Graceful Technology

<img src=”http://www.puebloarts.com/Native%20American%20Indian%20Tribes%20and%20Pueblos/San%20Ildefonso%20Pueblo%20Pottery.htm” alt=”pottery of San Ildefonso” /> Greetings 8th Grade.Introduction:The San Ildefonso Pueblo is one of the places in this country that, until now, has maintained traditional ways of life and traditional methods of making pottery. It is now up to you to insure the ways continue to be preserved, that they may flourish. Because of great poverty in this community, the tourist trade is pushing out the ancient art forms to make way for more modernized shops. Your task is to write a grant to present to the city council, solving the financial burden. You must find ways to convince the city council that preserving traditional ways of life and traditional art forms are essential to a healthy community and a healthy world.Task:

In groups of four you must each take on a different role in the grant proposal process. Together you must create a power point presentation using images of traditional pueblo pottery. You must also embed video and language justifying preservation of the arts in the San Ildefonso community. You must also create a budget for restoration and maintenance of the traditional artists guild. Your audience will be the rest of the class and Kitty Piercy, our mayor and the local leader of our own city council to give you feedback for your proposals.

Process:

1. First, take the GoogleEarth tour of the Southwest Pueblo. This has can be found as an attachment in your class email.
2. Next read the website http://www.nps.gov/archive/meve/research/curation.htm and also http://www.desertusa.com/mag05/apr/Mesa.html to discover more in depth about traditional people and ways that Mesa Verde went about preserving their artifacts and traditional ways of life.
3. Now , as a group, you must decide the roles you will take on for this project. They are: financial adviser (builds the budget for this grant), the historian (tells the story and builds the case for preservation from a historical aspect), the artist (uses art history and criticism language to plead the case) and the elder from the local tribe (convinces the city council from a personal point of view).
4. You may check with the economics and art teachers to gather advice from their perspectives. The rest of the information you gather must be found and referenced from the web.
5. After your individual information gathering , decide as a team what is most relevant to convince the city council to accept you proposal.
6. Build your power point presentation together.
7. Present your proposal to the audience, including Kitty Piercy, whose feedback as to the strength and breadth of your presentation will influence your grade.


SCORING GUIDE:

You will be scored on this assignment as a group and individually.
I will be grading you on the following criteria:
1. Quality of the process leading to the presentation component(1-4)
2. Breadth of information covered, did you have all the information?(1-4)
3. Creativity in compiling and presenting(1-4)
4. Quality of the final presentation(1-4)
5. Growth of learning from the start to the finish(1-4)

Your final score will be worth a total of 40 points. 20 possible x 2=______

CONCLUSION:

What I love about this webquest is that it is an assignment that meets all the levels of Blooms taxonomy.  While I will strive to scaffold students beyond Knowldge and comprehension and application,  not all students seem able to reach beyond analysis.  Because art criticism and finding ways to make the project assignments in my classrooms relate to the students culture and to their own lives is as important to me as authenticity, a project like a webquest weaves together these ideals.

Unfortunately, my current classroom situation does not allow computer access.  But reformatting the assignment without the use of technology, while limiting, may still achieve the learning goals.

I certainly feel much more confident navigating websites and finding site on GoogleEarth.  I also am beginning to know what questions to ask to improve my self-efficacy.  Thank you, Pacific, for requiring this learning tool.

Introduction:

Benchmark : Identify and relate works of art from different societies, time periods and cultures, emphasizing their common and unique characteristics.

My intention is to introduce southwest Native American culture through images of dwellings, pottery and a video of spiritual symbols from this culture. By looking at images of coil pottery and slip designs, a conversation can then evolve around purposes of pottery, meaningful symbols for Native people and meaningful symbols for the students and /or their families. This then leads to demonstrations and experiential learning of clay and the making of coil pots.

Conclusion :

I have embraced power point as a possible learning tool. I’m not sure how I feel about the united streaming video component of this assignment. I feel like it may be a good review tool for the teacher, but might not hold the students’ attention or invoke meaning…I’m willing to try this and experiment but it seems a bit contrived…and very passive as an experience for the young people. I like the way a linear thought can have added dimension by allowing students to experience and art history lesson visually….and in contrast with slides, there is so much more freedom for the presenter.

Oregon Benchmark:

Upon completion of this assignment the student will be able to: Describe the creative process used, and the effects of the choices made, when combining ideas, techniques, and problem solving to produce one’s work.

Reflections:

This project was much more accessible to me than I had anticipated. it was easy to integrate the benchmark to the project. I even found a diagram that I didn’t think was ugly.

Peer Review:

Laurie’s Coil Pot Firing Inspiration Diagram:

I like that you created the diagram as a directions page with links. The celtic design framing of directions works well, looks great. I would add some punctuation changes to the run-on sentences in the first and last frames. The note on process (drying and weight of coil pots) I particularly thought gave important info to students.

A note on website links: only one of the links worked for me and when I got to the website I did not know where to go to find info on pots. Perhaps you could make the link go directly to the page you want or offer information introducing the link on your page. Don’t know why I couldn’t open the other link.

Gorgeous pots as examples. I’m curious about the black pot with three openings. Please tell me more about that when I see you in class!

Kudos to you for not using a template like me. Because this process is new to me, I chose an easier route. I like that you created a very different sort of diagram.

Mariah