PODCAST
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist often referred to as the “princess of polka dots”. Although she creates paintings, sculptures, performances, and installations they all have one thing in common. Can you take a guess? If you said dots that is correct. The dots are inspiration taken straight from her own hallucinations. This allows her to measure the infinity of the unbounded universe, from the simplest form.. Dots.
Kusama was born in Japan in 1929. As a child Kusama would experience strong hallucinations. One of her earliest known hallucinations took place in a “field of flowers where all the flowers began to talk to her. The heads of flowers were like dots that went on as far as she could see, and she felt as if she was disappearing or as she calls it ‘self-obliterating’ – into this field of endless dots.” (tate.org) These strange hallucinations would continue for most of childhood as they became the building block for most of her work. Kusama once said ‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment’ Kusama also creates environments of dots so that we can experience this feeling of self-obliteration too. She calls these rooms her 'Infinity Rooms', which many are most often familiar with. By installing hundreds of flashing colored LED lights into mirrored rooms the small lighted dots inside of the dark room reflect endlessly in the mirrors, making you feel like you are in an endless space. The dots surround you and take you in, making it hard to distinguish where the room starts and where it ends. Today, Yayoi is the highest selling female artist and is considered a creative genius to this day. Since the 1970s, Kusama has continued to create art, most notably installations in various museums around the world and continues to be the princess of “Polka Dots” |
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APP REVIEW
Seesaw is a digital portfolio app available accessible through the web and as a mobile app which can be downloaded from Google play and the App Store for free. This app is accessible on your phone, laptop, tablet, etc. For this assignment I was interested in discovering an app I had never used before. I wanted the experience of teaching myself how to use it. Doing so allowed me to experience the app first-hand as a first-time user and eliminate any bias. After doing some research I came across Seesaw, a simple app used by teachers and students to share assignments, projects, and announcements all in one. For the students, the app serves as a digital portfolio that allows them to document their learning. It allows them to be creative while also learning how to use technology. It is extremely user-friendly, making it great for students of all ages, even those who might not have a lot of technology experience. It only took me about an hour to learn my way around the application. Within that hour, I had the chance to explore both the student's view and the teacher's view. I taught myself how to create activities, publish work, create templates, and comment on student’s work. I believe it would not take more than a couple of hours for someone to begin creating in this app. For others who may not have as much technology it could take a couple uses to get the hang of using all the features. I looked up different videos to learn unique features a little quicker on the app. I think others could benefit from this as well.
The application serves as a digital classroom. Each student gets their own journal and is allowed creativity with the ability to add things like voice recording, adding photos, drawing and notes. After assignments are finished, the students’ projects can be submitted to a private or classroom journal where other classmates can like, comment or even voice record comments underneath their peer's work. Along with these amazing features students and teachers can post PDFS, links, and videos. Some worthy mentions that I found incredibly resourceful are the features available for parents/guardians. Seesaw offers a special format for parents/ guardians to experience and engage with students' work. It is nice to see an app that includes home support in the classroom digitally. I really enjoyed the community that is created for teachers in Seesaw. Seesaw allows teachers to post and share activities and project ideas with other teachers to use in their own virtual Seesaw classroom. The use of Seesaw from a student's perspective can look like a creative canvas, inside of that canvas there is a drawing tool. Students can begin by taking a photograph of their and they can add multiple layers onto this photo. It can record their voice, they can draw on that, they can add labels, they can add various shapes. They can even start from scratch on the canvas and just create with the various creative pens that Seesaw has to offer. Seesaw has different drawing tools like highlighters, and glow pens and with a wide range of colors. This app truly has the ability to empower students and share what they learn in a way that supports all diverse learning needs. It helps reach different students who may not have the same physical ability to create like others, but with Seesaw it allows students to articulate in voice, drawing or writing and that creates a whole new meaning to the students. It removes barriers and it allows students to create, present, respond and connect in one single digital app. For this assignment I created one original activity and one activity from another teacher and assigned it to my sample classroom. I responded as a sample student. Below you can see a visual view of the platform and how my activities turned out. The first activity was an “all about me” template I created for students to fill out. The second activity consists of uploading a photo of oneself and creating crazy hair. |
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