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2001 Annual Grant Issue
Joan Harrington: Barra Technology Grant Report
Visual Portfolios for Students and Web Site Development
GOAL:
The objective of my grant proposal was to obtain funding to cover the cost of software and to provide a salary for the time needed to develop and improve the Germantown Academy Lower School Art web page.
HISTORY OF THE PROJECT:
In the mid to late 1990's, I had a vision for developing a website that would hold the visual portfolios for all of my students. Unfortunately, I lacked the time, knowledge, and software to implement the idea. During the 1998-99 school year, Katie Gupton, of the Class of 1999, was searching for an idea for a senior project and readily embraced the idea of working with me to develop a website for Lower School Art. Katie began the project with little background knowledge of web work, but with a full month of time to devote entirely to learning all the processes. The time that Katie was able to give to the project provided the impetus needed to establish our website. Carol Siwinski worked with Katie, providing countless hours of instruction and guidance. I sat in on as much of the instruction as time allowed, but Katie did most of the preliminary work. We acquired the necessary software and bought a digital scanner to scan the student artwork. Katie set up the initial systems with Carol and each day I did my best to follow along. We discussed all the essential attributes we needed and mutually agreed on aesthetic issues. When Katie's month-long commitment to the project came to a conclusion, she had successfully laid the groundwork for the site and had gained a lot of knowledge about web work. I, on the other hand, had a pile of notes on all the systems, but minimal knowledge about why or how things were done. I firmly believe that to master technology, one must have continuous hands on experience. It took me countless frustrating hours to understand and become comfortable working on the web page by myself. Finally I learned the systems that Katie and Carol had set up, so that I could continue the mission!
In the years that followed Katie's senior project, I have diligently photographed student work and placed art on each student's individual web page. Each year, I process approximately 1000 digital images onto the site. I use a digital camera for most of this work, as I have found that the quality is as good as when I use a scanner, and the time involved is reduced considerably. After I photograph artwork, I remove the disc from the digital camera and insert it into my computer. I use the program, Image Ready to crop, optimize, reduce size, and correct levels of color and sharpness in each image. The images are named and placed into student folders. Each student has a folder to hold these digital images and an html page to display the images. Each web page must be opened and the images of artwork that are stored in the folder must be placed within a table on the page. The current 6th grade class moved on to the Middle School this fall with visual portfolios spanning all three years of their Intermediate art classes. The Middle School art teachers have taken on the challenge of having the students work on their own web pages that link to their Lower School web pages. Feasibly students can have an online record of their artistic development from all three divisions of the school. Potentially, this record keeping of visual work could be used as a tool for assessment, a means for learning technology, an enhancement for college entrance, or simply a marker for personal growth. The portfolios are becoming increasingly useful to me when I am writing assessment reports for students and want to examine their growth and development. When I look at portfolios that have now been archived from the Lower School site, I remember vividly former students who otherwise would be difficult to recall as the years pass by. Portfolios may also be helpful to other faculty members as a means to gain additional insight into a student and as an opportunity for grandparents and others, who live out of our area, to view student artwork from afar.
One of the reasons I find web work so compelling is my background as a Graphic Design major at Tyler School of Art during the 1970's before computers were in general use. When we had assignments that required text, we had to go out to art supply stores and purchase "press type." Press type came on waxed sheets and was very expensive, particularly on my limited college student budget! Each sheet held the alphabet of one font in one point size. Invariably, at 2 a.m., when I was completing an assignment due the next morning, I would run out of a letter and would have to figure out some creative way to make a "T" into an "S." As soon as I saw the fonts on my first computer and realized the ability to not only change point size but also entire fonts in an instant, I was totally mesmerized. Computers have revolutionized the work of graphic artists! Good graphic design skills will become increasingly important in our world as people seek to communicate through websites. It is important that students learn to effectively organize their ideas visually in order to have their work recognized by others. I see the Lower School Art web site as a beginning for students, Middle School Art is taking it to the next step by having students design their own sites, and hopefully the students will continue to add to their sites as they move through the grades and gain more sophisticated technological skills.
Although I am convinced that keeping student portfolios is a worthy and challenging endeavor, I have found that it is extremely time consuming and sometimes amazingly tedious. I am hoping that I can increasingly involve students and others in the process to reduce the amount of time the maintenance of this site has added to the time I need to devote to my regular teaching duties. It is my observation that the time necessary for learning and utilizing technology has put stress on many teachers in our world today. While it is vital that we embrace technology so that we can instruct our students on a current level, it is clear to me that this extra dimension in our work lives, no matter how fascinating, makes it increasingly difficult to achieve a healthy balance in life.
I wrote a Kast Grant proposal last year with the hope that I could be reimbursed for some of the time that I spend on the Lower School website and to have a sponsor for a goal I set for myself to enhance the site with inclusion of curricular information, lesson plans, and interesting related links. I wanted to rework some aspects of the overall visual appearance of the site and make the buttons more interesting through use of rollovers and navigation bars. In order to accomplish these specific goals, I needed to purchase the updated versions of Dreamweaver and Fireworks and become familiar with these programs. The following describes my method of procedure for this project.
METHOD OF PROCEDURE:
1. I purchased the latest versions of Dreamweaver and Fireworks and transferred all files over from Pagemill, the original web program that we used.
2. I met with Carol Siwinski to review the size and structure of the site and to discuss the changes I wanted to make.
3. I developed an artist resource page and a museum and gallery page that include a large number of useful links that I researched and reviewed. I made certain that all links were current and appropriate. These links provide opportunities to visit museums and galleries around the world, research artists, find art supply sources, and get information on procedures for a variety of art techniques.
4. I worked on the curriculum page of the site and began organizing lesson plans and other curricular content.
5. I improved the design of the site giving it more dimension and style. Through Dreamweaver and Fireworks, I learned to produce rollovers, navigational bars, and batched web pages.
6. I worked on getting the current 3rd grade page ready for the fall of 2001. As each class enters the third grade, I have to make an html page for each of the 54 children. The class page has to have a special name button for each student that links to each individual page. Each student page must be linked back to the class page. This process is very time consuming, but once it has been done, it is all set for the next three years, except for adding new students.
7. I reset all of the archived class pages, and the current 4th and 5th grade class pages so that every student's name is included in one large table. It had originally been done line by line, which looked very sloppy and haphazard.
8. I worked on including primary student artwork in the site. Although these students are currently not going to have their own web pages, their work and art activities are now recorded and placed in an effective way within the site.
9. I am currently working on an article about the project, which I am hoping to submit to School Arts Magazine. I presented the updated version of the Lower School Art website at a Lower School faculty meeting on October 23rd. Andrea Owens, the Web Page Coordinator, placed my updated version of the art site on the Germantown Academy Homepage around the same time.
Although I feel that I have put a lot of effort into my grant project, I certainly understand and view it as an ongoing and open-ended project. Through this grant, which has been funded through the technology department, I have made some headway and have accomplished the majority of the short-term goals that I set for myself. I appreciate the opportunity that was given to me through this grant funded by the technology department and awarded through the Kast Fund process, and would like to thank all those who made the work possible. I would also like to thank Carol Siwinski for her invaluable assistance and guidance over the last several years. I invite all to visit the Lower School Art website at:
http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/lsa/lowerart/index.htm
(or under Lower School Visual Arts)
