Learning and Teaching essay
The concepts of learning and teaching are strongly related to each other: people must learn before teaching. In the process of learning, one should understand the text and concepts provided by the teacher. It is important to understand the concepts and not just to memorize them. To analyze the specifics of teaching and learning in more detail, it is possible to review the presentation prepared by our group. This presentation perfectly illustrates how students in the eastern educational system associate learning with memorizing, without understanding the key concepts. Students in the western educational system, on the contrary, focus more on understanding the concepts rather than memorizing them. This is more efficient because memorizing does not mean that the student mastered the concept and truly learned the information. Facts that were merely memorized might be forgotten one day, but something that a person has learned will remain in his or her mind for a long-term period.
The focus on learning instead of memorizing makes the key difference between western and eastern education. The focus of our presentation is on the benefits and advantages of both western and eastern systems and on showing the differences between these systems. We use our specific story to demonstrate the real experience of eastern education and to compare it with the western educational system (part of which we are now).
This PowerPoint presentation is a strong example that conveys our own experience to other people. In my lesson plan, I will consider the advantages of both teaching systems. The western system is more focused on activity and helps people learn things while completing various activities; in this system, students interact with teachers in a friendly manner. At the same time, the eastern system focuses on listening to the lectures more than on participating. I will do my best to incorporate both concepts in my micro-teaching lesson. I know I am new to teaching, but I learned a lot from Lise’s class before preparing own micro-teaching lesson. I will prepare myself in the best way. I hope that I will succeed and that I will become a good teacher in the future.
Object Lessons
After I finished reading the article ‘Object Lessons: Thinking About Material Culture’, I found out that an artist should study the materials in the surrounding world. For example, the author presents the case of a bicycle: an artist should find out why people might study human-made objects. The students provide different answers: because we need to figure out how to make such objects, we need to find out what motivated the authors and why they actually create them. By studying other kinds of objects surrounding human beings, we can assess and understand material culture.
When I finished reading the article, I decide to bring my mini-stapler as the object to Lise’s Object Lesson. The mini-stapler is my personal item that I keep in my bag every day. I think that a mini-stapler is useful for any college student, because one can staple documents or papers together using this object. Moreover, I enjoy the compactness of the mini-stapler: this object is quite small and it is easy to keep it in a bag or in a pencil case. The design of the stapler makes it convenient for carrying and holding, and it has all the necessary functionality that we expect from this object.
While studying the functions and the structure of a mini-stapler, I figured out that its structure is simple but this object can be used to apply strong pressure to staple a large set of pages together. When Lise asked us to recreate the visual representation of my object, I decided to give a new shape to my mini-stapler. I decided to make it more visually impressive and attractive. So I designed a new shape in the form of a shark for this object and used shark’s teeth to decorate the mini-stapler. The design became more impressive but the function of the stapler did not change. Staplers currently sold at the market do not have any creative shape such as the one in my design. All stapler designs are boring and blank. I want to re-create the visual representation of the stapler without changing its functions. Inventing a more impressive design and sharing this design with the world will let people consider the material culture from the visual perspective.
POV
The lesson about the point of view (PoV) deals with perceiving things from the view of a child, a teen or an adult. To become a good educator, I must understand the differences between the perceptions of students of different ages. For example, a child is more impressed by color. Children enjoy using different kinds of materials for working with art; color and shape of material catch their attention. So in my artwork, I created three drawings to describe the perceptions of a child, a teen and an adult. Firstly, to represent the child’s perception, I painted a bright image of family with lots of colors. Human shapes are very basic and schematic, but full of love. For a teen, I depicted a teenager with his mother, because in the teens people start understanding whom they love most of all in their family. The teenager is likely to focus on one person rather on the whole family. For a teenager, the artwork will be less colorful than for a child, because a teenager knows how to mix and match colors.
Lastly, the perception of an adult is detailed and has more shapes; with the help of the shapes, the artwork is enriched with more details and becomes a high-quality picture. The drawing is focused on one perception of a person or a thing. The intention of the drawing is to choose a specific angle to demonstrate the characteristics of the person or object. Furthermore, an adult will not use as many colors as a teenager. An adult will focus on one material, for example, pencil, ink or charcoal, because adults learn the technique of using different materials and know which one is the best for the picture.
When I acquire a good understanding of the perceptions of students of all ages, I will be confident while planning lessons for my students, because it is essential to understand the characteristics and particular qualities of the students.
Brittany’s Lesson Plan
The micro-teaching class is a great experience for all students. We have a chance to create own lesson plans and to see teaching formats and approaches of other people. It is very important to share experiences and to learn from each other. One of my favorite lesson plans that I still remember is the one prepared by Brittany Gerow. She did a lesson about self-portrait. It is not so engaging as Chelsea Hsu’s donut lesson, but the process of creating a self-portrait reminds me of high school classes. I enjoyed when the teacher of arts asked us to draw self-portraits because it is quite interesting: we have to face ourselves in front of the mirror, to draw each part of own face, to locate all face features correctly, to understand how big own face features are, etc.
In Brittany Gerow’s lesson, she used a different approach. We selected artists of different styles and we had to follow their style and use that style to make self-portraits. My selected artist was Pablo Picasso. Picasso’s abstract self-portrait is very famous. During the lesson Brittany taught us to understand how Picasso’s love to abstract shapes and exaggeration style could be used for self-portrait. Then I drew myself using abstract shapes, pictured very big red eyes, long nose and lightly colored face with blue and purple outlines. Also, I chose a different shape for the face so it was not normal anymore. The painting seemed to be like another person, not me, but I enjoyed how Pablo Picasso self-portrait approach was presented in the lesson.
Ying’s Lesson Plan
The other micro-teaching lesson I would like to discuss is the lesson prepared by Ying in Performance Art. I am taking this course right now, but I am still studying the part related to making video sounds. I know that we will have Performance Art in the next semester. Ying’s lesson awoke my interest in Performance Art. In the beginning of the lesson, Ying told us to stand in the middle of the classroom and to imagine that we were flying in the sky or dancing on the floor. She made us relax in the beginning, or, in other words, focused on breaking the ice. Then we had a serious lecture about the essence of Performance Art. The performance we did in the beginning actually made me involved, so I was quite focused on the lecture. Then Ying asked students to keep writing on the paper to capture the idea of Performance Art. From this lesson, I learned that the interaction between the students and the teacher is very important for all forms of teaching and especially for art educators.
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