Art Influences My Teaching (30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 21)

Do you have other hobbies/interests that you bring into your classroom teaching?  Explain?

I am not currently a classroom teacher, but I can't help but bring my passions into the classroom when I am working in that capacity.  I am profoundly influenced by the arts and interested in the creative process, for example.  I love music and experimenting with sounds and images.  Most recently, this influenced the way that I taught middle school students about Creative Commons and copyright.

Rather than simply teaching them about the terms, I taught students about these issues by inviting them to create their own derivative works using a variety of photo editing tools.  Students created collages with filtered images and vacation fantasy shots that allowed them to add pictures of themselves.  The catch was that students could only use images that they had permission to use, and they had to correctly attribute their derivative works.   Here is an example:  Photo Editing Website