T E A C H I N G T H R O U G H T H E A R T S

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VIAThe ezine for educators, administrators and advocates of arts integration

Using Centers to Enhance Arts IntegrationLearn how to use centers in arts and content classes that are mutually beneficialPage 8

A Quarterly Ezine Issue No. 1 - January 2011

Can Arts Integration Answer the 21st Century Skills

Challenge?

Upcoming Conferences ListPage 12

Roll Call! The latest websites and resource list for arts integration topics and ideas.Page 12

Scientific Support for Passion?Discover the benefits to the brain through listening to passionate artists.Page 11

The Part Arts PlayArts in the 21st CenutryPage 5Lost In the WoodsHow the Arts Can Splinter ChangePage 9

Join Us!Join the conversation on

Twitter

Education Closet

Have an Idea to Share?Contact me to submit a piece for a future issue

All About ViaFind out about the vision for this ezine and the authors behind it.Page 2

Images courtesy of http://www.artsjournal.com/dewey21c/keyboard.jpg and http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTqaaT6EWqgxOqpxHnpjeGWR5ZsfcCKB9T9XKFp2Hq17VUepH8k

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W E L C O M E !

Welcome to VIA - the ezine that is designed for arts integration teachers, administrators and advocates! This monthly ezine will strive to provide you with useful resources, updated programs and conferences and a multitude of activities, programs and networks that can further arts integration in your school, district or state. You will find so many wonderful teacher, administrators and artists converging throughout these pages - it’s hard to contain it all! Each article will also feature the writer or organization contact information in order to further our outreach and community with one another.

So....why the name VIA? The best simplified definition I can find for arts integration is “teaching the content areas through the arts” and when you look up synonyms for the word “through”, via is an accurate portrayal. We use the arts as a lens for filtering content knowledge via connections, via technology highways and via teaching artists and educators alike. “Via” is a thoroughfare through it all and so it is fitting that this ezine be a way to gather this information through our multitudes of research and resources.

So I fervently hope you enjoy this first issue and the hope and energy it can bring to your students, your classroom and to you professionally and personally. May it be a way to connect VIA our shared ideas!

Susan Rileywww.educationcloset.com

Susan Rileywww.educationcloset.com

Susan Riley is an author, editor and distributor of VIA ezine. In addition, she write regularly on arts integration and current education topics at her blog www.educationcloset.com where she advocates for working together to educate together. In addition to her blog, she also had written an ebook “The Keys to Making Arts Integration Work” which

can be purchased from her website. Susan is a music teacher, an arts integration site coordinator and a teacher development liaison at her public elementary school in Maryland and uses these experiences to influence her ideas and research. In addition to her education expertise, she is also a family portrait photographer, wife and mother to 18 month old Emma. You can contact Susan through her website or via email at sriley81@hotmail.com for more information.

Kristen Quinnwww.theartsroom.wordpress.com

Kristen Quinn is a writer, designer, and mother of two. She recently (like, yesterday) went sledding for the first time in almost twenty years! She is currently in the midst of her own experiment to

encourage the arts and arts-integration in her local public schools. She holds a M.S. in Environmental Engineering and worked in the

corporate world before deciding to jump ship and study design at Rhode Island School of Design, an eye-opening experience that forever altered the way she regarded education, the arts, and the traditional academic worldYou can follow her endeavor on her blog, The Arts Room, at http://theartsroom.wordpress.com.

Elizabeth Petersonwww.theinspiredclassroom.com

Elizabeth Peterson has devoted her life to education and to reaching out to other teachers who want to remain inspired.  Mrs. Peterson teaches fourth grade in Amesbury, Massachusetts and is the host of www.theinspiredclassroom.com.  She holds an M.Ed. in Education, “Arts and Learning” and is currently enrolled in a C.A.G.S. program through Plymouth State University with a focus in “Arts Leadership and Learning.”  Elizabeth is author of Inspired by Listening, a teacher resource book that includes a method of music integration she has developed and implemented into her own teaching.  She teaches workshops and courses on the integration of the arts into the curriculum, leads an arts integration PLC (PLaiC) and is adjunct faculty for PSU.  Mrs. Peterson believes there is a love of active, integrated learning in all children and from their enthusiasm, teachers can shape great opportunities to learn.

