Welcome to the Triple A Learning blog for DP Visual Arts. The most recent blog posts are listed below and you can access the blog archive by following the appropriate link in the panel on the left.
Student as curator?
Confidentiality agreements prevent me from describing in detail the many discussions, often intense, that have occurred over the past year in the DP Visual Arts Curriculum Review meetings. However I think I can safely say that – among many other issues, theories and ideas – the role of curatorship has been raised more than once.
“Until I saw my drawings replayed on the iPad, I’d never seen myself draw. Someone watching me would be concentrating on the exact moment, but I’d always be thinking a little bit ahead. That’s especially so in a drawing where you are limiting yourself, a line drawing for example. When you are doing them you are very tense, because you have to reduce everything to such simple terms“.
(David Hockney http://quote.robertgenn.com/getquotes.php?catid=84 )
I start interviewing stude
nts and making my final school visits in about two weeks. Sad but true.
I started teaching DP visual arts 26 years ago in an international school (International School Moshi) set in the foothills of Kilimanjaro, and stayed for eight years, and during that time also became a visiting examiner, so I was able to visit and interview students in international schools in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam.
The DP visual arts course currently has two components – studio and investigation. There will be three components in the new course, but in many ways the focus will stay the same: students will continue to research and look at art from different times and places, and they will continue to make art, and there will be a link between the two.
In a few short weeks all final year DP visual arts students will be interviewed, either by people like you (the teacher) or by people like me (the visiting examiner).
And this time next year, as I hope we all know by now, no interviews will be conducted by the visiting examiner, because that role will cease to exist.
On Monday 20th February, the next Triple A visual arts workshop starts.
I’ve been leading DP visual arts workshops for around eight years (since 2004), initially only face-to-face, in towns as far apart as Bratislava, Oakham, Munich, and Athens – but over the last few years also online, through the technological expertise of Triple A, which allows participants to stay where they are and have a longer (three or six weeks) and more-in-depth experience.
All our grade 11 students are being given iPads, and I have just received mine
The theory is that their learning might be ‘enhanced’ by having them use the iPad for school-related work, although there are some who suspect that more time might actually be spent on games, social networking and videos.
Friday January 20th was the date of the annual LISA (London International Schools Association http://www.lisa.org.uk/) Conference. There are currently 15 LISA schools: most are international schools in and around the London area (although the International School of Aberdeen is also a member).
The conference was hosted by the King Fahd Academy with almost 500 participants attending.
I have been interviewing my final year IBDP visual arts students during last week and this week, giving them a chance to rehearse some of the things they might want to say to their examiner when their final exhibitions are up.
They discussed their studio work (option A) and their investigation workbooks (option B), providing background information, explaining how one thing led to another, and generally presenting a much fuller picture than could be gleaned by just looking (for example) at the artworks.
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