ICT Links
Some of the most common ways that computers are used in an Art room at present are:
Research
Students are asked to research an artist or art movement. They type the words into a search engine and print out the results as pictures or text. They then usually cut these out and stick them into sketchbooks or work sheets. Often there is a lack of real understanding about the artist.
Drawing and Painting
Draw packages like Corel Draw or Paint packages are used to create computer based pieces of art. Usually students draw with a mouse, which makes accuracy difficult. Some schools buy Graphic tablets, which employ a pen tool and flat tablet that allow a greater sense of control and flexibility with the range of media used.
Photography/Digital Manipulation
Digital Cameras have become the mainstay of the Art Room for a wide variety of purposes. When combined with digital photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements they can become a powerful creative tool that can have very effective and instant results.
Design
Usually in the form of Desktop Publishing, students create designs for magazines, advertising, book covers, packaging, logos, letterheads and posters.
Researching Artists and Art Movements
Websites: I would try to focus students onto web sites that you know and trust. The teacher should have prior knowledge of where the information can be found and what the information is that is being sought. Just asking students to blandly search for information from Google results in bad results in most cases. Students will nearly always take the easiest, fastest route: Google Search, open page, select, copy and paste text, then print.
As the teacher, you should really have looked at the web page where the information is held and direct them to it. It should be their task to then find and filter the information that is relevant to them.
It should be good practice to build up a library of websites that hold the information you need to teach your course and this library should be regularly revised and updated. Students should know where this database is and how to access it.
Here are a few good art web sites to get you started:
For Art Research:
Wikipedia School Site An excellent site for arts and arts movements.
BBC Arts A super, student friendly arts site.
National Gallery The Uk's leading art gallery site with fabulous resources.
National Portrait Gallery Great gallery site for portrait work.
Olga's ABC Gallery A fabulous site of high quality art images.
Artcyclopedia Great site for art research.
Yahoo Arts Another good arts site.
Artchive This, for me, is one of the best arts sites out there.
The Tate The name says it all!
The Saatchi Gallery Probably the most influential name in modern art.
Deviant Art Gallery This brilliant site is full of digital artwork from experts and students alike, however be aware, content may need your approval before showing to students.
For Art Resources:
TES Teacher Art Resources One of the top resource sites in the UK.
Topmarks A truly excellent site, packed full of teacher resources and links.
Wildgoose A great professional site for art resources.
School Zone With 50, 000 Free resources this is a very useful education site.
CD-ROMs/DVDs: An Art CD-ROM is assembled at a much slower rate than a website. This means that much more care has to be taken in putting this information together. Information is usually much easier to decipher and well designed, with easy to navigate chapters and indexes. Images are nearly always of high quality, you can trust the text and sourcing much more than the information on the web and you can network the CD so that its content can be used on multiple computers for easy reference.
So it is worth having some good CD-ROMs and some links to good art sites like the one's listed above.
Other Research tools:
RSS -Problogger Explains what RSS is and how to make one
Search Engines - Dogpile.com groups all the big search engines into one easy page.
Encyclopaedias A list of links to lots of Encyclopaedia sites. This is an Australian site, it is a great list of subject specific encyclopaedias.
Wikkis - Wiki Spaces.com This is a great page to find out more about these incredible learning tools.
Software for Producing Art
Here are some links to some very interesting products that are worth checking out. I am not an expert in their use but I have had experience of them and I recommend you take a look at them. It is not an exhaustive list, there is a lot of stuff out there, but this is a good starting point. The sites listed are in no way connected to me personally and I take no responsibility for any actions that result from their use.
Adobe photoshop elements: For a link to the very best school level photo imaging software
Adobe Photoshop CS: For the full Professional level Adobe Photoshop CS3.
Gimp: This is a link to a very popular and FREE photo imaging software package called GIMP.
Corel Paintshop Pro: This is a link to Corel Paint Shop Pro, a very good image manipulation package.
Corel Painter: The excellent Corel Painter is available as a free trial.
Corel Draw Corel Draw is brilliant for vector based illustration.
Pencil: A brilliant FREE drawing and animation software.
Inkscape: This is a FREE drawing programme
CinePaint: FREE Paint software for Linux and Mac.
Anim8tor FREE 3D animation package that is just excellent. It is more suitable for older more confident ICT users, but great fun!
Open Office is a free desktop publishing package: Why buy Microsoft when you can get just as good for free?