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Arts Integration is a nice notion to many people, a technique to dabble in for others, and a serious curricular method for a few. Could this process be the answer we are seeking in the education reform that we seek?

When you close your eyes and picture what the 21st century will look like 50 years from now, what do you see? Technology that is light years ahead of the advancements we see now? A society that questions and connects and builds upon ideas rather than industrial products? A place where nature is honored and people use all resources with respect? I see all of those things in my utopian vision. The question is and has always been “how to we get there?”. I have good news....the answer may be right in front of us right now: Arts integration.

Arts Integration is the curricular process by which students learn content through the arts with both sets of objectives being met at the same time. That sounds like a lot of educanese, right? Ok, so let me make that a little more clear. When a teacher is in the classroom teaching a math objective and the students are using paint and water in ratio to create

their own custom color, that is an arts integration lesson. The students are learning and being assessed on both the math ratio objective and the art objective of creating colors using their knowledge of the color wheel. This sounds like a simple concept - and it is! - but it is very rare to see it happening in a typical classroom. This is because it is different and different is scary. Not just to teachers, but to administrators and parents alike. The only people to whom different does NOT equate to scary are children. Pretty ironic, huh?

The 21st Century is upon us and we are behind in the realm of education when compared to the rest of the globe. Thus, we are now looking at yet new mandates for testing and new “core standards” for our students to meet. However, I personally think everything should be on the table. Time in the classroom, methods for teaching, differentiation and inclusion regulations, technology and above all, teaching by acknowledging how our students learn. We pay a lot of lip service to that last one, but it’s rarely done.

What I mean by all this is that our students are coming to us in the 21st century with synapses that make faster connections, a larger variety of prior knowledge and more sophisticated skills than every before thanks to the many ways they have access to multimedia. We must acknowledge all of these attributes and teach to them if we are to really make a difference. Arts integration is key to this process.

Can Arts Integration Answer the 21st Century Skills Challenge? Why arts integration is the education revolution we are seeking.

“The only people to whom different does NOT equate to scary are children”

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What are the 21st Century Skills?

People make connections with the world around them all the time. This is an intuitive process and therefore, anytime people can connect two or more things together, deeper learning occurs. When there is deeper learning, there is more critical thinking. Critical thinking then begins to question and solve larger problems. This is what the 21st Century Skills are all about. These skills aim to teach and assess students not only in core subjects, but also in life and career skills, learning and innovation skills and information media and technology skills. The goal is to teach and shape students who become life long learners, can operate within a global society, and solve the problems that we have yet to recognize.

How Does Arts Integration Connect?

Arts Integration is the process which links two or more natural subjects together. You can’t try to teach by making a square and a circle try to fit together. But, if there is an arts objective that is similar to a content objective, why not teach both of them together? It certainly allows for richer learning experiences and engages students in ways that a linear approach could never accomplish. We all know that students have different learning aptitudes. Edwin Gordon’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences has been well researched and implemented with mass success. By allowing students to learn objectives in a multitude of ways, we are encouraging a three-dimensional approach which can provide students with multiple ways of learning the same material. This, by default, provides a higher chance of students reaching academic success because we are giving them the opportunity to shine in a variety of mediums.

Critical thinking skills are developed by making connections, which is what is at the heart of arts integration. Connections, I believe, will be the single biggest factor for achievement and success in the 21st century. Not only connections between material, but also social and networking connections, technology connections, and connections between ideas. Teaching and learning

through arts integration gives students the vital practice to making these types of critical connections.

