Sunday, October 26, 2014

3 Helpful Apps For The Travelling Art Teacher





I'm back teaching art at the elementary level after 8 years of teaching at the middle school level. 

My program is now known as 'Art on a Cart'. I have no classroom, no computers and no tablets. I'm travelling from room to room.

If you're travelling like me, you know its tough to incorporate technology into your art program. Never mind having the kids actually make something with it. 

But if you're like me, you still want to use technology, so the kids (and parents) see the benefits of it in the art class. 

What do you do?

Use an IPad and a VGA cord.

As I go from room to room, I can quickly plug into the class room projectors. They are already set up in the rooms that I travel to, so it just takes a couple of minutes at the beginning of class as they're clearing their desks.


And I've found 3 very different apps that have been helpful to me as I travel. One is for classroom management, one involves art history and one helps with classroom presentations.


                                                         
Keynote- This is my favorite app to use to make slide presentations when I  introduce a lesson. It's easy to do a search for images, save them, then insert into the Keynote slides.  You can sync it (through Bluetooth) to a Keynote Remote  app on your phone and  simply move through the slides for your presentation. The kids also love the animations that can be added to the slides. Here's a hint. There's lots of oohs and aahs when they see the Fire or Confetti animations.


                                          

Too Noisy- This is an app you can use for behavior management. It's actually a sound meter. You  set  it to the the level of sound that is acceptable in your class. You then set it to how many minutes of acceptable noise before the class can earn a star. I usually set it for four minutes.

The needle keeps track of  the level of the sound. If the needle moves above your set sound level an alarm will go off. You can set it so the class  will lose a star if the alarm goes off. The kids actually ask me to set this up all the time, they love earning the stars.


                                          

Touch Van Gogh- This is an app to use when introducing the  paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. It is produced  by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, so a lot of research went into the information provided by the app. It provides information about various paintings of his, such as where and when a painting was made, what the locations look like today,  the damage to the painting, the colors used and the painting style. You also get an up close detailed view of the paintings. It is a touch screen app so you can chose to have the kids come up and touch the pad to get the information.

Introducing technology can be a trial when you are travelling from room to room. And there are so many choices of apps that are available out there. I hope at least one of these apps is helpful to you. 

If you know of any other apps that would be great for a travelling art teacher, I'd love to hear about it.

Keep Creating!

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