Action Research

By Mary Brady

Balmacewen
Art Gallery Online

Self Portrait Sew Hoy &Sons Building

by Sequoia Cunningham by Mike Gray
Action Research Title: Balmacewen Art Gallery Online
Author: Mary Brady
Date: 2008

Outline

The principal aim of this research is to develop Art Gallery for Balmacewen School
online. I hope that this Art Gallery is viewed and adds value to the experience of
making art for the Balmacewen students.

It may also:
• provide incentives and reward students
• raise the profile of students artwork
• have the students’ work reach a wider audience
• profile the school

The potential benefits for individual pupils are:

• rewarded for their success
• their artwork has a wider audience
• can receive feed back from others
• can feel proud of having their work on an online gallery

The potential benefit for me as a teacher:

• my students work can reach a wider audience
• I may find other art teachers doing the same and have more contact/support
with other art teachers
• the website can potentially profile me as an art teacher

The potential benefit for the school:

• is that the community may come to see Balmacewen as a school that values art
and has a strong art programme

Questions I am interested in researching:

• Is having your work posted in the Online Gallery something you would want
to have happen?
• Do they show their work to anyone? If so who?
• How do students like to be rewarded?
• Do students find value in having the top 5 students rewarded?
• What impact does it have on students if they are not in the top 5 selected?
• Would student like feedback on their artwork from viewers who see their
work?
• Do students want to give others feedback about their art?
Introduction

In 2007 I taught my first year as a Specialist Art Teacher at Balmacewen Intermediate

School in Dunedin, New Zealand. Balmacewen has about 380 students in Year 7 and
8. There are 14 classrooms and three Specialist teachers.

Students from two classrooms are split three ways into Art, Soft and Hard Materials
classes. Generally I have between 17 – 20 students per art class. Each student has on
average 26 art sessions per year, which is split into Semester 1 and 2. These students
come from a wide range of schools and arrive with varying skills and abilities.
They range in age from 11-13.

I have been teaching for 15 years: 9 years as a classroom teacher, 5 years teaching art
to students from Years 1-8 and job sharing and 1 year as an art specialist teacher. In
2006 I graduated from Otago Polytechnic with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

This research is of value to me as a teacher and an artist as I am interested to see if

students do view their and others work on the online art gallery and how they feel
about this.

Background to the project

Currently once a group of students (17-20) have all completed a piece of work we
democratically decide on the top five pieces of work. This is done by students
nominating up to ten students. Students are required to be specific about why they
value someone’s work and use art terms to describe what they value. Next the
students are asked to select the two students’ work they most value. The students are
encouraged to base their choices on what they value as opposed to who is their friend
or popular. They may not cast two votes for the same person and they may vote for
themselves. Students are then asked to close their eyes and a blind vote is carried out.
They top 5 are selected. Say if only the top three are clear winners then these get
removed and then we revote. However this time students are only able to cast one
vote. This is continued until we have selected our top five pieces of work.

These students receive a certificate and have their work display in the foyer or the
library. They also have their work loaded in our Balmacewen Art Gallery Online.
Our school website has a link to Photobucket’s website.

I have told the students that their work is available for viewing from our school
website but haven’t shown them it and haven’t asked them if they have viewed it or
shown anyone their work.

Research Method
I am going to trial two different methods for viewing with two different classes.
There is one main difference between these two methods.
• Photobucket is passive in that you can only view the work
• Blogger.com has the ability to be interactive with the students and their
families being able to post a comment about their work
Other than that both groups will fill in questionnaires that give me feedback on who
has looked at BAGO, who else was shown, why they looked there, how they like to be
rewarded, how they feel about having there work online and do they like the top 5
pieces being rewarded.

Group 1
The top 5 students’ work will be posted at Photobucket which is passive.
I am going to repeat the same process of selection and place the top 5 students work
on Photobucket. I will also show the whole class the website and then give the
students a handout with the school website address and instructions to get to
photobucket. I will say to the student that they might like to show someone at home
what we have been doing. Three sessions later I will get all the students to fill in the
questionnaire.

I will have posted the students’ work at Photobucket and put them into slideshow.
They can access this site by using the link on the school web page.

Group 2
The top 5 students work will be posted at Blogger.com which is interactive.
I am going to repeat the same process of selection and place and place the top 5
students work on the internet at Blogger.com. I will show the whole class the
website. I will say to the students that they might like to go to the website and give
feedback on students’ work. We will discuss what would be appropriate comments.
I will model adding a comment. Three sessions later I will get all the students to fill
in the questionnaire.

I will have put a widget at Blogger.com so the slideshow from Photobucket

automatically opens there. This will still be accessed by the link on the school web
page. However it is set up so the students are able to add a comment to the blog.

Group One Online Art Gallery Questionnaire

Select an Art Group 1 and 5 10 and 13 3, 7 and
11
Date: Yes No

1. Have you looked at the Balmacewen

School Art Gallery online at home?