Technology as the Frienemy

I love learning from my students - it keeps me on my toes. But it also aides me in learning their vernacular so that I can ‘speak their language’. One of the words that is used frequently in the halls of my elementary school right now is ‘frienemy’, which apparently means a friend who is also an enemy behind your back. When we discuss 21st century skills, most people automatically think of technology. So is technology the frienemy of arts integration? I don’t think so. Or at least, I don’t think it needs to be. Technology is a natural part of our world at this point. It will be the fastest changing and biggest impact in the lives of our students for the foreseeable future. As such, I don’t think we can discount it as an important teaching tool and skill. There is no denying that our students will need to know how to use technology and understand its rapidly changing possibilities. However, technology doesn’t need to compete with arts integration as the tool that will shift education in America. Indeed, if the two were to combine forces, so to speak, the impact could be mind boggling.

Using technology in arts integration lessons simply adds to those connections that I was discussing earlier. And as has already been established, the more natural connections we can make in our classrooms, the better. I know that in the classroom when I use Apple’s Garageband software to help teach music composition, students take creativity to a whole new level. On the flip side, when our math classes use design software to create a house plan using geometric shapes and color, students remember how they had to measure those dimensions much more clearly when they are assessed later on in the year. Technology is vibrant and changes based upon the user themselves, which is exactly what art is. If we combine our efforts together, we can provide a reality to that true dream of 21st century skills.

Questions Rather Than Learning

In a recent interview with Diane Sawyer that I watched, she mentioned that she once heard a father who asked his son if he asked any interesting questions today. Rather than asking “what did you learn about today?” this father was trying to find out if his son was curious. I find this to be a paradigm shift that we need in education. Rather than giving students information that we expect them to regurgitate, we should be providing them with opportunities to explore their curiosity and make their own connections. By doing so, we are giving them the gift of driving their own learning. And when you drive yourself, you always get more pleasure and deeper learning because you’re the boss. Why not trust our students to develop their own learning plan and give them the tools to do so? Arts integration definitely puts the students in that drivers seat - how exciting to watch which direction they will each choose to go!

A World of Possibilities

When you go back to that vision of utopia that you had when you closed your eyes, did it seem possible? Sometimes in education, I think we get so caught up in what is wrong and how to fix it that visions like this feel impossible. But I retain hope that reality will surpass the visions that we hold. When I think back to my grandparents, I’m sure they never could have imagined such a thing as the internet. They thought the development of the airplane was the biggest thing that could have ever happened. And when I look at my daughter, the thoughts of what she will see that I could never dream of are incredible. Change will happen, of this we can be sure. And I believe that if we can be the change through arts integration, we will have succeeded in providing top quality education that provides the critical links our children will need to manage the change they will see. I only hope others will join me in this quest.

- Susan Riley, www.educationcloset.com

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Education Yesterday and TodayThe world is changing at a rapid pace and there’s a buzz about in education about closing the global achievement gap and developing 21st century skills.  Education is changing too to meet these needs, but very slowly and we need to help that change along or we are going to be sorry we didn’t prepare our students better for the skills they need now and for those we are unaware of in the future.

Maybe you have heard a similar statement to this one here: We are preparing students for jobs that haven’t even been invented yet.  It’s something to ponder.

“In the beginning,” American schools were modeled after factories. Those privileged students were expected to memorize facts and figures in order to show their smarts and do well for themselves in life. Now, our job as educators is quite different. We are expected not only to teach ALL students, but we need to take responsibility for them if they don’t learn. But the biggest challenge is that the traditional school model doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. Our students need to be taught another layer of skills.

Talk of these skills is not only a hot topic in education, but it is in the business world too, and rightfully so! People all across the professional spectrum are

concerned with the skills students are acquiring and, too often not acquiring. Daniel Pink, a best-selling author and speaker on business transformation refers to this idea as developing six high-concept, high-touch senses.  Tony Wagner, an education consultant has his own list of “Survival Skills.”  They have both authored books about the state of our

The Part Arts Play in 21st Century Learning

“...the traditional school model doesn’t seem to be enough anymore”

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country at this time and the part education plays in preparing our students for the workforce.  And of course there is the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an organization that advocates for the readiness of children in the 21st century.

