'BODY' User Guide
This is a digital resource aimed at supporting teaching and learning for Year 9 – 10 Visual Art students that addresses some of the strands and learning elaborations of the Visual Arts discipline in the Victorian Curriculum (VCAA). This link leads to the annotated and photographed example of a creative process I undertook with the theme of ‘Body’. I began with a mind map. I added to it as ideas and interest trajectories surfaced in my imagination. Themes are very helpful and often necessary because without a theme to direct and focus our attention, it is predictable that we will be overwhelmed and immobilised. We approach a theme from our individual life experience when generating ideas so that the artwork in some way is a product of who we are and/or represents us. This serves as one example of what a creative process looks like and is intended to show rather than tell. It would not be surprising that majority of visual art students would be visual learners and therefore glean a lot from observing the recorded visual and annotated creative process of an artist. Through this resource, students gain insight into what other artists do, the extent of their work, the trajectories, dead ends, failures and successes. There is also great potential for ideation to be triggered in students when viewing other artist’s creative process and artworks.
This resource can help classroom teachers address specific aspects of the VCAA because elaboration codes are included in the annotations and students can be directed to them to read and look when needing direction. Cross curriculum capabilities of sustainability, empathy, critical and creative thinking and intercultural skills are considered and included in the resource for students to consider.
The pedagogical benefits of a web based teaching resource are that, students’ knowledge can always be extended and no learning time is wasted. It is portable and available everywhere there is internet access, and it provides a reference that is perfectly suited to my teaching style because I designed it. The resource enables smooth, organised, confident teaching and it can be added to as new issues, themes, skills sets, mediums and techniques become available.
The design features of this digital resource are that there is open and informal engagement with my responses and interpretations of ideas and support material. Generous selection of pictures, photocopied images and photographs to engage visual learners. There is also a good range of materials and techniques used in traditional and improvised ways for students to formulate ideas from. My failures and road blocks are acknowledged and clearly recorded to enable and normalise the frustrations for students. These factors contribute to the effectiveness of the resource by making a creative process visual and tangible for students that may never have before engaged in such a process.
© Copyright Ingrid Schmidt