Welcome to the Penn State Art Education 212 course blog! This blog
is designed to provide a starting point for Art Education students enrolled in
A ED 212 to discuss the weekly assigned readings, respond to classmates' blog
posts, continue conversations that began in class, ask questions, and discover
multiple answers. This blog is also a place for the general public to read
about what Art Education 212 is learning about, comment, and ask questions.
Students currently enrolled in 212 may choose to use this blog as a part of
their professional portfolio or as a way to make connections with other art
educators. There are many possibilities for how this blog may take shape. One
interesting feature of public writing is that the author cannot predict (or
control) how the conversation will continue. The possibility that A ED 212
student writing will have many different interpretations and inspirations for
other authors is only multiplied by the fact that authors have the option to
add photographs, video, and hyperlinks to their writing. Hopefully as this blog develops over time we will have an
opportunity to see the ways that intertextuality and metaphor affects learning.
The blog also stands as a public invitation for comment, so any reader who
happens across this writing is encouraged to comment and share the information
our class discusses.
Many blog posts may follow the following format: one to
two paragraphs summarizing the assigned reading for the week, a paragraph or
two following the summary sharing the author’s views of the piece, and finally
a concluding paragraph pointing the way to further conversation and shared
learning. The author may choose to relate the present reading to other things
they have read, seen, or experienced. The author may also choose to conclude
the writing with a series of questions for the class to consider. The author
may also choose to conclude the writing by connecting what they learned in the
reading to a practical or hypothetical teaching situation. This is a basic
outline for how students enrolled in A ED 212 may approach writing blog posts.
There are many other ways to construct an essay that will grab the attention
and imagination of classmates and general readers. Spend some time looking for
blogs related to art education that you find engaging, informative, and response-worthy.
As you find other blogs that you admire you may want to take notes to better
analyze how the writing is effective. Ask yourself:
- Does the author write in one long post?
- How are the paragraphs broken up?
- What kind of tone does the author take: technical, narrative, humorous, or shocking?
- How does the author utilize moving and still images?
- What other features of the blog draw you in and make you want to learn more?
As you begin the blog writing process rest assured that everyone
in this course will also be searching for his or her own way to create blog
posts that encourage conversation. With each successive blog post you will grow
as an author, reader, and art educator! (507 words)
This is an example of a substantial response. I think the example blog post helped clarify the length, organization, and look of a blog post for me. It was easy for me to read because the format helps me see the flow of ideas. The use of hyperlinks within the text works like footnotes in a book: I can get more information about certain aspects of the text if I choose to explore the links or I can just read the body text. One issue I had with the example blog post was the fact that it only includes a video and no photographs. The lack of photographs leads me to have some questions for the author. What kind of images should I use to illustrate my future blog posts? I am concerned about who might be looking at this blog and I want to make sure the photographs I choose are visually engaging, relevant to my writing, and appropriate for my audience. Should I choose photographs that are examples of people of all ages experiencing art? Finally, I am not sure how I am supposed to caption a photograph I embed in a blog post in order to have proper attribution. I'm not sure where to find the answers to these questions and I would like some feedback from the rest of the class about these questions.
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