Amidst it all, there is truth (and hope) in how arts education and integration can not only help, but teach some of these skills we are finding necessary for our young people. They can be a huge piece of the solution to get students from compliance to creativity, from rigidity to innovation. People like Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland have done research on this, which was highlighted in their article Arts for Our Sake, showing the intrinsic skills that studying the arts can instill.  These “habits of mind” that Winner and Hetland discovered through their research are very much related to the skills discussed by Pink, Wagner and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

Regardless of the person, organization or terminology, they all have many skills in common: innovation, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, initiative and flexibility.

These are all arts-based skills!

What Can the Arts Do?The arts are not just about expressing your emotions, they are even more than that.  They help us to integrate within ourselves intellect and creativity.  When people look at and interpret a painting, they are thinking critically, when they work with a new type of media, they are problem solving, when they play in an ensemble, they are collaborating, when they play a game in PE, they are practicing good team work skills.

An education in the arts can really develop most of those skills referred to as 21 century skills: those critical skills that students need to succeed and become prepared for the future.  Maybe innovation and creativity is obvious, but what about some of the others?

For example, take initiative, motivation, reflection and self-criticism.  Here are skills that are sought after, but how do you practice them?  When anyone puts together an aesthetic piece, be it a poster, a sculpture, a movement or sound, there is time for this.

I think about my fourth graders who will be putting together a biographical poster to accompany themselves as they become an historical figure in a grade level wax museum.  As they work toward a final product, they will take the time to reflect, self-criticize and revise the content.  So is the same with the one-minute speech they will script.  Students will need motivate themselves as they write it, practice it and present it many times for the audience of “museum-goers”.   Presenting this information through a visual piece and drama not only teaches content, but allows students to practice some of these other skills.

Because art is a process, students not only learn the value of a final product, but practice collaboration, self-direction, critical thinking and accountability.  Think of a musician playing alongside another.  The accountability of that person to know their part is very high.  If they don’t practice, they are letting themselves and their teammates down.  Think of the collaboration dancers achieve as they move together in various degrees of tension and fluidity.  By working and practicing together, they create something beautiful.

Every six weeks, my students and I take a time in our schedule to have “Studio Days.”  These are days where we work on a project from conception to product uninterrupted for hours during the school day.  Sometimes these days are very much integrated with other standards in our fourth grade curriculum and sometimes they are not.  Did I hear a gasp?  Please don’t because while the students work, they are learning skills far beyond the written curriculum, they are

practicing and living 21st century skills - through the arts.  

For one studio day, my students decorated the covers of their learning reflection journals to make them more personal and special.  The kids loved the idea and enjoyed their time working on their own for an extended period of time.  

During another studio day, my fourth graders did an integrated art project where they created a folder to house a poem they wrote for their mothers for Mothers’ Day.  They were to use paint, sponges and templates to create a Frieze Pattern on their folders as part of the decoration.   

Each time we have studio day, we always end with a reflection time where students think about themselves as learners.  The entire day provides them with a wonderful opportunity to experience the creative process, the learning process first hand.

These 21st century skills of innovation, self-motivation, reflection, collaboration, independence and hard work are embedded throughout these art-filled experiences.  And they are so important to a child’s future.  These are skills that employers are seeking out in employees.  They take practice and the arts provide a way to do so.

The Tech PieceThere’s no escaping it and we can’t fool ourselves anymore.  We need technology in our classrooms.  Our students are technology natives and if we don’t help them harness the power that is at their fingertips, we are doing such a great disservice to them (and us!)

Media literacy is as much part of arts education and integration as it is technology.  It’s not all about memorization of facts and figures anymore, it’s about how to process all the information that sits before us on a screen.  From music to videos to text and images, digital media is

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is unavoidable.

It is also artistic in nature and if we are training our students to be better receivers and creators of art, this will transfer to technology.  

For example, this year I assigned a project for my students using Glogster.com, an online program where people can design and publish digital posters that include all types of media.  With this type of assignment, students are able to show what they know about a concept while using tech tools to express their ideas.

