We held a professional development session for 33 teachers on May 4, 2019, on “Closing the Gap in Digital Literacy with Arts Integration,” at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC, US. Photographer, Jen Crickenberger, animator, Jaclyn Bowie, and Museum Interpreter, Luc Travers, facilitated workshops.
“Thank you. Everytime I’ve come, your PD is better than any other—even State convention PD.”
—Heidi Pfirman, Art Teacher, New Hanover Co. Schs.“I really enjoyed this workshop from beginning to end. It is definitely going to help me in the classroom.”
Jen Crickenberger
Jen Crickenberger led an elegant introduction to photographic composition, after which teachers went on a photo safari, taking pictures of elements like line, shape, light and shadow, foreground-background, abstraction, and more. They used one of their pictures as a jumping-off point for writing either haiku or free-form poetry.
Jaclyn Bowie demonstrating stop-motion technique.
Jaclyn Bowie began by showing stop-motion animations that she, and her students, had created. She led teachers in an exploration of Google Earth, focusing especially on how rivers cut their shapes out of the rocks and soils they traverse. Then teachers, while using stop-motion photography made a model of a river in sand and poured water down the riverbeds they made, to recreate and document the serpentine process of erosion that rivers continually bring about.
Luc Travers led teachers into one of the CAM galleries, introduced them to the works of Minnie Evans, Clyde Jones, Annie Hooper, and Vollis Simpson, and gave them some open-ended approaches to engaging students with the art.
Using an ipad to make stop-motion animation of how a river moves through sandy soil.
“This was an incredible experience that motivated me to motivate my students to use art to learn.”
“Thank you so so much for making this available! I loved seeing the museum, exhibits and learning everything today!”
