Sound and Science with Jad Abumrad of Radio Lab

Jad Abumrad, the host of my second favorite radio show, Radio Lab, talks about the sound of failure. Radio Lab uses a tapestry of sound and story to explain interesting science concepts. The hosts and producers are masters at the craft of editing and playing with sound. In this short talk, Abumrad discusses the sound of failure. Besides being another great example of masters reflecting on their process and craft, it does a nice job of demonstrating how sound could be used creatively in the service of illustrating scientific content.

Illustrating Poetry: Being Figurative

Language Arts 8

8th grade students were required to write a series of poems as part of their poetry unity. Their teacher, Pat Ludwig, wanted them to produce an illustrated book of their poems. We saw this as an opportunity to extend their thinking about what purpose an illustration serves. They had been working with metaphor, irony, and figurative language in class, and we wanted them to transfer those skills from the realm of language to that of imagery. This is what meaningful arts integration is all about: not merely showering kids with art projects, but using the arts as a vehicle to help them think and communicate in different ways; to understand that each of the arts can come at the same concepts from different angles.

In the slideshows below, you can see the steps we led the students through to reach an understanding of how they could be figurative in their approach to illustrating their poems, followed by examples from their final poetry books. The books were produced using Blurb, and the students were given the option of finding images in royalty-free image databases, or creating their own original artworks. Please note that you may pause the slideshows, or click on them to view a full-sized version.

Memorials, Monuments, Museums

Social Studies 8

This is an 8th grade Arts Integration Social Studies unit, which looks at societal values, beliefs, and ideals, and how they are enshrined through architecture and the built environment. Students look at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and other sites they will visit during their class trip to Washington and New York, with attention to what meaning is conveyed through the design of these forms and spaces. The students design a memorial, monument, or museum for their simulation country, and watch a presentation by a local architect. The first slideshow below takes you through the lesson sequence leading into their final design work. Please note that you may pause the slideshow.

Here are three example pieces from start to finish: a museum, a monument, and a memorial. For each piece, you can view the student's process journal, model, and graphic presentation. The students were required to keep a process journal to record their creative thought process through sketches, notes, and photographs. They were also required to write a statement and create a visual graphic to present their final design. Click on the slideshow to view full-sized images in Picasa. Photos of other final models are included in the slideshow as well.

Creating Infographics: What is History?

Social Studies 8

Michael Stein-Ross, our Social Studies 8 Teacher, came to me with the idea of having his students create infographics. He was having them devise their own definition of history, and wanted them to be able to give visual form to these ideas. Infographics have become a natural outgrowth of both the information revolution and the increasingly visual nature of our ever-expanding media universe. They vary in quality and eloquence, but the act of creating one provided a nice vehicle for exploring how to communicate an idea or message visually.

 Below is a slideshow that walks you through our lesson sequence, and here are a couple of great resources we found along the way:

"Teaching with Infographics: Places to Start" from the New York Times Learning Network

"A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods" from visual-literacy.org.