Music is one of those medias that we cannot escape either.  It is everywhere!  In my class, I have time carved out of our day, each day, where we sit and listen to music together.  Sometimes them music comes from a CD or iPod, other times it comes from the computer, but we spend time listening and processing music together, helping students to become active listeners.  

How it All Comes TogetherWhen our classrooms are full of real learning experiences where we can step back and let students take a front seat to their learning, students will flourish.  They need to try things out, fail, work with mistakes, reflect on their actions and learn from their experiences and succeed.

Sure there are time restraints, curriculum pressures, test scores and meeting AYP.  But we also need to remember we are teaching children how to be life-long learners, how to be great contributors to society.  It’s not how well they can do a menial task, but what innovation they can come up with when given a challenge.  Let the arts be a tool with which they can practice those skills.

- Elizabeth Peterson

Elizabeth Peterson has devoted her life to education and to reaching out to other teachers who want to remain inspired.  Mrs. Peterson teaches fourth grade in Amesbury, Massachusetts and is the host of www.theinspiredclassroom.com.  She holds an M.Ed. in Education, “Arts and Learning” and is currently enrolled in a C.A.G.S. program through Plymouth State University with a focus in “Arts Leadership and Learning.”  Elizabeth is author of Inspired by Listening, a teacher resource book that includes a method of music integration she has developed and implemented into her own teaching.  She teaches workshops and courses on the integration of the arts into the curriculum, leads an arts integration PLC (PLaiC)

and is adjunct faculty for PSU.  Mrs. Peterson believes there is a love of active, integrated learning in all children and from their enthusiasm, teachers can shape great opportunities to learn.

Click here for Elizabeth’s book on Amazon!

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As a music teacher, I am constantly watching my fellow classroom teachers to see how they organize their classrooms, what the daily routine is and knowing what vernacular vocabulary is being used so that I can stay relevant with our students.  I want those students to make connections between their classroom and their specials classes so that they can complement each other and thereby make yet another connection.  After all, isn’t the whole purpose of education to make spiral learning the reality?  One thing I’ve noticed through the years is the intense use of centers within the content classes.  It allows for differentiated instruction, saves time and deepens meaning for many students.  My question to you is: are centers being used in the arts classes in your school?  If the answer is no, why not?

I have been using centers with much success for the past 6 years in my music classroom.  I differentiate groups at the beginning of the year, and usually switch them around 2-3 times a year.  Students know that on the first full week of the month, their music class will be using centers throughout the room.  The four

centers are always the same – a melody center, a rhythmic center, a computer center and a reading/writing center.  Each month, the topics at the centers change in order to either review content

from the past month or to prepare the students for what is to come.  As an example, this month’s centers for 2nd grade are as follows:

Melody Center – students will create a song using handchimes in AB form.

Rhythm Center – students will use half notes, whole notes, quarter notes and corresponding rests to create a rhythmic story on the drums.  Word syllables must match the note values students choose.

Computer Center – students will create a song on Garageband that combines patterns and rests.

Reading/Writing Center – students will compose a poem on their choice of subject in ABA form.

Students go to the assigned center with their color group (red, brown, blue or green) and then rotate to each center.  I usually allot 7-8 minutes at each center.  For the upper grades, this means all four centers rotations in the hour time slot they are provided.  For the little kids, that means two rotations at each music class (I see them twice a week for 30 minutes each time).

The impact of using centers in the arts classroom is two-fold.  First, you’re making those connections back to the regular classroom through routine and differentiation.  Second, you’re able to incorporate content curriculum within each center as a result.  Students learn about fluency and genre through their poetry center.  Occasionally, we study music in historical contexts (like Holt’s The Planets) and the centers revolve around science and social studies.  This allows students to deepen their critical thinking on these subjects, while interweaving them with musical knowledge and discovery.

