Jon Schwartz & The Kids Like Blues Band Program: How technology and music help children learn

“We’ve managed to incorporate tons of technology into our classroom. Over 90 % of my students have personal blogs. Through their individual blogs, the kids can keep their parents in the loop and show off their creative skills. I get instant email updates when they blog, and nothing is cooler than seeing one of my students post to their blog – over the weekend!- about guitars they wish they had! Oh how I can relate!”

------Jon Schwartz

Can you believe a six-year-old child is as proficient as you do in Photoshop and blogging? Yes! That is what’s happening at Garrison Elementary School located in Oceanside, California. Jon Schwartz, a blues guitarist and a second grade teacher, creatively uses the blues, blogs and Photoshop, as tools to educate kids. Jon’s teaching endeavors, creativity and energy seem highly relevant to arts engagement opportunities for organizations across the country.

“The Kids Like Blues”

The Kids Like Blues Band Program is about using blues music and lyrics as a springboard for teaching academic content standards in reading, writing, listening, speech, social studies, and the visual and performing arts. Based on a careful song selection, Jon chooses lyrics with the appropriate cadence, imagery, and kid-friendly content. Students then sing out the vocabulary given the rhythm, and in turn practice reading through repetitive and engaging activities. The kids themselves are encouraged to choreograph cool dance moves and motions to help them define and recall complicated vocabulary.

These activities provide children an encouraging and exciting environment that motivates them to learn new knowledge and unleash their creativities. Chuck Berry’s “Let it Rock” is one of the most popular tunes.

[embed width="560" height="315"]http://youtu.be/Nlg5n9GmpZE[/embed]

Students who are learning English, have speech difficulties or other learning disabilities, and just plain shy kids seem to develop more confidence as they learn the songs since the material presented to them is an engaging group practice, rather than them needing to talk by themselves in front of the whole class.

See how a Japanese girl benefits from the project:

[embed width="560" height="315"]http://youtu.be/8hCWFIPmD5Q[/embed]

Additionally, both high achieving and struggling students who have made tremendous gains tend to take leadership roles in their enthusiasm generating  creative opportunities, such as designing dance moves, coaching others, blogging the artworks.

See how children create artworks through Photoshop and Blogging:

[embed width="560" height="315"]http://youtu.be/xt4AZ5XWQsM[/embed]

“Perhaps most importantly, my students’ self esteem is soaring and they are becoming passionate about lessons that would have otherwise been dull..”said Mr. Schwartz.  These strong emotional responses to the arts are exactly what arts educators wants to generate in the children, what arts organizations want to generate in their audience, and what art wants to generate in the human soul.  Mr. Schwartz’s model of creative participation and engagement can be translated to audience engagement models through online groups or onsite post-experience workshops. The opportunities abound for the arts to become as exciting to your audience as they are to these students.

Resource:

You will see all of the articles, TV features and 4 videos on their official website www.kidslikeblues.org

What a Difference an “A” Makes: Moving from STEM to STEAM

It’s a hot-topic today, complete with nifty acronyms, but the great debate about the “Two Cultures” is hardly a new one. The movement to incorporate “Art” in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program curriculum recalls the historic debate between the Sciences and the Arts (for more information on the debate, read C.P Snow's short essay, "The Two Cultures”). The irony of their supposed polarity is the fact they are completely interrelated. To say that the field of Engineering involves and is influenced by nothing more than “scientific” fundamentals is to say a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is made with nothing more than peanut butter. And we all know that is just plain silly, and only half the sandwich.

“The arts can no longer be treated as frill. Arts education is essential to stimulating the creativity and innovation that will prove critical to young Americans competing in a global economy.”- U.S Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan

Ask an engineer (go ahead, I did) if they have ever turned to creative problem solving in their work, prototype building, model-making, or taken a course in design as part of their program’s curriculum. A course in design teaches an engineer the artistic and creative fundamentals they then apply to engineering-specific projects and solutions. Need a second opinion? Ask the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at any company if they have ever pulled out a dry-ease marker and taken it to the white-board to diagram the effects of a potentially risky investment or visualize projections for the next quarter. Visual studies and applications are an integral component of STEM professions.

“The idea that we must choose between science and humanities is false”- Dr. Alan Brinkley, in the article “Half a Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste,” Newsweek

So let's take a look at two different schools representing both “sides” of the "Two Cultures" debate. Perhaps you will agree with me that these two fields are not as mutually exclusive as some have explained them to be. In fact, it appears they are, dare I say, mutually interdependent.

