E-portfolio Guest Book

My e-portfolio is finally finished!

If you have already seen it, please leave a comment here.
I tried to use a fancy "guest book" but it didn't work!

If you haven't yet visited my e-portfolio, you can see it at http://www.geocities.com/chezolson/artistic.html?1174756426145

I used Geocities to post it!

However, Geocities can be rather buggy so I linked the main page to pages in my blog and to photos in photobucket.com. If you have any trouble, you can probably access everything from this site.

Enjoy!

(and I hope you are all so inspired that you do your own e-portfolios!)

Inspiring Pieces by Other Artists

I wanted to include a tribute section to my fellow student artists and a few others.
Included here are pieces that I purchased and the reasons why they are interesting.

Wheel-Thrown Pieces

Plates by Janet:
I am a big fan of Janet's work in general. She's definitely a pro with glazes and her work has a nice weight - not too light, not too heavy - just right!

Compare with my small plate
Mine is tiny and heavy when compared to Janet's! You can see where I tried to duplicate the overlapping glaze effects she created.

Bowls by Matt:
Matt's work has a really interesting hand-made feel to them. However, this is a set of one large bowl and six matching bowls that actually match. This is really difficult to do by hand although we are used to identical pieces made by forms. The basic black glaze is especially well done since it goes all the way down to the bottom of the piece.

Compare with my blue bowls
Both are small when compared to Matt's. Also, the glaze misses the bottom of the bowls by about an inch. One bowl shows a nice consistent glaze. The other shows how difficult a basic black glaze can be. This bowl also shows interesting "ridges" which happen when the pressure is inconsistent while throwing the bowl.


Vase by Yumiko:
This light-weight vase is of very high quality and is very thin. However, what makes it remarkable is that it is a mixture of two different clays. The outside is left unglazed to show this feature. As a result, the vase has an interesting texture as well: rough on the outside, smooth on the inside.

Compare with underside of my small plate and my Indian Motif Bottle
I mixed two clays for this plate, following Yumiko's instructions, and it actually turned out pretty nice. (If you look carefully, you can see a drawing of me "cutting off" the plate). The Indian Motif Bottle looks similar but remember looks can be deceiving in pottery. When you pick up this bottle which is 1/4 the size of Yumiko's vase, it actually weighs more than the vase! The weight is "hidden" in the thickness of the walls that you can't see.


Cups by various artists:
These cups were produced by professionals. However, what is remarkable here is the glaze work.

Compare with my blue cup
This cup is a pretty nice little cup actually! One of my success stories. However, artists always want to take the next step! So, imagine this cup with a more interesting glaze job.

Whale - Hand Built Raku by Inga:
Inga is a fellow beginner but she already has good technique. Her whale rattle makes a beautiful sound when shaken. The whale was glazed with the Raku process, which is very exciting to watch. It involves fire and a lot of luck. The hot piece is pulled from the kiln and newspapers are poured over it. The newspapers catch fire easily and are allowed to do so for a few seconds and then a bucket is clamped down over it to snuff out the fire. Inside the bucket, the glaze reacts to the smoke and the fire causing variations and iridescent effects.

Compare with my Raku Turtle
Again, another success story! Turtle is quite cute and turned out well for a Raku piece. However, if you pick up Inga's whale and my turtle, you would notice the weight difference. Hers is much lighter and more consistent in texture. Her rattles have a lot of room to move. In my turtle, they move but not as much, which indicates that the walls are thicker. So my next step as an artist is to follow her example.

Reflections on Working With Clay

I really love clay as a medium, partially because it is so tactile. You have to use your hands!

Displaying my pieces on the web only gives you part of their story. To understand their strengths and their weaknesses, a person has to hold them. I thought this was strange at first when my teacher would always wait to grade a piece until she had picked it up. However, now I understand that the weight of the piece told her something about the quality of it Lighter pieces are more difficult to make than heavier ones. She was also measuring the consistency of the wall thickness and feeling for places where the clay had uneven weight.

