Skip to main content

From traditional art classes to distance learning!

While attending art school waaaaaaaay back in the last century, computers and online learning were a thing never imagined by myself. My classes were held in a large, light, and airy studio. The smell of turpentine permeated the room. Students stood or sat, intent on portraying the gestures of the model in front of them. Learning to draw and paint in the creative physical environment provided motivation and inspiration. Interaction and critiques with my fellow students and teacher were integral to my learning experience.

Well, time certainly has flowed quickly by since those halcyon days. For a number of years, I've been searching for a local drawing class that could help me achieve a fresh and more expedient way of executing my detailed colored pencil work. Finding a class that suited my specific needs and one that also meshed with my busy schedule was impossible. Then, an "aha moment." Why not try an online course? Bingo!

I'm currently enrolled in an online class titled "Building Color that Works," offered by colored pencil expert, Bet Borgenson. The purpose of this class is to learn color-layering techniques that afford the artist more speed in completion of a piece and yet retain a high level of quality. So far, I've completed lesson #1 and am working on lesson #2. I'm very pleased with the teacher's knowledgeable and constructive feedback.

Once I learn how to post pictures, I'll periodically throw a sample or two up here so you folks can see my progress. I'm excited that my very first experience with a distance learning class is proving to be as inspiring and motivating as being in that art studio so many years ago.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Schools of the Future: Acquiring and Representing Knowledge

This year's Schools of the Future conference was an information-rich event. When we think of the future, more than a few of us probably also think of technology. That association certainly carries over in the interpretation of the conference title Schools of the Future . Indeed, many topics besides educational technology were covered; however, the technological advances were a strong highlight at the conference in my view. As mentioned in one of Cassie's previous posts , there are online classes everywhere. The first few links on my list reference ways to learn on your own (i.e., ways to acquire knowledge). The second set of links refer to ways of representing knowledge. **Note:  All icons link to the affiliated website.  Academic Earth has hundreds of free online lectures from prominent university professors, including Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, The University of Houston, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Michigan State, Princeton, Rice, UCLA, UCSF, and the list

Geotagging

A "wouldn't it be nice" idea that's been around a while is the ability to tag a map with images that are linked to more information about the site. Kelly C suggested it as a way for students to share knowledge about a cultural/historic site or the geographic area they live in with classmates. (right, no addresses!) There are now cameras and even storage media that embed latitude and longitude into images as they are shot. But you don't need fancy new toys to do this. I tried Flickr's geotagging map and it's fun and supereasy. Want to try it? Log in to Flickr http://www.flickr.com Sign in as " techedine " password " wist101 " yea, corny. Click the " You " tab then the " Your Photostream > Map " or Organize > Your Map links. Click the Satellite link in the upper right. Cool view! (you may need Google Satellite downloaded). Images along the bottom of the screen with colored dots have already been droppe

Zoho Creator

I thought I’d share this web application I came across in my quest to find a relatively simple app to help us manage our mentoring data in the DL Orientation. Our specific needs were that it be a free online database, password protected, had the capability of rapid form development without too much programming knowledge and was easy for the end user to use. The application that met these requirements was Zoho Creator ( http://www.zohocreator.com/ ) a part of a suite of online applications including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, wikis, organizers and more. What’s great about Zoho Creator is that they have an online repository of applications already developed that you can download to your account and use for free. Initially, I tried some of these applications, but it was overkill for our needs. Zoho Creator can do a lot if you know programming and they have a pay model where it allows you more flexibility and features. I think Zoho Creator would be a useful tool for both