Communication david to Mark 5/23This is a featured page

Hi Mark,

I like your ideas and the themes of community, identity you're bring out. The idea of a product that lives beyond the project, a book, a video, whatever, is important.

Here are the fronts I'm currently working on concerning the this whole video conferencing endeavor:

I'm very interested in projects that result in products that are usable as teaching tools by teachers around the country. I like creating peer teaching resources, impressing on the students that they have a responsibility to learn, create and teach. The book idea is a good one. I'm also looking at a resulting wiki or blog with multimedia links and resources that are documents of student discoveries and dialogues.

My task this fall is to create a pilot project that can be replicated four more times in the spring of '09. I'm thinking about processes that that can be general enough to be attractive to a range of participants, simple enough that I'm not reinventing the wheel each time, and (here's where the tire hits the gravel) matching the curricular needs of participants to the museum's collections. I have surveyed 53 schools/teachers/administrators, from 28 rural counties. Concerning curricular needs, the majority of responses spoke about exposing the students to wider worlds, different cultures, etc. Along this same line I'm looking at Missouri high school Art, English and Social Studies GLEs and trying to make these interests work with the areas of the collection, including special exhibitions like the "Age of Steam" that will be open during the 08/09 school year.

Gear. I still don't have a clear idea of what we are getting. I have communicated to the right people what I envision a vital, interactive, real-time, video conferencing session looking like. Instantaneous dialoguing from anyone anywhere in the room. Images, audio and video material available at my finger tips and brought into the discussion on the fly. I am only imagining these things as I have never seen an example of a video conferencing session that actually does these things. My IT people and the ATT people have said this is all possible. I am hoping to meet with our IT soon to get a better idea of gear and capabilities.

Really the second front, creating a curriculum that can be attractive, flexible, collection/exhibition based, and replicable, is where I am devoting the most time right now. At this stage, email conversations are probably the most efficient way of working. As I look more into the wiki/blog thing I may set up a site, probably a blog, where we and anyone else we want to invite can input ideas at their leisure. You know, as I write this, that sounds like a viable way to move. I'll get started on that.

What do you think?

d

P.s. I'll get more info about collections/exhibitions to you.

David Adelman
Manager, New Dimensions
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street Kansas City, Missouri 64111
816.751.1370
dadelman@nelson-atkins.org -----Original Message-----
From: Mark Anderson [mailto:manderso@nkcsd.k12.mo.us]
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 8:50 AM To: David Adelman
Subject: New Dimensions

Dave,

I wonder if we could set up a time to chat and brainstorm sometime soon? Or maybe we can just "talk" via email: whateveer works best for you. Anyway, I'd like to move forward with planning something like you and I discussed, connecting some of our students with students in a more rural setting. I am envisioning a possible project that involves digital storytelling.

Some randomly fired thoughts: I really like the entry point that two groups of learners (on the surface) are connected only tenuously through the railroad. In other words, NO obvious connections! But, it's interesting to think that we might create prompts that will facilitate the discover of real connections. AND, that together - from a distance - we might collaborate in the creation of something tangible. My kids have been very involved with making books and I'm thinking this might be an excellent collaborative format. I've been using the online service blurb.com to generate absolutely fantastic published products...I have samples I can share with you: you simply have to see these to believe them. I think that there are two important facets to this: a sense of identity and a sense of community. Identity is largely a product of community, which is interesting in the context of "connections." Community can also be viewed through the lens of the creation of an artistic, narrative community of learners. Community identity is something for which many of us take great pride and ownership: "I'm just a country boy" or "I come from Missouri" or "St Louis is MY hometown." I'd love to also see the PROCESS documented and shared via the internet. Maybe we could create a pastiche of video, still image, writing, and sound bytes? As I write this, it occurs to me that JJ Higgins will be back in the metropolitan area teaching at Blue Springs. She is an incredible emerging media artist who is really into "community" too and maybe I could arrange to dial her into this as well. These are just some of my rambling thoughts and I'm sure that if we were to look at the context of the exhibit we can make many other connections. Even though we're still finishing the school year over the next week, I need to put the wheels in motion NOW in order to facilitate this thing (whatever this thing turns out to BE!) What I'd like to be able to do is to get people in the district excited about this so that we can see some press coverage and keep the wheels greased. I see no problem making something happen so long as I can begin to "prime the pumps" now.

I need to be able to tell folks sort of what this might look like. What are your thoughts?

Mark

Mark Alan Anderson,M.Ed.
Fine Art Department Chair AP Studio Art | Visual Art Photography | Design Oak Park High School
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