The dimension of weight also affects the feeling of the piece. Picking up "Baby Owl" for example, one might notice that it is about the same size and weight as a small baby. "Yappy Dog" is clearly an "overweight" piece and its heft coveys the feeling of an older dog who has led a comfortable life but can no longer chase the squirrels and he had done in his youth and now must be content to bark at them from a distance. "Thin-Walled Bowl" is very light weight and is impressive until you feel the sides and notice that they grow thicker towards the bottom - a reoccurring problem with many of my wheel thrown pieces that I need to continue to work on.

However, producing anything in clay requires patience. So much can go wrong in the process. Cracks can develop in the drying process. Glazing a piece can be a matter of luck but it has severe ramifications. A good glaze can save a poor piece, while a thinly applied glaze or a poor chemical reaction of a properly applied glaze can ruin the most promising work.

Since I am a beginner, my work can be sorted into the following percentages:
25% of it is really awful and can't be saved
50% of it is in a limbo state - neither good enough to keep, nor poor enough to throw out immediately
25% of it is appealing
As one develops skill with working with clay, I expect the percentage of appealing work to go up BUT what I have seen in reality is that one's standards simply become higher. Accomplished aspiring artists that I know can produce work that is appealing to me and my criteria quite consistently. However, they often express dissatisfaction because they are working towards higher goals.

My Ceramics Club Work

I joined Foothill College's Claybodies Club in the Fall Quarter of 2005.

I have served as Secretary to the club since that time.

My responsibilities were writing and e-mailing agendas and minutes for the meetings.
I provided organization and leadership when necessary.

I have also served as the Organization Board of Directors (OBD) Representative for part of that time.

My responsibilities were filling out the necessary OBD forms, meeting OBD deadlines, and addressing the
OBD body with our proposals.

In the School Year 2005-2006, Claybodies Club had the following activities:

• Holiday Ceramics Sale Nov. 28 - Dec. 1
• Mask Making Workshop March 14
• Mother's Day Ceramics Sale May 10 - 11
• Low Fire Salt Workshop May 17 & 22
• Soda Fire Workshop June 12 & 19
• Photography Workshop June 26

Special Accomplishments? We won Club of the Year!

In the School Year 2006-2007, Claybodies Club had the following activities:

• Guest Speaker: Jenny Morten Nov. 15
• Holiday Ceramics Sale Nov. 28 - 30 & Dec. 2
• Guest Speaker: Christa Assad Feb. 28

Challenges:

• Keeping Club Members Enthusiastic and Involved
• Recruiting New Club Officers (We've had some turn over each quarter)
• Filling out OBD paperwork correctly and getting it in on time

Reflections:
I learned a lot about group dynamics from being involved with Claybodies Club.

• Groups don't move quickly to do anything and if you want to get something done it is important to assign it to someone specific. Doing everything yourself is exhausting and it does nothing to build team.
• It is important to communicate verbally and in writing, especially if your message is urgent.
• Bureaucracy can be difficult to work with but usually rules and regulations are there to protect everyone's best interest. Missing OBD deadlines can be frustrating but usually it is for the best and the event is better when it is planned welland not at the last minute.

San Francisco State E-Portfolios March 19, 2007

Week 10

Thought I would look at some e-portfolios closer to home this week.

For those of you who don't know, last semester, I took Greek 3 up at San Francisco State in addition to my Foothill Classes. SFSU has a beautiful campus but they also have beautiful examples of e-portfolios. Check out some samples at:

http://eportfolio.sfsu.edu/gallery.php

I like the range of examples that they included. There is a creative writing student, a business student, a California studies student, a multimedia studies student, and instructional design student, etc.

The sample templates are very nice! For those of us who are starting from scratch, they make good guide lines for what fields to put in.

On this site, I would recommend you check out Pony Smith's example. This ePortfolio is written in a nice conversational style that might be great for this class.

Catherine Magee's and Rachel Poulain's e-portfolios are very business-like -- more so than the business student's-- but they are both studying public health.

