Week 1: Thursday 4th June 2015 (first meeting)
A new group of students and teachers started to plan a new action research project. New members are HK,SM,KD,MK for confidentiality reasons we only use initials.
We looked at the project that other pupils completed last term. We wanted to see how it was done.
We looked for ideas for our research. We asked each member for ideas about art. we had 3 ideas:
3. how to make 3d stuff
We voted for each topic and technology got 2. other topics got one vote each.
Inspired by the previous project, we tried to design a research question. Our question was this: 'Is there evidence that technology in art helps students learn (as seen by 2 KS3 classes)?'
We shared tasks in the group. HK, SM and MK agreed to write a blog. HK, KD and MK agreed to interview people. SM and MK will design a questionnaire to ask pupils.
We decided to interview a few teachers who teach art.
Then we decided the next steps for week 2:
We had in mind to design a questionnaire, but we realized that we needed some information form the teachers first. So we agreed to interview a few teachers first.
MK will write a letter to parents informing them about their children's participation in the action research project.
Week 2: Thursday 11 (planning)
We planned out schedule and filled in the action research form.
Our weekly plan:
- Week 1: search for a topic.
- Week 2: interview people.
- Week 3: design a questionnaire and sent it to pupils, continue to interview.
- Week 4: analyse data from the questionnaire and interview people.
- Week 5: interpret interviews.
- Week 6: interpret interviews and analyse data,
- Week 7: draw conclusions.
We were not able to finish the tasks but we decided to fill it in as we go along.
Week 3 Thursday 18 (questionnaire and interviews)
We were not able to complete the questionnaire in week 3. We postponed it to week 4.
However, we managed to develop questions for our interviews. Initially we had 3 questions, but 2 questions where added in the process of interviewing.
These were the questions:
- What does technology mean to you?
- What technology do you use in an art classroom?
- What can we learn from art by using technology?
Two added questions:
- What do you do in art?
- What is creativity?
- Do you like art?
- Are you a boy or girl?
- What does technology mean to you?
- Do you use an Ipad in art lessons?
- Do you use a computer in art lessons?
- What technology do you use in art lessons? (multiple selection)
- What do you learn in art lessons? (open question)
- Do you like using technology in art lessons?
- How often do you use computers?
- What things do you do on a computer? (open question)
Our next steps for week 4 are:
- finish the questionnaire and send it to pupils.
- interview people who work in art lessons.
- interview the head of department.
Week 4 Thursday 25 June (questionnaire and interviews)
In week 4, we added 4 more questions to our questionnaire.
- How well do you do in an art lesson?
- Do you use technology to draw?
- What is creativity in art?
- Do you learn to be creative in an art lesson?
Then we defined what we meant by creativity and technology because we thought that our understanding of it may differ from other people's understanding and interpretation.
Creativity is when you make something by using your own and other people's ideas.
Technology means devices that help us to do things. For example, drawing on paper may be seen as old technology and drawing on Ipad may be seen as new technology.
Then, we looked through one of our interviews and discussed what we could do with the information from them.
Week 5 Thursday 2 July 2015 (interpret interviews and data analysis - moved from week 4)
We started to analyse interviews and summarised them, but we were not able to finish them all. So we moved the task to week 6.
Week 6 Thursday 9 July 2015 (continue to interpret interviews and data analysis)
We have finished interpreting the interviews. We have interviewed 4 adults two KS4 groups. We added the results to our matrix*.
*Question, answer and conclusion matrix:
We have also asked pupils to fill in our questionnaire^ and we had their responses:
Week 7 Thursday 16 2015 (conclusions)
We have concluded our research and summarized our findings to the question 'Does technology in art promote creativity?'
Technology helps us to make things and it is fun to use, but it is not necessary for to promote creativity. Creativity is a process of developing thoughts and exploring ideas. Those ideas can be implemented by using technology such as the heat press to print logos on t-shirts or to cut out stencils with a laser cutter.
Discovery Web Team