Legos and Airwaves

On Saturday I had my first day (of this session) of Lego Star Wars and Motorized Machines. As you know, Brianna and I planned our collaborative project(s?) based on what we could do with our real life classes. I was to get my kids to make a collaborative Lego sculpture in a single class period. I did... sort of. But, I guess you all will hear about it tomorrow.




While I'm here I wanted to mention a couple thoughts I had about Airwaves. First, I have to admit it was more successful than I thought it would be. For some reason I thought people would avoid participation, or be skeptical or unoriginal are just draw simple lines. Clearly, I was wrong. tens of people enthusiastically participated. They filled both entire sheets of paper (and even spilled onto the walls). And, I really understand how the colors, line quality, and ambiguous flow of the papers reflects each of the soundtracks. However, I am biased. I wonder how people off the street would describe each drawing? Would they use descriptors like 'serene, calm, soothing, oceanic' and 'noisy, violent, angry, fiery?' Maybe we should try to find out.

take down

I was really expecting there to be some sort of addition to the works we left up. But, this morning I found they were just as we had left them. I am going to attribute this to 1. it being the weekend and 2. the community of respect and appreciate the Corcoran harbors among its students. I wonder what other students reactions were over the weekend without any sort of explanation to go with the pieces. Let me tell you, they look quite different after a few days of separation. They are in my locker at school, I'll be sure to bring them to class on Friday. Can't wait to see the other group's work- I hope it went smoothly over the weekend!

Collab at Amidon

Last Friday I spent my first few hours volunteering at Amidon-Bowen High Tech Elementary School. The 4th graders there have spend the last few weeks working on large community/autumn related project that will be posted in the school's hallways.

The class is working in groups of 8 or 9 students. Each group is working on a unique project (a tree, a human figure, or a building). The project idea, including the concept of working groups/'communities,' come from our group of MAT's. None of the developers have taken this Collaborative Studio class. But, the idea of collaborative project came naturally to them.

The Amidon group projects make me wonder about teaching and collaboration. I am realizing that several teachers make their students do group projects. I have usually assumed that the group projects occurred because school don't have enough tables, glue sticks, etc to give to individuals. However, I am wondering now if teachers also innately realize the creative value of collaboration, even without an explicit explanation of how collaboration yields different results than individual work.