I received an email from Renee from My Adventures in Positive Space telling me she was contacted by Ian from Art of Apex HS. Both were finalists in AOE’s Art Ed Blog of the Year contest. As Ian was “sizing up his competition” he noticed a project that Renee did with her 1st grade students, and asked her if his HS art students could animate her elementary student’s drawings. What a cool idea!
I love this because:
1. It shows that distance is not a barrier for doing innovative collaboration. You can collaborate from across the country and make meaningful art with other students.
2. It reminds us to be flexible. Just because you had a plan for a project with your students, you can always adapt when something interesting comes along, and the result could be even better!
3. Art educators need each other. Sometimes we get into the mode of thinking “HS and Elementary” are separate entitles, with separate goals. We forget that one needs the other in so many different ways in order to provide a well rounded art education experience for our students. You are never to old (or young) to lean on someone else and collaborate creatively.
Here are some of the animations that Ian’s students created from Renee’s student’s drawings:
To find out more about this project and each of these bloggers, visit Ian’s site and Renee’s post on this collaboration.
How cool is this?
Have you ever collaborated with an art teacher at another grade level?
Tell us about it!
Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.
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