ArtStream Project Guide

Introduction

To encourage others to try out this model for multidisciplinary, multi grade level approach to environmental education, we offer this guide, which follows the steps we took in the pilot ArtStream project.

We are glad to answer questions; just email the project coordinator, Lois Reborne, at staff@watersheds.org. And let us know what you accomplish!

This pilot took place at West Plains Middle School in West Plains, Missouri during the 2002-2003 school year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region VII, through the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, provided partial funding for this project under Section 319 of the Clean Water Act. Teachers involved were Pam Hessee (computer skills), Lavada Mann (5th grade science), Kevin Smith (7th and 8th grade art), Jim Dill (technology), and students were from 5th through 8th grades. Mark Giles of Mountain View, Missouri, was the artist in residence for ArtStream. Mark is a nationally known graphic artist who specializes in conservation and environmental work.

(Please note: "ArtStream" is not a proprietary title, and you do not need our permission to use it. It is actually used many places in many applications. Use it, or make up your own title for your project!)

School Year Prior to ArtStream Project

• Engage the school administration at the district and building level to explain the project and get their buy-in as well as suggestions for process and content connection to curriculum frameworks, and for potential participants.
• Select a school for the project. Identify one or two core teachers who are interested in the project.
• Identify an artist to work with.
  • Since one of our goals was to have new material for our web site, we chose a graphic artist who works in computer animation.
• Make a budget and figure out how you will pay for the project.
  •  We found the primary cost to be about an even split between fees for the artist and the project staff who coordinated and supported the project. The actual outlay for our first pilot ArtStream was about $5000.

Project School Year

August

• Contact school administration to set up an inservice early in the school year for teachers to learn about the project
• Distribute informational invitations to teachers for the inservice.
  •  Ask your core teacher(s) to do personal recruitment to get teachers to sign up. This is key to a good turn out.

First and Second Quarter

• Conduct the inservice.
  •  Ours included a brainstorming session about what the final product might be, as well as plenty of free curriculum materials from the Missouri Departments of Natural Resources and Conservation. Our artist attended this meeting so that everyone began to get to know each other. We set a date for a planning meeting. Nine teachers attended our inservice, and five ended up working on the project.
• Have the artist in residence visit with teachers and students to explain the process.
  •  This is probably unnecessary if you are working in traditional media, but with computer graphics as the end medium, it helped everyone understand what was possible. Mark demonstrated his techniques for using dimensional sculpture and a scanner.
  •  The visits heighten the artist in residence experience; our students - and teachers- were amazed that Mark could be making his living here in the Ozarks doing this work.
• Identify with participating teachers when they will be teaching ArtStream related topics, and what products their classes will produce.
  •  We tried to work within existing curriculum, rather than create whole new lessons, adding the creative element. For example, the 5th grade science teacher already covers pollution and benthic macroinvertebrates in her water unit. She added the cartoon story board exercise.
• Plan for any quantitative evaluation such as pre and post tests, and how it will be administered.
  •  This was particularly problematic in the pilot. We'll let you know when we figure out how to do it more effectively!

Third Quarter

• Meet with the planning group to coordinate the next phase of the project.
  •  At this time we could see a pattern emerging, and chose to focus on benthic macroinvertebrates and the effect of polluted runoff on them, and therefore on the food chain. We decided on a pair of workshops with the artist: sculpture and computer graphics. These were scheduled after the big testing push in the spring.
  •  Teachers in art, science, and computer technology all selected students to participate in the workshops. The art teacher, for example, had a fish sculpture contest.
• Look for opportunities to display and document the work being created, even as it is in progress.
  •  We set up a webpage that followed the project: ArtStream
  •  The sculptures were displayed in a hallway trophy case for several weeks, and again in the library during the Parents Night.
  •  The video technology classes made a documentary of the sculpture workshop.
  •  We planned that we would exhibit the student work at our county WaterFest in late March. However, the timing was off, and we had no work to display. But because of the interest generated at the school by ArtStream, the 5th and 8th grade science teachers collaborated to select and train a team of eight students to be presenters of a lesson on polluted runoff at the WaterFest. The 8th graders were matched up with college students as mentors, and together they made their presentations to more than 450 5th grade students during the WaterFest. We'll repeat this very successful “accident.”

Fourth Quarter

• Conduct the student workshops with the artist in residence.
  •  These were both half day workshops, with a different set of students each class period.
  •  For the sculpture workshop, we paid for substitute teachers to take over the classes of the science teacher and the art teacher so they could stay the whole morning. We also recruited two community volunteers to help. The ratio of adults to students was 1:3.
  • Remember to evaluate both the process and the product!
• Work with your artist and the planning teachers to come up with the final product(s).
  • This took much longer and was more complicated in the pilot than we expected. But persistence paid off. Mark created a draft movie, but it didn't happen until after the school year was over. Collecting feedback and suggestions took a long time and considerable waiting for vacations to be over, etc. In the future, we'll try to keep to a tighter time frame, realizing the need for a draft phase and remembering that our artist is not an educator or a mind reader!

Our completed ArtStream movie,
Macroinvertebrate Lunch

Wrap up and start again

• Conduct final evaluations and gather suggestions for improvement.
  • Enthusiasm for ArtStream remained high at the school in Fall 2003. Students in technology classes this semester recorded digital soundtrack components - the voices of the benthic macroinvertebrates for the movie. The computer teacher worked with her computer club students and our webkeeper to create a "cast of characters" identification guide for the benthic macroinvertebrates.
• Lesson plans and teacher guides to support the project have been added.

Celebrate!

We sent out an announcement about the movie to our list of area teachers and supporters. We sent a press release to the local paper. ArtStream has been presented at the Missouri Educational Technology Conference in October 2004.

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