Many art rooms have document cameras and interactive boards. But not many art rooms can use them both at the same time. Most fancy expensive document cameras connect to your projector on a separate stream from the interactive board which is mirroring your computer. So you have to switch sources from one to the other. However, when you use a usb document camera, like iPEVO's, your can use them both together. This has been extremely helpful in my art room. I was using it all day today with a collage project. Below you can see that I wanted to teach the students to draw half of a vase on the folded side of their paper. I was able to freeze the image and draw over it, label it with digital ink, and draw without really drawing so I could demonstrate what to do and what not to do as well as any other helpful information alongside (see the second image below).

MimioConnect is an online community of teachers generating and sharing interactive resources created in Mimio. This software is available for free for both Mac and PC.
When my Art Education PLN began discussing spinner games for the classroom, I immediately thought of Mimio software. Instead of spending lots of money, you can make it for free, change it with a few clicks, add music, and store it all digitally.

I logged into my MimioConnect account and found this spinner, downloaded it, customized it in a few minutes and now it's ready to use. Download my version here.

We LOVE our interactive board in the art room. It gets used everyday in almost every class period in so many different ways. I started collecting ideas a while back for how we use our IWB and began a wiki to share some of our lessons. I love to use Mimio Studio software for building interactive games since they offer a free download of the software, a community site to share files, and PC and MAC users are all welcome. I use mimio on a polyvision board. It doesn't matter what the IWB brand is since the software running on my computer creates the interactivity experience.

As I was preparing to teach this collage lesson to my 4th graders based on Pablo Picasso's Old Guitarist, I thought that a scramble/reassemble activity would be a fun way to encourage students to study the image. This could be done a number of ways, but I thought I'd try to make it digitally in Mimio Studio. 
                 -->This file can be downloaded here<--
In the tutorial below you can see how to play the puzzle with varying levels of difficulty and how to make one yourself using keynote and preview (on a Mac) along with Mimio Studio. All this has been added to my Art is Interactive Wiki here.

This is the time of year where I reflect on what worked and what I would like to do differently in my classroom. Classroom management is one of the biggest issues for any teacher, but I think even more so for Arts Educators who service the entire school population. I have over 500 students in and out of my art room all week long. Our time is limited yet I want to make it rich and meaningful. So, strategies that prevent disruptions and encourage good listening, following directions, and make clean up run smoothly are very important.

Here is a list of some of my resources:

• Push up your Sleeves- (39 second video) Students made this Fugleflick to visually demonstrate how you should enter the art room. Sometimes I run it in quicktime and set it to loop. I hold an sign in my hand that says, "Do what the video says".
• The Pencil Exchange- (40 second video) This video is like a commercial for how the pencil exchange works. It saves me from explaining it to every class at the beginning of the school year. I show it once to every group. They all completely understand how it works after this viewing and I rarely have to say a thing more all year long.
• The Scoreboard- (digital file) I use this image and run it through BlockPosters.com to enlarge it to the size of my bulletin board. This scoreboard keeps track of behavior for each class all school year long. Every group gets 4 points per class:          1 pt for Listening, 1pt for Showing Respect, 1pt for Being Polite, 1pt for clean up.         We work our way to a "star" to receive a prize (Shhhh! I'll let you in on a secret. The prize is usually a smiley faced eraser cap and a lesson on being kind to your erasers).
• Clean Up Digital Organizer- (for Interactive Whiteboard) This digital file was made in mimio studio which you can download for free for PC or Macs. I use this to organize clean up when students know what "number" they are. I put a number on their seats, but you can have them pick numbers from popsicle sticks, or something similar. Watch this screen cast video to learn how I use it. Find more of my interactive mimio resources to download along with screen cast demonstrations on my Art is Interactive Wiki.

Here is one video I made a few summers back as a result of my reflections on the school year. It's called the LISTEN PLEA. It is literally a song and dance routine that teaches the specific components of good listening (there are four-quiz students afterwards).  I have used it from time to time as a refresher for my students when they stop listening to me. They seem to want to listen to my video though-go figure!?