Meiko Swartz's portfolio is interesting to artists but the SFSU link goes more to a reflection page, then you have to click on a link to get to the main portfolio:
http://www.monstersgalore.com/portfolio/

Also, they seem to very a lot. Some seem to be more like an on-line resume without many artifacts, while others have a lot of supporting material showing their projects as well as their reflections.

All in all, I would recommend checking out this site from San Francisco State University!

E-portfolios for Wisconsin Art Teachers - March 06, 2007

Week 9

This week's winning website is :

http://www.uwstout.edu/art/artedportfolios/help/index.html

"This site and its contents were created by the following K-16 art educators in Wisconsin as part of a University of Wisconsin-System PK-16 Grant titled "Developing Electronic Portfolios for Pre-service and In-service Art Teachers," during the 2001-03 academic year."

I think this site will be helpful to everyone but especially so to those of us in the class who are working on "art" e-portfolios. It has technical tips for getting started, examples with feedback, tips on wrting an artist statement and a section about "reflection". It also has lots of links to helpful resources, including some to our "friend" Helen Barrett's articles.

I hope you can check it out! It is definitely worth a look or two!

Quick notes: 2nd Post for Week 8

Here is the second post for Week 8.

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on my new site!

technical difficulties resolved ... more info on Blackboard Portfolios can be found at:
http://www.blackboard.com/products/portfolio/demos.htm


Note on "rote learning" and Friedman -

I see that Friedman's observations on the subject fall in Chapter 8. This fell outside of the reading assignment, so I haven't got to it yet, but I think I see your point. He definitely says
creativity can be learned.

However, I think the nature of the Chinese writing system implies a certain amount of rote learning that isn't necessary for an Alphabet writing system.

To my evil editing, drum-smashing friend who writes:

"I didn't know that Alex Haley could trace his lineage back to
West Africa as could ancient Icelanders.  Those Vikings got
around.  Edit carefully."

yes ... I will be more careful in the future.

And thanks for the pointer to the JFK quote on Reference.com.

It fits nicely in with the themes of our new book Earth Odyssey.

"In an address before the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy said, in part, 'Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.' "

An Award Winning Eportfolio - March 05, 2007

An Award Winning Eportfolio - March 05, 2007

This week I've decided to follow Dr. Scott's example and comment on an URL that is interesting.

In the fall of 2005, Clemson University began requiring a General Education ePortfolio from all of its students.

http://dcit.clemson.edu/resources/articles/gened_eportfolio.php#jump11

Located in Clemson, South Carolina, this university has anticipated the needs of the future student and are requiring them today. This is a great site to visit for those of us still struggling with what an eportfolio should or could be.

However, it is also nice because it gives the school's rational for the decision.
Also their is a recreation of the best ePortfolio at Clemson (designed by Josh Reynold's) which we can view at:

http://people.clemson.edu/~jsreyno/portfolio/

worth checking out! As are Josh Reynold's comments about e-portfolios.

"He said, 'The whole point of the portfolio that I made was to help me realize the connections that I made across the curriculum, and to make these connections obvious to the people who view my portfolio, to show that I indeed did learn something, and not just how to regurgitate the assignments of the past semester.'

Reynolds explained that incoming freshmen will need to understand that 'this is an opportunity for students to demonstrate how well they can link their experiences across the gen ed competencies. They have already proven that they have the knowledge to answer specific questions by passing their classes, but it is just as important for them to demonstrate that they can make connections among those things they have learned. This is where I believe the value of the ePortfolio lies.' "

I also tried to investigate the platform "Blackboard" that this University was using.
http://www.blackboard.com/us/index.Bb

but ran into some technical difficulties when I tried to find out more about ePortfolios on their site.

East versus West Education Differences ...

My Wikipedia research didn't prove to be as fruitful with this topic
as I had hoped. So, unfortunately, dear reader, this blog will contain mostly my own thoughts on the subject. (Already I feel your pain).

