Mural painting provides an excellent opportunity for students to participate in a collaborative project. To many teachers, class mural projects seem intimidating because of organizational and logistical challenges. Many of these challenges can be mitigated, however, if there is plenty of discussion beforehand to organize ideas, get input from…

In this article, the author investigates the teaching and writing of poetry within public school spaces, illuminating how the work of poetry in an Academic Interventions classroom stirs new visions of who the students and the teacher can be. The study involves five teachers from a range of rural, urban, and suburban districts. These teachers…

Music has always been an important aspect of teenage life, but with the portability of the newest technological devices, it is harder and harder to separate students from their musical influences. In this article, the author describes a lesson wherein she incorporated their love of song into an engaging art project. In this lesson, she had…

Educators at the East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT) in Mesa, Arizona, are always looking to industry leaders for guidance on how to educate and prepare students for new, emerging careers. But sometimes, it's not a matter of a new industry emerging, but rather several previous occupations merging to form new opportunities for students and…

This article presents this year's winners of Tech & Learning's student photography contest. Selected from an overwhelming six thousand entries, these images are proof that "the kids today" are not only extremely talented, but also powerfully enabled by digital tools that can help them express and communicate those talents. The theme of the…

As a novice teacher, the author was confident in his ability to teach digital photography but didn't initially realize the extent to which blogs, wikis, and social networks could reshape and enhance how students learn, and how, by incorporating these tools into his curriculum, he would ultimately find ways to use Web 2.0 tools to truly engage and…

The shift from analog to digital video transformed the system from a unidirectional analog broadcast to a two-way conversation, resulting in the birth of participatory media. Digital video offers new opportunities for teaching science, social studies, mathematics, and English language arts. The professional education associations for each content…

This article introduces a new "perspective" on the typical landscape painting. It is an opportunity for art students to study the local ecosystem and native trees in their community. Other aspects of this assignment are the study of Symbolism and a new focus on the natural designs created by exposed tree roots. (Contains 1 web link.)

Trigonometric parallax is a powerful method to work out the distance of celestial bodies, and it was used in the past to measure the distance of the Moon, Venus, Mars and nearby stars. We set up an observation campaign for high school and undergraduate students with the purpose to measure both the Moon's and Mars' parallax. To have a large enough…

The author and his first-year algebra students explored the quadratic behavior behind the parabolic shape of fountains at the local family splash park. This hands-on discovery project has three main parts: (1) gathering data by experimenting with and photographing the fountains; (2) analyzing the photographs to obtain numerical data; and (3)…

The environmental education through filmmaking project, a case study at an alternative US public high school, investigates environmental literacies of "at-risk" students who produced two short documentary films, one on recycling and one on water conservation. The filmmaking project sought to promote students' awareness of environmental issues and…

Virtual world platforms such as "Second Life" have been successfully used in educational contexts to motivate and engage learners. This article reports on an exploratory workshop involving a group of high school students using "Second Life" for an urban planning project. Young people are traditionally an under-represented demographic when it comes…

Room M219 of Tucson's Catalina High School feels more like a hip design shop or bustling photography studio than an advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) class. Printouts of photographs lie scattered amidst rows of computers. Fingers dash across keyboards and images flash onto monitors as students review their own work. One would never guess…

Several years ago, the author began exploring the use of digital film and video as an art-making media when he took over instructing the video computer art class at the high school where he teaches. He found numerous ways to integrate a variety of multimedia technologies and software with more traditional types of visual art processes and…

For a long-term project, the author challenged her students to photograph themselves each day for fourteen days using a theme. She asked them to think about how the final work would influence the viewer to understand who they are. Students first had to write a proposal for their idea, including what type of lighting, props, and ideas they were…