Great Art & Craft ideas for Teachers and Students

Scribbled.com.au is a highly creative site for those who want to learn about innovative art and craft ideas.   

Scribbled is packed with activities to suit all abilities but best of all everything is laid in in step-by-step directions with photographs to support them.  There are a number of themed ideas for all major events of the year with new crafts and activities being added each week.

Teachers will also love the video tutorials and printables to jazz up their classrooms.  There are also  activities and games particularly aimed at younger children.

Take a look at scribbled today and release some of your creative energy.

Great websites for exploring CAD (Computer aided Design)

High school

students will really enjoy the opportunity to create something in 3D on a computer from an original idea and a 2D image.  Of course there is always Google Sketchup for a great entry point into computer modelling and design but here are a few other alternatives to try.

Technology Student:  Drawing tutorials including buildings are one part of this huge site that includes graphic design, physics, structures and simple machines.

Small Blue Printer:  Build your own house plan, view it from above, take a 3D walkthrough and printi it out.  Simple drag-and-drop online software.

3D models of Great Buildings:  Hundreds of free 3D walkthroughs of architectural computer models including landscaping and interior decoration.  Also include real photos and floor plans of famous buildings from around the world.

Visual communication and design resources:  Click through guide to design principles, design elemnts and drawing systems.

A Great Art & Craft site for Kids

I probably don't get as artistic as I should with my kids from time to time but the fact is that they love getting their hands dirty and actually creating something from scratch.  Kidopo is full of great craft ideas for teachers and parents with colouring pages, printable paper templates of and games for kids to get creative.  Check out Kidopo here. it might be just the solution for an afternoon of fun for you and your kids

Is your face symmetrical? Great Maths Lesson

This week we have been looking at Geometry, Symmetry and tessellation and as a part of this we got our kids to use their school photograph and see if their face actually was symmetrical.  Surprisingly to  nearly all of them realised that their face was far from symmetrical but had great fun doing this activity and learnt a great deal from it.

In doing this our student learnt about lines of symmetry and mirror imaging  We just used Microsoft Paint but any number of free programs such as Paint.net will achieve the same results.  Follow these simple steps to complete the task.

1: Load a photo of yourself in Paint ( we just used our school photos because they were a great portrait picture.  If you have none of these you may have to take some pics of your kids first.

2:  Click the select tool and select half the face the nose as this will be your line of symmetry.  You need to make a copy of your selection.

3:  Paste the copied selection back on top of the original photo.

4:  Click on the rotate button and select flip horizontal.

5:  Move the selected flip so that it aligns as best with the rest of the photo.  then ask yourself is your face really symmetrical.

As an extension task you might like to get you kids to use google images and find the lines of symmerty in objects such as flowers, fruit and shapes.  Discuss the lines of human symmetry and it would also be worth looking at the famous Da Vinci Picture - the art of man

Create your own 3D Pop up Books online

ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that is designed to let anyone easily create their own customized 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life.

ZooBurst books are completely web-based and can be experienced using nothing more than your browser outfitted with the Adobe Flash plug-in. Books can be inspected from any angle from with a 3D space, and rotating around a book is as easy as dragging and dropping your mouse. In addition, the author of a book can choose to make items "clickable," allowing you to learn more about individual characters within a story. You can choose to experience a ZooBurst book in a number of ways, including in Augmented Reality. If you have a webcam installed on your computer simply click on the 'Augmented Reality' button at the top of the screen and watch as the book appears in the palm of your hand!

Click here to check out an example ZooBurst book!

Create your own 3D artwork with Qblock

I really don't know where this fits into the grand scheme of things but it is very cool nonetheless and shows us just what can be achieved from the browser when you want to get creative.  Qblock allows you to Create 3D Pixel art on a canvas.  It is kind of like a cross between Lego and Microsoft Paint.  It takes minutes to create something and you can then view and rotate your object as a 3D masterpiece.  Unfortunately you cannot export your image into anything but you can save it for prosperity in the Qblock gallery.  Very weird very Cool.  Check it out here.  Your students will love it for 15 minutes at least.

BBC Data Art - Visualise the web

Data Visualisation is a great way to make sense of the amazing amount of data avaialble to us in 2010 and the BBC have being getting all creative to bring us their latest offering BBC Data Art.  Here are a few examples of how it works.

• 

  Flared Music

  Flared Music is a simple Flash visualisation which shows relationships between musicians as stored in the BBC Music / Musicbrainz database.

  Read more »

• 

  3d Documentary Explorer

  A visualisation using a BBC documentary as its data source. Explore material used in the making of the programme in 3d.

  Read more »

• 

  SearchWeb

  See how BBC search results are distributed across different sections of the site, and use the tree structure to navigate.

  Read more »

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  News Globe

  Search for BBC News and Sport articles and see the place names in them geocoded onto a 3D globe.

  Read more »

Check it out here.

Smarthistory: Art, History, Conversation

Smarthistory is an excellent way to learn about famous painters and pieces of artwork from around the world throughout the history of time.  It contains detailed video commentaries of various aspects of a piece of work and has plenty of opportunity for the audience to add their own thoughts and ideas too.

Smarthistory features images of notable works of art. Videos lessons, VoiceThread lessons, and audio lessons about eras and themes in art history. Students can browse all of the resources of Smarthistory by artist name, style of work, theme, or time period.

Definitely  great option for high school and tertiary students who want a detailed critique of their favourite piece of work.