Tag Archives: arts

Inventing Our Future: Summer Institute for Educators

May 16, 2013, 8:12 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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Join KQED, SFMOMA, the Alameda County Office of Education, local artists and educators for the Integrated Learning Summer Institute, August 13-15, 2013 at Chabot Space and Science Center. All educators are welcome to register. Plenary speakers will include Spark-featured artists Favianna Rodriguez and Rhodessa Jones. The Integrated Learning institute is like summer camp for educators, set in a beautiful, natural environment with three days full of working with arts education experts and getting inspired to integrate the arts across all subjects.

KQED and SFMOMA will be presenting a three-part workshop during the institute about storytelling and exploring identity. Educators who sign up for this special session will create their own short film using personal symbolism to create a storyline. This professional development opportunity, related to using and making media in the classroom, is a perfect way to learn best practices for incorporating art and technology into CCSS curricula.

Sign up by the end of May for $50 off the registration fee, and select "Tracing Identity through Digital Media" as one of your mini-courses. We look forward to seeing you in August!

Filed under: Arts, Arts Events, Conferences, Teacher Trainings
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Performing Arts Institute for Educators June 2013

May 8, 2013, 8:51 pm • Posted by Kristin Farr
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teacher workshop

Join us this summer, June 10-12, for a dynamic professional development institute focused on performing arts integration in the classroom. Educators will spend three days at the East Bay Center for Performing Arts working directly with professional artists to learn new skills and ideas for incorporating music, dance and theater into their curricula while addressing Common Core state standards. They will also discover new media-rich resources KQED and PBS, including a new arts video series made specifically for a student audience. Teachers can also earn a $200 stipend or two continuing education units from CSU East Bay for completion of the institute and follow-up assignments.

Artists and educators Kwesi Anku and Kweku Morgan were recently featured on KQED's new arts education video series, and they will be leading a full day of the institute. Check out their interview and then sign up for the institute by visiting http://kqedperformingarts.eventbrite.com/.

Filed under: Arts, Arts Events
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BAYMN FEST 2013 -- June 1 & 2

May 2, 2013, 3:01 pm • Posted by Matthew Williams
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BAYMN FEST

On June 1 & 2, the Bay Area Youth Media Network (BAYMN) in partnership with KQED will present BAYMN FEST, a free two-day interactive showcase of media produced by young folks ages 12-24, hosted at the San Francisco Public Library. Through screenings, workshops, a transmedia gallery, a makerspace, parties and networking opportunities, BAYMN FEST will be a place for young artists to share their work, meet their peers, acquire new tools, make their voices heard—and win cool prizes and media-making tools! It is a unique opportunity for youth, educators and the general public to celebrate the work of talented young media makers. We hope you will join us and be inspired.

We received over 300 youth-produced videos through our call for entries in a variety of categories including Science, Technology, & Innovation; Arts & Expression; and Social Justice & Community Engagement; and we have put together an exciting series of shorts programs that will screen throughout the weekend.

This event is open to the public. For educators, we encourage you to schedule time for your students to come and participate… or if you are out of school for the summer, to organize a group of young folks to attend. This event will be a great opportunity for young folks to connect with their peers who are passionate about making media, and it will give you the chance as an educator to immerse yourself in the youth media movement, network with other educators and even acquire some new skills. This festival is funded by Adobe Youth Voices and The AT&T Foundation.

To attend to this event, you must RSVP here -- www.baymnfest.eventbrite.com Below is a breakdown of the festival schedule, workshop schedule, and film program. Please reserve a spot for one of our workshops by filling out this form. Be sure to reserve spots for any or all of the days. And don't forget about the BAYMN BASH reception on the evening of Saturday, June 1! And it's all FREE!

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Filed under: Bay Area Youth Media Network, Community Voices, Youth Media Festivals
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PD Module #3: Narrated Slideshows for Arts Education (self-paced)

April 29, 2013, 2:14 pm • Posted by Kristin Farr
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ArtsPDcoverimage

Nearly every student who is in school today will enter the workforce needing skills in media production. From social media to YouTube videos, many industries will require a knowledge of how to leverage online platforms. In the arts classroom, media production is a dynamic way for students to gain these technical skills, while also practicing aesthetic valuing, design thinking, communication, and creative writing. All of these skills can be cultivated through the use of media-making projects. For this reason, student media-making projects are an excellent way to introduce these 21st century proficiencies.

A good, basic-level media project to use with students is a narrated slideshow. The programs used to make one are relatively simple and students can either take their own photos or find properly licensed images on the web in addition to using their own voice to narrate the story. KQED has developed a new tool for educators to assist in the understanding of how to create a slideshow as well as the implementation of such a project in the classroom. Arts-focused slideshows can be used in visual and performing arts classes as a reporting, portfolio, or assessment tool, but they can also be used in other subjects, such as history and social studies, as a tool for understanding culture through art and artifacts.