However, I did learn a thing or two this week. It appears that India and China are centuries ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to education. Both had a long standing academic tradition. India's was destroyed by the imposition of a British system. China fared somewhat better as a colony but I imagine it lost a lot during the infamous Cultural Revolution, where the old classics and the art was looked upon as being bourgeoise and destroyed.

However, that being said, I think that there has to be an emphasis on rote learning in China, especially when it can take 8 years before you know enough Chinese characters to write a letter home.

This is where I see the main difference because I feel (with no facts what so ever to back it up) that America's education reform of the 60's and the 70's moved away from learning by rote and into new territory. Now we are even venturing into brain research to inform our teaching practices. So, I guess I would say that "Western" (meaning American) learning is more about the process than the facts.

Also, I think we have moved further away from corporal punishment in the classroom than most countries. In fact, I think we have taken the lead in this regards and our model is slowing moving in to other countries education systems.

(Although, I guess that student/teacher relations in China also changed significantly during the Cultural Revolution. One would think that they would have to, given the amount of power that students weilded under Mao. For those of you who don't know, some teachers were actually beaten up by their students during this time. See Son of the Revolution by Hen Liang and Judith Shapiro.)

Different Education Systems

So many blogs ... so little time.

Recently on the group blog (Feb. 4), I posted a question about the differences between education in the East and in the West. A fellow student's comment has got me thinking about this in more depth.

I've had more training in Anthropology than most but I doubt that this answer will be comprehensive without further research. However, here are my initial thoughts on the subject.

I think the minute that we in America use the term "Education", it implies books and schools.
However, that makes it hard to compare with education systems that are vastly different. Also, the trend, perhaps to keep up with the rest of the world, is that "Education" fits the schools and book model.

Other education "systems" that I could think of that have been used over time are as follows. Hunter and gather societies often just let their children "play at being adult". The behaviors they needed were the same as adults, so they learned by copying their parents or other adults in the community. Everyone still uses this method of education for the basics before children start school. An example of a hunting and gathering society that used this was/is the BaMbuti Pygmies as written about in the book The Forest People by Colin Turnbull, first published in 1961.

Another popular education was the "education" males received when they were inducted into society in the most painful way possible. The circumcision rituals were when the boys became men of the tribe and learned about their place in the society. There is no equivalent learning to this in modern society except perhaps for military boot camps. Incidentally, these rituals were often decried as barbaric by "modern" society, and since "modern" society values the individual over the group, the removal of these ceremonies rips apart these societies at the seems. Perhaps the most important lessons learned here were the "order of things", with the tribal elders at the top of the chain of command.

Another type of education was story telling or oral history. Of course, I have to say something about the Icelandic saga tradition, in which listeners not only learned the values and morals of the days but also the genealogy of the island. A recent example of this type of learning that I can think of was Roots by Alex Haley. He could trace his lineage back to West Africa in much the same way that ancient Icelanders could.

Apprenticeship is still a form that we are familiar with in our society. This type of learning was used for complicated subjects. In this category, I would place shamanism, because I believe that this is how this type of religious training is passed. However, the example that I like better is the training of the Polynesian navigators, which you can read more about in East is a Big Bird by Gladwin. Also, in this book, there was an interesting comparison to the knowledge that a navigator needs to have and the knowledge that is stressed in our schools. Gladwin mentioned that learning to be a good navigator is like being able to be a truck driver. It is about reflexes and complex moves that have to be copied. Then there is the knowledge about the stars and nature that has to be learned so that the ship can know where they are. In this category, I am also reminded of a story I heard about the Australian Aborigines. The young were rounded up by the missionaries so that they could attend school. The parents were very upset about this, understandably, but I think one of the reasons they gave was that it would interrupt their "education". The children needed to learn the Aborigine way of life and they couldn't do that while they were in the classroom. So, I think that this habit of missionaries to "educate" the young may also have wrecked a certain amount of damage on smaller cultures.