Now, let’s take this one step further – what if centers like this were designed for use in the content classrooms?  Think of the amazing possibilities for math and science centers.  The variations are almost immeasurable.  Let’s continue to learn from each other and see what other pathways we can create.  It’s an exciting world out there – but don’t forget about the center.  - Susan Riley

The “Center” of Your Universe

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"I just wish there was something we could do, besides sit here and

complain."This was the comment voiced by a friend that lodged like a splinter in my mind, preoccupying my thoughts during the day and disrupting my sleep at night. We had gathered again at a local coffee shop, friends since our children started kindergarten together five years before, to compare notes and commiserate and wonder aloud what more we could do. Because there had to be something we could do; we were used to doing, having been actively involved parents at our children's former elementary

school. Our children had attended an arts-integration elementary school for four years,

until a wrong-headed decision by local officials to consolidate buildings closed our school, effectively dissolving the arts-integration program and breaking apart our school community (we

lost half our teachers in the job fair that followed the closing of our school). Our children were

now spending their fourth- and fifth-grade years at a neighborhood elementary school with no particular emphasis on arts-integration, and the difference was notable.

There's not much written about what to do when you lose your arts-integration program. Around the web, you can find plenty to peruse regarding the numerous benefits of arts-integration in schools, and more recently there's been an surge of articles recommending strategies to employ when starting up an arts-integration focused school. But not a lot of advice for what you can do when your successful, high-performing, beloved arts-integration program is cut off at the knees and left for dead. As parents who had fought the local officials but lost, we spent a year giving the new school the benefit

Seeing the Forest for the TreesWhy arts integration is the splinter within change.

— Kristen Quinn

“There’s...not a lot of advice for what you can do when your successful, high-performing, beloved arts-integration program is cut off at the knees

and left for dead”

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of the doubt, watching our children slowly but surely begin to loathe going to school, and grumbling about the carelessness of the people responsible for killing our arts-integration program. But that had gotten us nowhere, our children were struggling and soon their younger siblings would be starting kindergarten, so we needed to DO SOMETHING! But what?Studies abound informing us that parental involvement is key to a child's success in school, but 'parental involvement' is an umbrella term that can mean a range of actions and behaviors. Asking your child about his day, making sure he gets his homework done, attending Open House and Parent-Teacher Conference at school, participating in PTA meetings, volunteering in your child's classroom - there are many ways to be an involved parent. In my experience I've seen parents take involvement a step further, bringing their talents and expertise into the classroom to enrich the learning that happens in school. My friend Adam is an architect, and when his son's class was studying "Community" he came into school to work with the kids on a community planning project. Another friend is a history buff and Revolutionary War re-enactor, and he visited the school and shared this particular talent during a unit on the Revolutionary War. One young man's uncle, who happens to be a children's book author, came into school and read to the entire student body over the course of Reading Week in the spring. And since foreign language study is not currently a part of our district's elementary curriculum, a young mother I know came into her daughter's school to run a Spanish Club afterschool program. When my son was in third grade, his teacher began a unit on folktales in the spring. They were reading Patricia

Polacco; I am quite fond of her story Rechenka's Eggs. I mentioned to the teacher that as a child I learned from my grandparents how to decorate Easter eggs in the same style as is depicted in that book. She was intrigued (and quick-thinking) and before I knew it I had agreed to come into the classroom and give a demonstration. She tied the demonstration of the traditional egg-decorating technique, called pysanky, to the language arts lesson on folktales, and for several days her students learned how to 'read' the motifs on a decorated egg and interpret what the artist is trying to say, and connect that to what they were learning about folktales in general and from Patricia Polacco's stories (and other folktales they were reading) in particular. They also wrote their own folktales, collaborated on a design for an egg and took turns working with the pysanky tools and materials, presenting the finished egg to their teacher as a gift at the end of the unit.Teachers and parents familiar with arts-integration will not be surprised to hear that this lesson was an inspiring experience for me, and the teacher, and the students. The enthusiasm that grows from a successful arts-integrated lesson is a contagious form of energy; it circles the classroom and can permeate an entire school. The converse is also true: the boredom and frustration that get planted in a dull classroom where rote learning is king will also grow, until drastic measures may be required to hack back the weeds and restore the garden of wonder that once existed in the mind of a child. So, back to that splinter. Now that I found my child in a school where parents were being held at arm's length in many classrooms and arts-integration was only being practiced

