before and after plastic (photoshop) surgery

The first time I saw this I just fell in love with these comic strips. I thought they were so clever and funny! The person who illustrates these comics, Bill Watterson is a great example of staying creative even though he has grown up and had his own kids. If you want to check out more "snowman" strips just click on the picture to where I found this one.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

I haven't really thought about this until recently now that I'm more involved in art in education and how valuable it is. In hindsight I can see that the way schools train kids to sit down, be quiet, and spew out memorized information is ok, but it's only half of the "solution." It's great that kids have structure, goals, and good study habits, but it is equally important to have kids be active, engaged, creative, and expressive. I am doing my O&P at a high school and I had a student tell me that she hates the class and thinks art is stupid.
Of course I was disappointed and saddened that someone would, in a way, say that they hated expressing themselves. To me it was a clear example of how "kids are 'educated' out of creativity because they become afraid of making mistakes."
It was this kind of attitude that really sparked my interest in looking up on the importance of not only education but art/creativity in education. A really good speaker on education that I found on the internet is a man named Sir Ken Robinson. He speaks a lot about education and the youtube video that I watched he said/paraphrased Picasso and he said(ish), "All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up."

What is education good for?

I think one of the greatest trageties in education is that most of us go through our educating life being crammed with either useless junck or we go through the "memorize-terminate" cycle. How many of us graduate high school and find ourselves at a loss when we enter collage and simply cannot remember basic algebra, I know I did. There's this clip on youtube that I think is a pretty good summary of what goes on in our educational system, at least here in America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4

“Blogging in Education”

• Web 2.0 is the world of technology in which information is shared through electronics such as web videos, pod casts, and wikis. Every time a person downloads any information, updates their blogs, or communicate through the net, they are tapping into the world of Web 2.0.

I believe teachers should be familiar with this style of information sharing because the world we live in is becoming more and more electronic and kids now days will continue to grow in their familiarity with newer technology. In order to better communicate with them and take advantage of their interests, teachers must use any and all resources to connect with their students. Web 2.0 is yet another means of communication that will help students receive and share information.

• A blog is a social network in which the “blogger” posts comments, opinions, and any other information on any number of topics and other “bloggers” leave their own comments creating a vast library of communication and online interaction. A blog is a place of information sharing and gleaning. Teachers can take advantage of this technology by posting what they know and experience while looking at other teachers’ blogs and take valuable information from them.

• Student created blogs have great advantages in helping students take initiative in updating their blogs and blogs will help students foster the tendency to do research independently. It is true that blogging is a way sharing information and opinion but those opinions will be based on research and fact. There can be class blog in which every student needs to read it and leave comments or students can create personal blogs on anything they want to discuss about.