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Filed under: Arts, Online Training Modules, Teacher Trainings
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In the Studio with Kirsten Lepore

April 26, 2013, 11:21 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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photo/kristin farr

Kirsten Lepore is an artist and filmmaker who works with different animation techniques, including stop-motion animation and claymation. Creating personal short films and animated segments for clients such as Yo Gabba Gabba, Whole Foods, and MTV, Lepore is known for her hand-fabricated film sets and characters made from an eclectic mix of materials including clay, food, sand and snow. Her wildly popular food-themed film, Sweet Dreams, stars a butternut squash who shows a cupcake the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. The award-winning film is remarkable in its production design, art direction, and wordless storytelling style. We visited Lepore at her Los Angeles studio to learn more about the intentions behind her food-focused film, the unusual materials she works with to create her animations, and why she loves the laborious process of stop-motion animation.

Kirsten Lepore also gave us a hands-on demonstration of her preferred techniques for creating claymation. Lepore's technical set-up is sophisticated, but the animation process is simple and can be recreated using digital cameras and editing programs like iMovie and iStopMotion. Even flipbooks are a form of animation.

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Filed under: Art School, Arts
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Meet the Alphabet Rockers!

March 13, 2013, 5:19 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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We recently met a group of educators known as the Alphabet Rockers and started jamming to their YouTube videos, including this one called Shape Rap that helps young students learn their shapes, and encourages them to recognize common shapes in the real world.

Each of the Alphabet Rockers videos is accompanied by multiple classroom activities that are designed using principles from the Common Core State Standards. They also do school tours and performances about nutrition, bullying, and other topics that are relevant to today's educational community. Their approach is a perfect example of how art techniques, such as singing and rapping, can be a great way to integrate subjects and help students remember facts in a fun, engaging way.

Check out the Alphabet Rockers web site to find more fun videos, discover their lesson plans and other classroom tools, and find out when they are performing near you.

Filed under: Arts
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Stop Motion Animation and Scientific Transformations

March 11, 2013, 9:45 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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stop motion

A group of educators recently completed a KQED workshop, stop motion animation in the elementary classroom. Our focus was on creating stop motion animation films to demonstrate scientific concepts and transformations. While some teachers used animation to represent plant growth and weather patterns, others created videos for use in other subject areas, such as Spanish and video production classes.

Stop motion animation is an artistic activity that can be applied to many subject areas, and is a hands-on way to introduce students to how animation and films are created. It also requires a low level of technology and can be done simply using digital cameras or mobile phone cameras, and free editing software.

Check out our teachers' videos below, and send an email to ArtsEd@KQED.org to learn about future educator workshops on stop motion animation.

Filed under: Arts, K-5 Science
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In and Out of Shadows – Stories about Undocumented Youth

February 14, 2013, 1:54 pm • Posted by Maxine Einhorn
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In and Out of the Shadows


Courtesy The Marsh

Immigration reform is center stage right now – a top priority for President Obama’s second term in office. It is also centre stage for so many young people, many of our students here in California, who may be among the 11 million people in the U.S. without documents. They either came to theUS as young children or their parents immigrated to the US and remain undocumented.

Their stories form the basis of new musical called "In and Out of Shadows" at the Marsh Theatre in San Francisco, performed by members of the Marsh Youth Theatre group. Written by Gary Soto, it is based on interviews with undocumented teenagers from diverse ethnic backgrounds living in the Bay Area, who describe how their dreams for the future look really bleak without papers. No college would accept them. No employer could employ them. They would be invisible.

For example, Homero Rosas came to San Francisco from Mexico when he was 6 years old.  “My parents would tell me I wasn’t from here, but up until then I didn’t know what that meant,”….. “I didn’t know it meant I couldn’t get financial aid, I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t aspire to anything, really. I felt trapped.” His story is dramatized through his character, Juan.

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Filed under: ESL Insights, Post-Secondary ESL
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In the Classroom: A SLANT Approach to Learning at the Paul Revere School

January 31, 2013, 10:55 am • Posted by Matthew Williams
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SLANT

Cynthia Vasquez teaches her Pre-K students at the Paul Revere School in San Francisco with the methodology of learning through play. Her approach is influenced by a group of teachers from the San Francisco Unified School District's SLANT (Science, Literacy, Arts, and Technology) program where she explores ways of integrating each of these disciplines into her students' learning objectives.

In this installment of In the Classroom, Ms. Vasquez has selected the unit of study "things that roll (or do not roll)" and we see her students explore this theme in a variety of playful activities derived from their curiosity and desire to learn through play.

Although many Pre-K learning models emulate play, Ms. Vasquez argues that this approach can serve students at all grade levels where they become more active, following their curiosity and inquiry to perhaps stimulate a growth in academic achievement and an interest in becoming life long learners.

See the video below:

Filed under: In the Classroom
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"Wows and Wonders" at Glenview Elementary

December 6, 2012, 10:13 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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Arts educator and recording artist Jahi recently shared an inspiring new video with us that gives an overview of his artist residency at Glenview Elementary School in Oakland, and his philosophy about arts education. He mentions PBS's Art:21 as a resource that inspires his teaching practice. Jahi teaches both visual art and music, and inspires young people to imagine how their art will change the world. Enjoy this moment of inspiration with a dynamic teaching artist.

Looking for ways to invite from teaching artists into your classroom for a virtual visit? Check out our new video series about Bay Area artists who demonstrate concepts and techniques that students can follow along with.

Filed under: Arts
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