MUST SEE! VIEW STUDENT WORK ONLINE...
Fiddler on the Roof photo gallery
Art & Technology submissions for Google's annual student design contest
Art and Technology Catholic Schools' Week Posters
Take a look at this website posting art work that the Art & Technology class put together.
This is a self-portrait project conducted by students in our Art Seminar elective. They took a black and white photograph of themselves and then superimposed a transparent sheet that was then decorated in color. The effect is stunning!
Click to view the full slideshow.
This project was done by Art & Technology students attemping to imitate the (post)modernist style of artist Jackson Pollak.
The St. Jude Constitution Project.
Students in grades 5-8 are conducting a year long project which studies different aspects of the US Constitution and them applies them to the writing of a school constitution. Students are working in cooperative teams and conducting their work through a web tool known as a WIKI. That allows the teacher to post research links and other instructions about the project, while students can participate in collaborative discussions and writing. We are blessed to have a teacher who can think up such exciting projects and delighted at what the students have put together so far. Come visit and check out their progress.
• For a more academic example, you can read some of the papers that our 7th graders composed in their Internet and Writing class. For most of these students, this was their first real exposure to academic research and writing. The assignment was to work in partnerships to use the internet to do research on historical persons. They were given advice in how to use both standard search engines as well as online databases to find sources that are current, credible, and relevant.
The paper was to be written from the autobiographical point of view of its subject (as if a journal or diary), using both in-text citations after each paragraph as well as a bibliography at the end. We gave them a simplified format to follow, as both APA and MLA may still be slightly too complicated at this level.
We realize the papers are not perfectly edited, but the point of the exercise was to get them thinking about quality writing; not necessarily to end up with a piece to turn in or publish. For example, in many cases neither the citations themselves nor the bibliographic references are consistently punctuated or formatted, but they still represent a reasonable first attempt to incorporate original ideas with factual source material. We used a process of peer revision and peer editing, so the results are completely student-generated, with some teacher oversight. The finer details will all come in time. Next year we are planning to spend a little more time teaching issues related to quotations, parentheses, and punctuation.
What we were most excited about was the way that they really captured a moment in these persons' lives. There were asked to focus in on a critical moment or accomplishment in the subject's life as opposed to a general recounting of every life event. Not all figures will be represented in the way we think of them today, but from the point of view of that person. Several of the writers really captured their person's state of mind in a way that is probably somewhat accurate. We are truly proud of what these students accomplished and hope that it speaks of positive future work. Have fun reading.
