartners are busy coloring as they finish their wearable art for the K-tea.
We're practicing our Kindergarten Song non-stop!
I took this animated gif picture using the free Cinemagram app.

Thank you so much to all those who chimed in when Suzanne Tiedemann, art teacher in New Jersey, asked for adjectives to send to the Golden Apple Foundation on my behalf as they make their decisions about this coveted award via this tweet:
"Golden Apple asked 4 adjectives 2 describe @fuglefun! Innovative Transformative Global Want 2 offer up a few #artsed PLN" 
Below (or here) is the response she collected (all on the same day). Thank you so much everyone for your kindness and support! It's like one big virtual group hug!
No matter the outcome, I'm a winner to have such great friends!

I have more good news to share about our super cute Fugleflick, Elementary Musical.
I had entered it into the NextVista.org online student video contest back in March and just learned today that it was chosen as a finalist! (This is only the second Fugleflick ever to be chosen as a finalist in their contests. Our first one was Careers in Art-Student Video of the Year 2011.) There are three strands they will select winners from.

Teacher Strand:
Two Color Reduction Prints: http://www.nextvista.org/two-color-reduction-prints/
Plate Tectonics: http://www.nextvista.org/plate-tectonics_examples/
How to Determine Density: http://www.nextvista.org/how-to-determine-density/

Student Strand:
Nazca Lines: http://www.nextvista.org/nazca-lines/
How Glowsticks Work: http://www.nextvista.org/how-glowsticks-work/
Movie Tips and Tricks: http://www.nextvista.org/movie-tips-and-tricks/
Greek Culture Rap: http://www.nextvista.org/greek-culture-rap/

Collaboration Strand:
(note that two are on the same topic)
States of Matter: http://www.nextvista.org/states-of-matter/
What Is Matter?: http://www.nextvista.org/what-is-matter/
Elementary Musical: Art Is Not Accidental: http://www.nextvista.org/elementary-musical-art-is-not-accidental/
How To Fail a Speech: http://www.nextvista.org/how-to-fail-a-speech/

A group of several dozen teachers from around the world are currently reviewing the videos and casting their votes.  Sometime on Friday, April 20th, they will post the winners of the contest, so keep an eye out for that announcement.

Second Graders are transforming themselves into Superheroes to defend the pillars of character in this back lit silhouette graphic. They had to use body language to communicate their super powers as they work to make our world a better place. See their images here.

Last night I received some amazing photos from a district wide student art show as it was being hung for their big gala tonight. The photos showed the Different is Good project created by students in four elementary schools in this one district in South Brunswick, New Jersey. 
Back in 2008-2009 I designed the Different is Good project as a way to foster positive conversations with my 2nd graders about diversity while working on a figure drawing with color balance. We read Dr. Seuss' Book, the Sneetches and learned that whether your belly had a star or none upon thars a sneetch is a sneetch. And no sneetch is best on the beach. They all embraced the message as they worked on creating a self-portrait arm in arm with a very different friend (real or imaginary). I introduced this project again this year when I started receiving feedback that other art teachers are trying it with their classes. 
Here is our newest batch of Different is Good.
Here is our original batch of Different is Good images from 08-09 second graders.
Here is a link to my lesson write up on the Teaching Palette Blog
Here is a link to an animated version of Dr. Seuss' Sneetches on youtube

Take a look our project created by art students from New Jersey schools on display in their art show below:

I was asked today by Melissa, art teacher in a Cincinnati Jr. High, to relay my experience rotoscoping with my 5th graders on iPads.
I had mapped out a plan a long while back as to how I was going to approach this lesson and found that I did made some modifications along the way.

1. Students created a short video (Learned that adding transitions like fading out doesn't translate well when student did a contour line drawing-skip that next time)
2. Convert the video to jpgs (try using MPEG Stream Clip (free download) Here is my  screencast showing you how to do this.
3. Dropped the images into Dropbox (They were all 001-335 already so everything was in order)
4. Assigning images to students (I was taking too much time with this process. I should have just written the image numbers on tickets and have a bucket for them to grab from. Then later when I needed to reject an image, which I did many times on my quality control checks, I would just put the number back into the bucket)
5. Import into layer in Brushes (yes----but they draw in a layer over the photo then hide the photo under the white layer before the turn it in. If they followed directions then it worked. If they drew on the photo layer. they wasted their class time. UGH!)
6. Uniform protocol (We all chose solid black lines size 3, full opacity and decided how to deal with difficult parts of the video together)
7. Turned back the art via email (They wrote their name and image number under the drawing in digital ink in Brushes and used the Subject line of the email to tell me again their name and image number) 
8.Collect the images (I grabbed the images from email and renamed them by number and artist ie, "007jessica" Everything neatly stacked up in the folder. So I dropped them all into imovie with .2sec no effects and made the movie. It was too slow at first. So I exported it-reimported it and used the speed adjustments to make it faster. I tried gifninja to make an animation of some in-progress images.
9. Tweak and turn in (we were able to submit it to Rotoball 12 after we cropped it to 15 seconds and added the ball in and ball out as required)

For more information see the post that has all the links for this project here.
Below is our amazing collaborative ipad generated original Rotoscoped animation by 5th graders!