Artist of the Day videos are a warm up activity I’ve been using in my art classrooms for the last 4 years. I find interesting videos and show them to my kids; I keep them under 5 minutes and try to anticipate what I think will be interesting to them. There are times they think the video I have chosen is boring! I also started tying them to their curriculum or to aesthetic activities I wanted to engage them in. The videos work as a wonderful vehicle to find out what our kids are really interested in.
Some ways I use Artist of the Day videos:
- Explore new trends and paths in art
- Help teach art technique
- Use for interactive aesthetic activities
- Enrich their classroom learning with targeted information they are interested in
- Have fun! I love watching the Artist of the Day each period – the students are engaged, interested and excited about the discoveries we make through this feature of my classroom
Last fall in my graduate studies class at Texas Womans University, I chose an individual project of creating 10 aesthetic activities that I would conduct with my students in my classroom. I did one each week, and at the end of the week I wrote up my findings in a post and uploaded it to my older blog. You can find all 10 activities in the posts if you go here. I include the videos we watched (and how long they are), the questions I asked my students at the end of the activity, and a sampling of their written responses to my questions. It was a wonderful, fun and enlightening project!
I am presenting this PowerPoint at the Texas Art Education Association state conference in San Antonio to share this fun and exciting way to engage our 21st c. students.
Click here to download the PPTX and get more details about the many ways you can use Artist of the Day videos: Artist of the Day