Evaluation Questioning

When reading in the Preskill text about developing an evaluation plan, I come to the realization that the questions I ask are close to the questions I ask everyday when I teach digital photography and use Adobe Photoshop as a supplement to the class. Am I focusing too much on Photoshop and not enough on the camera? At the end of the day, many of the students in my class will not have Adobe Photoshop at home so what is the purpose of teaching the program.

Even in my own art department, we struggle and question the idea of using Adobe Photoshop and technology more and more in fear of loosing the fine art quality of art. Half of my department wants to push more for a use of technology in the classroom while others would like to keep the classes as they are. I’m not trying to say that all art should be created on the computer. But, students should definitely get some experience creating on the computer since many art careers now a days deal with some use of the computer whether it be through creating their own business cards or working in a graphic design firm. If anything, using image editing programs can always be another approach to teaching traditional methods of artmaking.

You have to Accentuate the positives, eliminate the negative…

Now that I finally got caught up on the readings, I finally think I have a handle on the appreciative inquiry idea.It is not seperate to traditional evaluation but works hand and hand and focuses on positive approaches to evaluation. In my posting this week, I did spend the time to compare the two, both AI and traditional evaluation. I found alot more focus on AI obviously since it is the focus of our text in the book over traditional evaluation. But I almost find AI to be tricky in that it never looks at the negatives. Sometimes I think looking at faults of the program through traditional evaluation and makes it a better program because you know how to improve it and make it better. Yes a positive approach is great but I don’t know if it fully helps you identify the problems so that way you can know what to improve on.

For example, when I go around evaluating my students on their artwork, I always like to start out with a negative but then end with a positive note such as “Your drawing of the eye of the face could have been done better by using this stroke of the pencil, but you did a great job blending on the rest of the face.” This approach of turning a negative into a positive is identical to the may simularities and differences between AI and traditional evalution and how they work together.

Comments on 3 other articles…

Doh! I forgot to comment on 3 other annnotation…. whoops!

I’d like to comment on Erik B’s Article on Classroom dynamics and inclusion: Improving classroom dynamics to improve student learning and social inclusion: a collaborative approach. I think he found a great article that is relatable to the classroom and classroom experiences and how AI was brought in to look at different experiences and relationships.I’d definitely like to read this article!

Dave’s article on Appreciative inquiry – the new frontier would be great for us to look at before looking at the Preskill text because it talks about the originators of AI and how they came about and what is to come with AI in the future.

As far as I know, Pam, Jennifer, and I (as far as I’ve seen) all did the e-learning article but I think each of us took something differently from the article. I don’t know if I’d take it as a scholarly article as Pam and I discussed because it didn’t have much background research or following on AI. I wasn’t sure if the AI section got lost within the article and was interested to see the other perspectives of both Pam and Jennifer on this article.

Crossing my fingers :)

This week took me back to high school having to write annotated bibliographies like I had to do for advanced english. Yes, to be honest, I was aggitated when I saw other people had posted the same articles before me. I tried to avoid looking at the posting site just because I was crossing my fingers hoping no one would post the same article as mine. But I think with the type of topic of appreciative inquiry, its going to be inevitable that a number of us would have the same articles. I still kept with the articles I had first decided to write about, because I had found them based on my interest. I found the Girls Scouts Behind Bars to be a very interesting article, dealing with how mothers and daughters can still continue to develop bonds and do things together even though the mom is in jail. I wonder if this a new program being developed has some drawbacks they still haven’t mentioned. The second article I read had dealt with the 10 steps to e-learning. I don’t know if it necessarily focused specifically on appreciative inquiry like the other two articles I have read but it definitely had characteristics that dealt with appreciative inquiry. The last article I read dealt with appreciative inquiry specific to reforming schools, in particular a catholic high school and talked about the appreciative inquiry process of inquiring, processing, gathering, and analyzing information and using it to effectively look at the positive and negative aspects of the school climate. Well, now to bed and resting after a long day of schooling

Principles of Design vs. Principles of Appreciative Inquiry

This week has been an interesting one on the readings and the intro of the final project. I started panicking about the hypothetical evaluation, not knowing what to evaluate. Art and technology is starting to become more prominent in schools so what better than to evalute it! I knew I wanted to evaluate something with my art program and since Adobe Photoshop is a main program I use in my digital photography class, I wanted to evalute how its being used and its use in other art classes.

With the Preskill Text, I found it to be easier to digest then the Program Standards Book. I still honestly don’t know how people do this for a living, going around and evaluating programs. However, I did find the Principles to resonate with simular principles found in art.Coming from the art world, there are principles of design that you need to follow in order to make an artwork. In an evaluation dealing with appreciative inquiry, you also have principles in which to formulate a certain type of evaluation. I found the appreciate inquiry chapter helpful in understanding how relationships with others and positive changes can impact an evaluation. Appreciative inquiry also deals with the freedom to choose and its important to hear all sides and perspectives, and that all these pieces need to come together in order to form an effective evaluation. The principles of art are the same way, trying to get all the elements of art (line, shape, color) to come together with the principles of design to create an interesting, effective artwork. I see many simularities between the principles and look forward to continue reading in the Preskill text.

To be honest…

After reading through the program standards book, I didn’t realize how many different standards there were in relation to evaluating a program. To be honest, I was a little overwhelmed at the book and had trouble tying in the standards with the case study and how much the case study still had missing questions that I wanted to answer. I found the guiding principles more relevant to the case study and easier to decode than the program standards book. The powerpoint did help in clarifying some of the points I had issues with when reading the book. I think now that I’ve read through the program standards, I have a better understanding of the difficulty that arrises when evaluating a program. It worries me that a state board would hire someone who has no background about the program to evaluate it. Do state boards do this for standardized testing programs too? Are there other program standards out there that this book is missing? We’ll see how this program progresses but I’m definitely learning alot of what goes on behind the scenes in evaluating programs.

About Me and What I hope to learn..

My name is Carole McCulley and I am an art teacher at Warren Township High School in Gurnee, IL. I also coach track and field in the spring and am sophomore class advisor. My husband, Matt, is also in the CTER 11 program and we’re excited to be gettting our masters’ done together. I hope to learn in EPSY474 how to effectively assess my digital photography class, which is a relatively new course at our school, to make it a better class for my students and to aid them in creating better projects based upon the feedback that is given. I hope to learn how to assess both the technology they are using as well as the projects they are creating. Looking forward to working with you all again!
Carole