Tag Archive | #STEAM
The Names Dress (With My Name!)
“There is no limit to beauty, no saturation point in design, no end to the material” – Salvatore Ferragamo Today I’m honored and excited to share the news that my name has been included in the Names Dress, which is on display at the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo in Florence, Italy! The Names Dress is a wearable, compostable conceptual […]
WeRMakers: Product ReDesign In Fifth Grade Art
“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.” – R. Buckminster Fuller This is the third fall I have facilitated the WeRMakers Product Redesign unit. This is a project-based-learning unit that utilizes resources from Project Zero Classroom’s Agency by Design. A few colleagues and I participated in their online […]
Light-Up Artwork with Paper Circuits
“Art history is littered with work that involves light.” – James Turrell, Artist Following the lead of artist, James Turrell, in the early days of April, we worked on drawings with oil pastel to which we added LED lights, by creating Paper Circuits. We used multi-colored LED lights, copper tape, a battery and a piece […]
Making Mandalas
Compasses, protractors, and rulers…oh my! Mandalas: Where art and math collide. As shared in the last post about Sketchbooks, this term we created Mandalas on the covers of our newly made sketchbooks. We used protractors, compasses, rulers, pencils, and markers. Here is a short video showing how to make them: Once the Mandalas were underway […]
GameMakers PBL Unit With 3D Printing
“I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.” – Steven Wright Two summers ago I put together the GameMakers unit to engage sixth grade art students while utilizing cooperative learning, project based learning, 3D printing, Google Classroom, and Google Sites. We piloted it in the fall of 2016, with great success. […]
ETTSummit 2017
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Proust I’m just back home from two days at the EdTechTeacher ETTSummit in Boston and want to write a few lines to keep the inspiration alive that I felt there. I go to a […]
Exposition, Exploration, & Exit ISTE17 Part 6/6
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? —it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road Massachusetts to Texas I had to go […]
(Rock the Boat) Don’t Rock the Boat Baby & ISTE17 Part 5/6
“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?” – Jack Kerouac, On The Road Middle Keynote Jennie Magiera kicked off Tuesday with an inspirational message in which she invited educators to tell their own stories as well as empower their students to tell theirs. She invited all of us in the auditorium to […]
Once Upon A Time Twelve – That Time We Fit The World In The Gym
This is a post about that time we fit the whole world in the gym with the Global Village project undertaken at Miscoe Hill School in the spring of 2007. This is the twelfth in a series of Legacy Posts about projects that happened early on in my art classroom. Recently I was able to tap into some archived […]
Great Question: Why Are We Designing Games In Art?
As he entered the classroom yesterday, one of my sixth grade art students asked, “Mrs. Gentili, why are we designing games in art?” “That’s a great question, ” I replied, “Let’s talk about it with the class once everyone settles.” And we did. We have been engaged in a project-based-learning unit on Game Design for […]
MiscoeMakerCrew In SchoolArts Magazine
It was very exciting to learn that an article I had written for SchoolArts magazine has been published in the February 2016 edition. The article is about the MiscoeMakerCrew, a group of twelve students who met weekly after school to learn about 3D printing and designing 3D models. Here is the link to the article: […]
The Strandbeests, STEAM, and the PEM
The half day before Thanksgiving provides a welcome chance to take a break from projects underway to see and learn something new. This year we’re watching videos of The Strandbeests, creations of Dutch artist Theo Jansen. Jansen’s Strandbeests are giant kinetic works of art, science, technology, math, and engineering. Or to rearrange those words, Science, […]
Thank You Again Mendon-Upton Education Foundation
Our Education Foundation, the Mendon-Upton Education Foundation (MUEF) is actively campaigning for donations right now. Flyers have been placed in local papers and emails have been sent to families in the school district. It is a perfect time to spotlight MUEF and the donation they made to the art departments of Miscoe Hill School and […]
On Being Named MA Art Educator Of The Year
Two weekends ago I received the Massachusetts Art Education Association 2015 Art Educator of the Year award. I found out about the award earlier in the school year and was congratulated and celebrated in the local media at that time. I took it all in stride then and November 8th seemed so far away. As […]
Geek Is Glam
This looks like a GREAT opportunity to explore and discover new and interesting things. And don’t forget, where there’s STEM, there’s STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) – because you can’t create anything great without design…! See it larger here: Geek is Glam
3D Printing – Design to Build! Thank you, Autodesk!
Forget everything I said 2 posts ago about Blender. We are rocking and rolling with the 123D Design app on the iPad. Honestly, we were discouraged to think that we would have to return to our PCs and laptops to create printable designs. So, we worked a little harder and looked a little deeper for […]
It Is Alive! Our 3D Printer Comes To Life!
Yesterday was a banner day in the lives of the Miscoe MakerCrew! It was our first “make” with the new 3D printer! In just two after-school meetings, we have figured out how to prepare a design for 3D printing and create it! We downloaded a “thing” from Thingiverse, played with the software a little bit, […]
6th Grade Students Present “Hour of Code”
This morning I am so incredibly proud of Andrew, Belle, Ben, Liam, Skye, Riley, and Reem, 6th grade students who presented with Ms. Meyer on the Hour of Code to our school committee last night. With literally just hours of notice, the students pulled together a presentation that appeared to have taken much more time […]
Happy Friday!
As always, this week – conference week – has been a busy week! I took some time yesterday to install and calibrate our new interactive whiteboard, which is a tool that works with the projector, computer, and document camera to make our projection screen behave like a SmartBoard. We can thank IPEVO and their Wishpool […]
THIS PROJECT IS FULLY FUNDED! WE’RE GETTING A 3D PRINTER!!!
We are so close to getting a 3D printer for the classroom and school district! The manufacturer of the 3D printer, Makerbot, launched an initiative on Tuesday to pair with crowd source funders, DonorsChoose, to put a printer in every school. I wrote the DonorsChoose project request on Tuesday night and was notified today that […]