One of the world's premier design schools, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), is leading the discussion with the initiative, STEM to STEAM. What follows is a description of RISD's position as published on the school's webpage:

“RISD offers endless examples of how art and design education teaches the flexible thinking, risk-taking and creative problem solving needed to solve today’s most complex and pressing challenges – from healthcare to urban revitalization to global warming.”

[embed]http://vimeo.com/48817744[/embed]

Ok. So now let’s head to one of the world's leading institutions for technology studies: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT’s position on the STEM verses STEAM debate, as published online by the school, is as follows:

“In the current moment of economic uncertainty, America is once again turning to innovation as the silver bullet that will guide us forward. Yet in the eyes of many leaders, innovation seems tightly coupled with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math–the STEM subjects. We need to add "Art" to turn STEM into STEAM.

Artists and designers make information more understandable, products more desirable, and new invention possible through the project-based inquiry that has long been practiced in the art studio. By investing in art/science collaborations in research and education we can keep America at the forefront of innovation, ensuring our sustained global leadership and cultural prosperity in the 21st century.”

At this point in my academic and professional career, I simply cannot fathom how true innovation can result without art and design. Design in and of itself has become a differentiating factor for American products in the global and increasingly competitive marketplace. Incorporating art and design in the STEM program will create a new generation of creative thinkers, doers and problem solvers, capable of innovating in an interdisciplinary context and world. Be it the Opening Ceremony at the Olympics, the iPhone, or the chemist restoring frescoes in Florence, Italy, art, design, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are constantly at work together- equal weight must be given to art and design in school curricula across the country. Need I remind you that the world's greatest scientists, thinkers, and mathematicians were also poets, painters, and musicians. As Rebecca Ryan (founder of Next Generation Consulting) so brilliantly included in an October 2012 article, "Why STEM Isn't Working" in Madison Magazine, “Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, came to him when he was participating in what he called “musical thinking.””

“Artists and scientists both ask big questions; designers and engineers both provide inspired solutions. Together they are more powerful than apart.” - RISD

I am most likely preaching to the choir, I am confident our TitA followers are already on board with the STEM to STEAM movement. I ask you to take your advocacy one step further by sending a letter to your Members in Congress or by contacting an elected official asking them to co-sponsor H.Res. 319: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that adding art and design into Federal programs that target the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields encourages innovation and economic growth in the United States.

Canal Educatif: Art History Like You've Never Seen Before!

On YouTube, if you unearth past the layers of apocalyptic cats, nyan cats, evil cats, scary cats, and sneaky cats, you’ll find content that can actually educate you! A double rainbow for erudition! We have all heard about the instructional simplicity of Khan Academy and the brilliance of Ted-Ed, but there’s an equally fantastic channel for Art History buffs that truly deserves some viral appreciation: Canal Educatif à la Demande. Canal Educatif (educational channel) is a French co-operative project. Our aim is to produce a unique series of high-quality educational videos and make them available free of charge to young people and adults.

Since 2007, Canal Educatif (CED) has produced investigative-style documentaries on Art History, Economics, and Sciences and Innovation. Tristement, only the Art History section is available in English and it includes documentaries on works by Holbein, Delacroix, Poussin, and Rodin. But it is clear that the quality of these videos far succeeds their quantity! For example, in Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, the documentary explores why Delacroix, an aristocrat, would paint the very ideal he opposed and even feared? And why did Rodin leave his iconic sculptural gateway, The Gates of Hell, unfinished? Why was it never cast in bronze? These are just some of the questions answered in the highly informative series of documentaries produced by CED.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFu3aJgkYkU

The organization has also explored a new avenue in the dissemination of Art History; the Google Art Project. In a YouTube series called Art Sleuth, CED has created short, detective style explorations of some of the gigapixel paintings on the Art Project. In these clever, 10 to 15 minute episodes, the nitty gritties of close observation reveal that in art too, the devil is in the details ; what seems to be a touching portrait of Marie Antoinette and her children, can emerge as thinly veiled attempt at false benevolence and humility. Coincidentally, there are some works in which there is literally (and figuratively), a Devil in the details.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjcR90M8of4

To cover its production expenses, CED relies on micro-donations made to their website. So if you’d like to learn more about Manet’s A Bar at Folies Bergères, do make a contribution! Here’s hoping that Kickstarter will soon be launched in Europe because CED’s projects (Filmmaking) seem ideal for the crowdfunding platform. In the meantime, there’s a lot of content offered by CED on both YouTube and on its website. You certainly won't miss the repetitive babbling of nyan cats after having watched Manet’s In the Conservatory or Rembrandt’s The Prodigal Son. Let the sleuthing begin!