Well, that's my two cents for this week. Next week, I think I'll ramble on about the differences that I learned about between schools in the East and the West.

Technology and the Decline of the English Language: Feb. 8, 2007

Technology and the Decline of the English Language: February 08, 2007

"Isn't this sad? People who have been taught nothing about their own language are (contrary to educational expectations) spending all their leisure hours attempting to string sentences together for the edification of others. And there is no editing on the internet!"
Lynne Truss
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
(page 17)

This was the rant of Lynne Truss was about the numerous incidents of bad grammar that have simultaneously occurred along with the explosion of writing now available on internet.

No doubt she would also have had a field day with my recent post on Steve Jobs' speech where several times, I refer to his achievements with Job's. Then there is the infamous post on the group blog where I misspell guarantee while trying to sound like an intellectual.

In this technology age, where "everyone's a writer!" there is a definite down side, which is the spread of bad grammar and bad spelling. Now I am definitely not a grammar stickler but I think she has a point. While it is exciting that more people are indeed writing for fun, it is also disheartening that the quality controls are not there.

I've noticed that some systems DO have a spell check that can be used before posting, which would help correct the spelling errors, but I have also noticed that they are "optional". Being lazy, I can't even count on myself to take the extra step.

Since we are an on-line English class, we need to try to set a good example. However, isn't that the whole problem? If we knew it was wrong, we probably would correct it. Right?

Perhaps the internet DOES need a good editor?

Will the internet eventually erode the standards of good English if things continue as they are now?

Is punctuation important?

She gives this popular example on page 9 of her book.

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Finally, I am left to wonder how DOES one do MLA citations in a blog? Am I committing yet another faux pas? Where is that editor when I need him? Or her? or ... it?

Writing "Technology" and Education - February 05, 2007

As you can tell from my last post, I am enamored of "writing" as the first "education technology".
(I am also an admirer of E.T. Bell's book Men of Mathematics, whose stories are in this post).

For after all, without writing, this marvelous thing called the internet would not be very interesting .... or perhaps it would, but then it would be very loud, relying of the spoken word.

So, let's do a quick review.

First, writing on clay - some obvious disadvantages to this one.
You have to let the clay dry and then fire it. However, then it is almost permanent.
Interesting example, there are only four books (codices) left written in Mayan, but there are
a lot of vases and clay artifacts with Mayn writing.

Of course, you can always write on sand, like Archimedes did. Of course, this is just a temporary fix.
Some Roman soldier is bound to come alont and mess them up. (And yes, his famous last words were probably Μη μου τους κύκλους τάραττε ("Don't disturb my circles")

Then papyrus ... not too bad but I think you have to pound the papyrus and then you have to watch out for mold.

Then vellum - that leather that people used to write on, making each "book" a labor of love.
Interesting fact, if you get vellum wet it returns to the shape of the animal.

Then, of course, paper and the printing press come along.

But until they became inexpensive enough, there were chalkboard slates in schools. They, of course, had the disadvantage of only holding so much information on them at one time. This is brilliantly illustrated by the story of Carl Friedrich Gauss. He was assigned busy work, to add up all the integers from 1 to 100, which he did without erasing his slate once and quite quickly as well. Slates were useful in showing who was a genius in a class.

And then there is the mail system. Used to be quite laborious to get a letter or goods sent by horses. However, the mail system is still an incredible invention in its own right, allowing people far removed from each other to communicate and collaborate. A good example would be the correspondence of Fermat and Pascal which gave us the beginnings of probability theory, as they worked on the problem of how to split up a poker pot if the game is interrupted.

Finally paper becomes cheaper and books are mass produced. First, books were sewn and you can still find some of these gems. Now however, most are glued to their covers.

Now, of course, there is the internet, encoding the writing with electricity and vastly improving upon the speed in which it is delivered, within seconds instead of days.

However, it all goes back to the writing system as the first technology used in education.... and/or time travel ....

2/6/07

Embracing the new standard that has emerged, I switched to blogger.