in a few (and not in his), what could I do besides complain? I found that writing things down and zeroing in on the action words, the verbs, helped me immensely in figuring out what I wanted to do - it was like throwing open the curtains and letting in the light. If you find yourself in my shoes, you may want to try writing a mission statement, as hokey as that sounds, and figuring out your action words, because it's entirely possible that yours will be different from mine. Then take a deep breath and start talking about what you want to do, first with friends and family, and then with colleagues, expanding further and further until you build a wide circle of support. And then get to work, because you know what they say about ideas without action!

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Technology is in every facet in our lives these days. And with good reason - it’s efficient, effective, and has tremendous connective power. However, sometimes you just can’t beat the “real thing”.

Researchers seem to have discovered a key element to enhanced brain activity when listening to music: passion. In a study at Florida Atlantic University, researchers played the same piece of music for participants two times on the same piano. The first time, the music was synthesized. The second time, the piece was played by an actual person and contained the human “nuances” that come with individual expression. Researchers found that minor neuron systems allowed the listeners to “feel” the performer’s emotion the second time through increased brain activity.

The study, published in PLoS One, identified the nuanced changes in tempo and loudness that resulted in emotion-related brain activity.

"It had previously been theorized that the mirror neuron system provides a mechanism through which listeners feel the performer's emotion, making musical communication a form of empathy," principal investigator Edward Large said in a statement. "Our results tend to support that hypothesis."

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/12/21/Listeners-feel-the-musicians-passion/

UPI-56841292989204/#ixzz1Apzi6JN1

So while technology is a fantastic tool for the arts and has plenty of potential, it looks like a case can be made for the benefits of real human interaction - even if it’s just through the art form itself.

- Susan Riley, www.educationcloset.com

A Scientific PassionScientists seem to have confirmed that listening to passionate musicians can evoke more brain activity. What does that mean for us?

Image courtesy of http://viperpilot.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/tools-of-future-music/

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UMBC Arts Integration Conference - February 26

Re-Envisioning Education: Building Creativity and 21st Century Skills Through the Arts

Saturday, February 26, 2011 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. UMBC University Center

Keynote Speaker Dr. Pam Paulson Perpich Center for Arts Education

Interactive Hands-on Workshops Lunch Door Prizes

Attendance is limited, advance registration required. $25 Registration Fee No charge for students. For further information contact Ali Purvis: ali25@umbc.edu

CETA Learning About Arts Integration - Jun. 27-29

For Arts Organization Staff, Teaching Artists, Teachers, Principals, and School District Administrators

The Kennedy Center’s 2009 and 2010 conferences, Arts Integration Schools, examined ways to develop an arts integration school. Based on overwhelming requests, this new 2011 conference explores the “how” of arts integration, rooted in the Kennedy Center’s 30 years of experience in professional learning for teachers, and provides many strategies that can make arts integration a part of every teacher’s approach to teaching.

When: Monday, June 27- Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Where: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.

Registration is available for individuals or teams.

Conference registration is limited to 130 attendees. Registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Deadline

Friday, April 15

Contact

For more information, contact Michelle Carney at MLCarney@kennedy-center.org or (202) 416-8842.

Resource Links

Please visit some fantastic resources to help guide and inspire your arts integration movements.

The Inspired Classroom

www.theinspiredclassroom.com

The Arts Room

www.theartsroom.wordpress.com

Arts Edge

http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators.aspx

Arts Education Partnership

http://www.aep-arts.org/resources/integration.htm

Arts Every Day

http://www.artseveryday.org/Educators/detail.aspx?id=212

The Teachers LoungeResources, Links and Upcoming Events for Arts Integration