Art Inservice: From the Art of Design to STEAM

Last week, as the director of  NTIEVA (North Texas Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts) at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, I had the honor of giving an inservice for Lewisville ISD art teachers with Eric Orr, Leslie McReynolds, and Liz Langdon.  The inservice was based on Design Thinking and its connections to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). You can link to my PowerPoint presentation for the introduction here.

Design and Design Thinking are very much part of STEAM so there are great connections between them. You can look at the presentation on this here.

The hands-on portions of the inservice were focused on the art and science of paper marbling (which works because of surface tension) and clay whistles and the science of sound. You'll find the paper marbling presentation here.

Participants working on silhouettes.

Teachers made black silhouettes for their paper marbling background papers.

Chalk dust is scraped over the surface of water in shallow trays that just fit 12" x 18" heavy drawing paper. This process is most successful with Prang FREART chalk. The PP for this details all the steps.

The paper is quickly laid over the surface of the water then pulled up and allowed to drain.

Everyone had a chance to try it.

The results are always unpredictable.

These were laid to dry on newspapers.

Eric Orr presented the clay portion of the inservice, helping participants make clay whistles that worked.

A whistle.

Another whistle.

This inservice was designed specifically to fit the needs of the Lewisville ISD. This one will be repeated later two different times. NTIEVA and Director Nancy Walkup are available to present any art inservice that your district may need. You can contact Nancy at nancywalkup@unt.edu.