Category: 1

I grabbed my video camera to show you this AMAZING occurrence in the art room. When students learned how to rotoscope on the ipad this is what it looked (and sounded) like.

Years ago we tried a rotoscope project with a very motivated small group of third graders. They created an animation, divided it up into still frames, drew a contour line drawings over each frame, and deleted the photos. We used FLASH software and the interactive board to draw. The process took 3 months of 15 minute recesses. But the results are amazing!! It's hard to believe that 8 / 9 year olds made the rotoscoped video below:

UPDATE!!!
Today a bunch of images were finished and turned in to me via email. I started sequencing them and saw the animation forming. Here is our sneak peak of what's to come! Isn't this going to be cool? If it isn's animating for you below, than use this link to view it online
at gifninja.com

Modern Escher Moment 02/16/2012

My fifth graders came to art for their first day of Rotoscoping on their iPads. They plan to turn their little movie into an animation created by line drawings over each of the 300 or so still frames of this video (see at bottom of this post). As I watched them draw using our new styluses on the class set of iPads I captured an MC Escher moment where a hand draws a hand, but this time digitally. We hope that all 100 5th graders will each create three drawings that will all be combined into one digital animation. If it works out, we hope to enter it in Rotoball 2012.

Here is the animation video that they are planning to rotoscope. They designed it to loop over and over again so the 15 second animation could run endlessly.

Happy Valentine's Day from our 1st Graders 02/13/2012

Created on the iPad by first graders. Students had to go through a series of steps to locate the heart template, download it to the iPad from my website, import it as a layer into the brushes app, select the layer beneath to paint on with a resized brush, and their own color choice. Students had to learn the digital tools for trouble shooting (undo, eraser, eye dropper, and some discovered a way to use the paint bucket to quickly fill). Students were to paint the negative space of one side and the positive space of the other, create a digital tint of their color by sliding the selector closer to white, and paint the remaining spaces. Then, they emailed their artwork to me when it was complete. As a special Valentine's gift, I ran their digital artwork through the Wordfoto app which magically transformed their work into a Valentine.

Our Wish for the World 02/09/2012

Third graders were challenged to create a four letter wish for the world in the style of Robert Indiana's LOVE image. Then, they composed a short statement explaining their choice. The art and the text were combined using an iPhone/iPad app called Wordfoto. This app puts the words into the image in an artistic way. Take a close look at these wishes below and you can not only see their four letter wish, but also read within it their reasons why they chose this word and it's meaning to them. Please compliment these artists on our online gallery on Artsonia. Find their work:
Look at the original artwork gallery here.
Look at the Wordfoto gallery here.
Interested in the handout I used to generate ideas and artist statements? Click here.

Accessing Images on iPads with Kindergartners 12/09/2011

It was only a theory when I first posted my thoughts on how to teach my kindergartners how to access their digital template for making their digital snowmen paintings.
View my video of how I planned to teach this here.
This past week was our first experience trying to see how kindergartners could handle all the steps, concepts, and button pushing necessary to do this technique. It took every moment of my 1/2hr art class to walk them through the steps from turning on the wifi to importing the saved image into the Brushes App, but WOW they did it! I don't know how I would do this without the Apple TV. I need to walk around the room, demo, and show my screen all at once to do a really good job and Apple TV's ability to mirror my iPad exactly is perfect for this!

My Puppet Pal Fairy Tale- Storytelling on the iPad 11/30/2011

There are so many ways for students to tell their stories on the iPad. It took no time at all to create this very unrehearsed and spontaneous fairy tale using the free version of the Puppet Pals HD App. It gives you the option to make customized characters and settings for a price (which would be very cool) but everything you see here was free. Explore the app here.

Accessing Images for iPad Art Projects 11/29/2011

One of the challenges of doing iPad art projects is giving students access to the images they need to complete their project. Usually I use the dropbox app (sign up for free here http://db.tt/8OXEHNn ). But when you're working with the younger students, like kindergartners, logging in and reading file names would be hard to do. So I finally figured out a really easy solution. Take a look. If you want to use my template, download it here.

Mirroring the iPads Wirelessly 11/09/2011

Our Apple TV, HD--> VGA converter, and HDMI male to male cable, and our art room iPad finally got connected today. Beth and I took some time to test the possibilities and filmed it for you to see. We really only explored a short time and already see this as a game changing way to manage iPad sharing and instruction in the classroom. Take a look below or go here.

I learned about Apple TV's ability to wirelessly mirror the iPad from a post by Scott Meech on EdReach.us. Read it here.