Welcome GWHS Globaloria Students

This is a special posting to my Globaloria students at Greenbrier West High School. I am so excited about the upcoming year. We have a great new schedule that will allow us a great deal of time to work on projects each day. The class is now a 2 period block occurring each day! We will have time to really concentrate on a topic without having to shut down so quickly. That will enable us to work on Globaloria, Videography, Photoshop (we are supposed to be getting this!) and other computer related art programs. Hopefully, you are as excited as I am even though as students you don't always feel that you can show that excitement. I am going to assume that you are all excited inside anyway.
Another exciting addition is that we will be having Mrs. Leef in the classroom also. She has great computer skills and is hard at work learning all about Flash. She and I have been in some very helpful training sessions this summer and we are planning on really being able to start into everything very quickly.
Want to get started? Begin looking at games and jot down some things that appeal to you; the components, the type of game, the graphics, etc..
Lookings forward to working and learning with you!
Mrs. Neal

August session

New Flip Cameras! Yes, teachers love to have new toys but in this case, toys that will be very useful in the classroom. We had some great training on Tuesday and except some new things today. The presentations by the new people just blew me away, they were so much better than what we did last year. So the training is definitely on the right track. I feel so much more capable this year and I'm looking forward to a great school year.

most memorable moment of learning?

As a teacher, I believe that we often assume that students 'get it'. I always try and go back and remember when I was taking a Ceramic Glazes class in college. I had no prior art class experience when I entered college so while I could produce what the teacher was asking for in the visual art classes, I would not have the knowledge base of the terms and medium. Therefore, I would have to wait, hang back and see what the other students were doing after the assignment was given so that I could understand what the assignment actually meant.
So, when I entered the Ceramic Glazes class, I was very intimidated. I had not had a Chemistry class and, of course, that is what you need to have before you begin working with the dry chemicals.
Always before in school I was able to keep pretty good grades with relatively little effort. I could study the night before and pass tests.
So, to make a long story longer, the day we had our final in the Ceramics class, I had studied really hard the night before and thought that I was prepared. When I sat down and opened the test, I realized that I was not. I could actually feel the blood in my whole body drop to my toes and then flush up to the top of my head. I just knew that I was going to bomb on this test.
I tried my best though and actually earned a B on the test.
My point is, I always try and remember that experience when I work on my assignments for my students. Never assume that the students have the prior knowledge that you think they should have.

thoughts on technology

Again, I am not a writer. I am an artist, a teacher, a facilitator, a mentor and most of all, a learner. It seems that I am constantly finding out things that I don't know, or perhaps it is that I have forgotten things that I should have remembered. I say this because it is intimidating to me to read other participants blogs and to read such good postings. Maybe it is being an art teacher; I think art teachers are more competitive than other content teachers. Oh, well, I'll try to do better.
My work here at the Globaloria will be on the simplest of terms. The computer that I brought from school reinforces the idea that I need to 'bite the bullet' and buy my own new laptop. THis one is sooooooooo slowwwwww. I would like to embed links to other sites but it takes about 4 minutes to load onto another site and I am afraid of losing my connectivity. I did read the wv designdiva's posting and it was awesome. Bill DOrsey had some good ideas and Patrick's had a link about photography that I will be sure to check out. Rachel's art links about gaming is definitely one that I will begin with because after all, I am an art teacher.

Charleston Workshop

June 23, This should probably be titled "Call for Auditions". Jeremy is planning a new film and he is looking for a few good men, or is it women; I'm not sure. We'll have to wait for the movie premier to see what he comes up with.

frustration

Frustration, frustration, frustration! My students are getting frustrated about things not working like they're supposed to. We had a webex and Brian demonstrated several things last week but that was another source of frustration because the sound wasn't very good and we couldn't understand a lot. For example, several are having difficulty getting the fill to work when they draw their objects. More later...

Mid November

Finally was able to have the time to upload paper prototype videos to website. I was also able to add team pages for the different teams and place the links to the videos on those sites. We haven't posted too much to the projects pages since the students have been working on learning and using flash. We have had round table sessions about each of the game designs - giving feedback and suggestions on ways to improve their games and positive comments about the parts of the games that they really like. They've also discussed how the games are useful social issue games - not just a game to be a game. I believe research will be their biggest and most useful tool if they use it as they should to improve the quality of their game.
Just got the news that our school bond passed, after much time spent on the vote canvass! Hooray for our schools!!