Working With Others/Puzzles

To sum it up working with my classmates both in our peer teaching and in our final project has been an amazing experience. Working with others particularly in the final project with our balloons was a valuable experience as got to see a project from different viewpoints and learn from one another. If anyone hit a stumbling block we were able to look to the group for support and solutions. It was also really great to work with different members of the class who were not necessarily part of our peer teaching groups.

It was nice to incorporate our puzzles into our final work because I feel like the puzzles were the foundation for the adventure we had together. Our puzzling experience allowed us to communicate and work as a team while really coming together as a community. Puzzle time let us get beyond class discussion and really get to know our classmates which is valuable because it allowed us to trust each other enough to share our ideas freely and create such a great final project!

Thanks everyone for making my first University art class experience a great one!

Experiences

Discuss your experiences in Art 307. What have they contributed to your understanding of Art? Of the Role of Art in Leaning? Of what the relationship between education and learning is? Of the role of the teacher in this process?

Art 302 has been a very positive experience for me. It has caused me to question how and why I learn and how best to help the children I work with learn and understand truly the concepts I teach them. Above this I have learned to be a better listener and take value in the lessons others teach me and accept that sometimes there are many different ways to reach the same goal and they are not better or worse than one another but just different.

Though our discussions I have learned to broaden my view of art beyond traditional definitions of drawing and painting and can now see art as a full multifaceted course. After reading through our text and exploring the concepts in class discussion I can now see the importance not only in integrating art into other subjects but engaging it as a subject of its own and acknowledging the importance it holds in developing well rounded children and adults.

Through this class I have learned that the role of teacher is not to simply ensure children know the right answers and can demonstrate the right skills but it is much more than that. The role of teachers in education is to provoke children to go beyond simple repetition and memorization and explore their learning and understanding. The teacher is not simply a passive guide they must interact with their students on a one on one and class basis so she can meet each child’s special needs and like the balloons in our class program teach the children to steer their skills and their lives so they can meet new heights of understanding and development.

Working Collaboratively

What has this experience of working collaboratively added to your understanding of what one learns through art?

The experience of working collaboratively has added to my understanding of what you learn through art because it has helped me understand how art fits into a classroom and experience the roles of both student and teacher. Working collaboratively teaches you to respect those you work with and understand the different processes different minds and different artists must take when creating and they influence the final product especially in a project with more then one creator. Working collaboratively taught me most importantly that we must respect and strive to understand the differences in the classroom so we can help children reach their full creative potentials

Visual Arts as Solitary

Where do our notions of visual art as a solitary activity come from? What are the benefits and limitations of engaging in collaborative works of art?

Our notions of visual art as a solitary activity come perhaps from our historical view of the artist. We see artists such as Monet, Picasso and Escher as solitary people, individuals creating individualistic work that is all their own. Therefore as with all new ideas it is hard to expand our view to include groups and collectives. While collective art may be limited in that it can be plagued by creative differences, restraints due to over influence of one another and lack of understanding it has many benefits as well. Benefits of collaborative work come in many ways from these limitations in that the many creative minds that might stifle one another will also feed each other. That they can share different perspectives and build on one another to create dynamic works that will represent many of the group and therefore reach a wider audience.