EDUCATION IN THE ARTS / 2018

Today was Yom Kippur, reason why students who observe such holiday were absent. Although the class was smaller than usual, we reviewed the material covered in class up until now. The ideas discussed were: Artificial Intelligence Installation Art (Readymades, Found Objects, Marcel Duchamp) Creativity in Education Collage  Importance of the arts for the science of learning Site Specific Performance Pedestrian Dance Integration Questions What are the pros and cons of using artificial intelligence in the classroom? Why does installation art facilitate teaching methods? How can creativity lead to changes in the classroom? How are collages a viable way to enhance creativity? Why are the arts useful when teaching other subjects? How can site specific performance help teaching when there are limited resources? Why is pedestrian dance an easy way to create movement in the classroom? In which way can dance help the teaching of other academic subjects? Exercise ...

The students were introduced to the concept of Sound Art. Different from music, sound exists in almost everything we do. So it is a matter of training oneself to hear the sounds and their potential to become art. Thus, several videos were shown to illustrate the concept; one video shows the interview with John Cage, a precursor of sound as music, and the others show the work Gustavo Matamoros, a musician and sound artist.                                                                                                                                                  John Cage             ...

Dance with Wooden Sandals / Cuban Children Dover High School Students and Members of the Steel Drum Acapella Tap Dance Music with Objects The students were introduced to the videos above in order to illustrate how music can be created with our feet, with our hands, with steel pan instrurments originally made out of 55 - gallon oil drums, and finally with random objects.  Then, we began to create rhythmic clapping as a group using the Cuban rumba concept of the Claves. That was just the warm up before we began to use percussive instruments and flutes to create other interesting sounds that included the participation of the whole class.  Finally, we started using voices to create harmonies.  Every student proposed a vowel sound that was layered by the sounds of the other students in class.  The vowel was elongated into a phrase of three vowels, before it became the content of a larger and more complete cacophony of sounds. ...

Arts Integration: The Elements of Dance   (Video) After a lengthy discussion about the possible reasons why dance art is not considered an important subject in our culture, the students watched the video Arts Integration: the Elements of Dance (LINK ABOVE). The video emphasized the importance of using dance through the learning process of other subjects. The video introduces teacher Debra Kapp who explains in detail the different aspects of the process: Warm Up, Analysis and Reflection and Feedback. Based on the explanations given by the children it is evident that the process used by Kapp works. TAL students were then given a task: They were divided in groups, making sure they worked with students they had not worked with before. The groups had to brainstorm to come up with the idea they wanted to teach. Then the wrote the objective for that class. They agreed on the activities that would allow the students to learn the objective. They structur...

Linda Bair in the background. Sarah Gould and Alexandria Griffith in the foreground. Linda Bair Dance Company was on residence at the University of Miami from the 10th to the 14th of September. During their visit to the university, they shared their work with the Education in the Arts class. The students used the hallway in front of the classroom to engage with company members in a dance exercise.  They first warmed up, while the company's director and choreographer Linda  Bair, explained the peculiarities of doing a warm up with children. After that, students used pedestrian movement to explore walking in different directions. They were divided in groups and began to explore how to put together movement to create a dance phrase. Finally, they had to adapt their phrase to a piece of music they chose. Once they completed their dance ensemble exercise, they went back to the classroom and shared their work with each other. Following an introduction by Linda Bair, two m...

Ecobioartist Joaquin Fargas Tyler, Christopher W. Final Workshop Report: Art Creativity and Learning. National Science foundation, 2008. After reading about how the arts influence learning, as documented in the Final Workshop Report produced by the National Science Foundation, students were invited to answer a number of questions that allowed them to contextualize the use of the information provided in the report to advance their idea of teaching and learning. Bellow, the students answers. GROUP 1 Stefani Gonzalez Bryce Pickett Mae Corrigan Stephanie Longmuir 1.        Goals of the report/workshop? a.        Goal of the report/workshop was to come to a mutual agreement of the new field of the arts and sciences and their incorporation with learning. 2.        Explain the creative art process? a.  ...