Green Screen Art Talk Videos

During the past few weeks, I have recruited student volunteers to practice with our new green screen.  Students have been creatively generating ideas for how they would use this in their classrooms while getting time to practice with it on their own.  Yesterday it was time to have 7th grade art students create their own videos talking about their sturgeon projects.  These projects will be on display at Mosquito Hill Nature Center during New London's sturgeon run in spring.  Attached to each student created sturgeon will be a QR code, linking Mosquito Hill visitors to each student artist's video description of what inspired his or her art.  I thought that using the green screen to create the student videos would be a perfect fit.

Using Do Ink's Green Screen app for iPad, students added a picture of their sturgeons and recorded a video of themselves discussing their artistic inspirations.  Videos were then uploaded to YouTube, and QR codes were created using the website QRstuff.com.  Since the green screen and the app are new to us, I asked just a few student volunteers to try it out this time.  Here are a few of their samples.

Next quarter our plan is to have all students record in front of the green screen.  We are also thinking about having students include their original drawings in the background and explain more about their artistic process.  In addition, these videos can be further enhanced and edited by smashing the green screen app with other apps such as iMovie.  There are so many possibilities!  The best part was how excited our student volunteers were to create these simple videos.  We hope the community enjoys learning more about our 7th grade artists.

Sharing the Artistic Process through QR Codes

Students in Mrs. Daly's seventh grade art class created projects that will be shared with the whole community come spring.  Spring in New London is huge on the Wolf River, especially during the time when sturgeon fishing begins.  To celebrate this exciting community activity, seventh graders each created and designed a sturgeon of their own which will be publicly displayed at Mosquito Hill Nature Center in the spring.  The design of each sturgeon reflects something symbolically important to each student, and much thought was put into the design itself before the actual artwork began.

Mrs. Daly was inspired to do this project after learning about Chicago's 1999 "Cows on Parade" public art project where hundreds of fiberglass cow sculptures were decorated by local artists and displayed around the city.  Similarly, in nearby Appleton, prior to the 2007 premiere of Fox Cities PAC's The Lion King, the city celebrated by creating their own public art project called "Lions of the Valley" where local artists painted fiberglass lions and distributed them throughout the city.

These public art displays not only give artists an opportunity to share their talents with the wider community, but they also create an increased sense of pride for the city as many of the artists choose to add elements representing their community into their artwork.  Our students showed the same type of pride as several Wisconsin themes are also visible in their artwork.

I personally loved the idea of the public art display but felt that adding a 21st century technology component would make the display that much more powerful.  Mrs. Daly and I both agreed that the artistic process of planning and designing the sturgeon was an important piece that the public would not see unless students were given an opportunity to present their entire artistic process.  That led us to the decision to have students create videos explaining the meaning behind each sturgeon. After each video was created, students uploaded their videos to their school YouTube accounts.  To easily share the videos with those visiting the public display at Mosquito Hill, I showed students how to create QR codes.  Each sturgeon will not only have a label identifying the artist and the name of the piece, but also an attached QR code that will link the community to the videos of students sharing their artistic process.

For most students this was their first experience using QR codes.  After they were created, students tested them out by scanning them using the free app QR Reader. Ah ha! moments occurred when students realized that they have seen these codes at the grocery store, on their games, and even at Starbucks!  I can only imagine the things that they will scan now on their own outside of school.