2. If you have answered NO why didn’t you view the work?

3. Have you looked at the Balmacewen School Art Gallery online ?

At home
In the school library
In your classroom
Somewhere else
3. Do you have any work on the
Balmacewen School Art Gallery?

5. Have you shown anyone else the

Balmacewen School Art Gallery online?
6. If you answered YES, who did you show?

7. Why did you look at work in the Balmacewen School Art Gallery?
8. How do you feel about having your work in the Balmacewen
School Art Gallery?

9. Tick how you would like to be rewarded for your art work?
Verbal comment Work hung up in foyer/office
Written comment Work put on internet
Certificate Sticker
9. Do you like having the top 5 pieces of work named?

Group Two Online Art Gallery Questionnaire

Which Room are you in? 1&5 10 & 3, 7 &
13 11
Date: Yes No
10. Have you looked at any work at the
Balmac Art Gallery Online?
11. If you have answered NO why didn’t you view the work?

3Do you have any work on the

Balmacewen School Art Gallery?

Go to Question # 9 if you haven’t seen the

Balmac Art Gallery Online.
4. Have you looked at the Balmacewen School Art Gallery online?
• at home
• in the library at school
• in your classroom
5. Have you shown anyone else the
Balmacewen School Art Gallery online?

6. If you answered YES, who did you show?

7. Why did you visit the Balmacewen Art Gallery online?

8. How do you feel about having your work in the Balmacewen

School Art Gallery?

9. Tick how you would like to be rewarded for your art work?
Verbal comment Work hung up in foyer/office
Written comment Work put on internet
Certificate Sticker
1. Do you like having the top 5 pieces of work named?

Name: If you’d like to put it.

Results and Discussion

52% of the student looked at work on BAGO. I was surprised that so many students
looked at the Art Gallery. I imagined that about 30% would.

It is pertinent to note here that some students don’t have Broadband at home and so
this hinders some of them from viewing the website. These students still show up as
either did or didn’t have work on and didn’t look. So more students may have looked
had they had access to broadband at home.

Again 52% of the students who looked the Art Gallery showed someone else the
work. A question that would have been appropriate in the questionnaire would have
been to ask the students, if the people they showed looked at or commented on other
students work also.
Predominantly the people that were shown the website would already get to view the
students work, e.g. when it arrives home at the end of the year.
Advantages of the website:
• people got to see other students’ work that they wouldn’t usually see
• parents saw their students work straight way
• it adds value to the work to have it displayed in a valued forum

Since receiving these results I have instigated some changes in how I give feedback to
students.
One of the most consistent changes that I have made is in written comments:
• I ensure that I make a specific written comment on their self- evaluation form.
• In their workbooks when the students are doing some of their drawing
activities, I draw a  and then write what they are doing well. Then I write an
x and record what they need to focus on.
While I am writing the comment I also make sure that I’m talking at the same time. I
also try to give more detailed verbal feedback in general in class.
Next year I am going to use stickers as a form of feedback and reward in the drawing
programme.
67% of the students polled like having the top 5 pieces of work named. This could in
fact be higher as 18% didn’t answer the question. Only 7% said they didn’t like this.
It would be interesting to know why.

Part of me has questions as to how beneficial it is to the students to have the top five
pieces of work named:
• How do the students that were really close and did their best feel?
• How does it value what each student is doing?

Some of the reasons for selecting only the top five pieces are very practical:
• It would take me a great deal of time if I had to photograph all the kids work,
run it through Photoshop, upload it, label it and make them into slide shows.
• A portion of the students work isn’t at a quality where I would like to have it
displayed to represent the school.

Benefits in selecting the top 5 pieces of work:

• The students get to be “art critics”
• They get to verbalise what elements a student was skillful in making
• They students clearly see the standard achieved by the top students
• They get to have their say in what they think is “good art”
Well this was without a doubt the absolute shock of the research. NOT ONE student
or person other than me posted a comment. And I only did it in the demonstration.
So clearly the website does not need to have the facility to be able to post a comment.
There was very little difference between the two groups in viewing despite the
viewing taking part on different sites: Photobucket and Blogger.com.

47% looked at Photobucket

55% looked at Blogger.com
The difference between these groups may be able to be put down to the fact that
Blogger.com was the second group to be questioned and so the website was more
known about.

I’m not worried about the difference between the rounds and take heart that the
difference could be due to the site just being better known.

I have been looking at other school art galleries online.

So far all have their art galleries directly at their school website and so they load up
but are rather small and then you select one to make it bigger, but many of them aren’t
that easy to view for various reasons:
• Really small images and when you enlarge them they are very pixelated.
• Really small image and when you enlarge them, they are enormous so you
can’t see the whole image at once.

I have yet to see a school art gallery online which I feel is has a better method in terms
of IT than ours.
Summary/Conclusion

Based on the findings the Balmacewen Art Gallery Online is achieved much of what
I had hoped to achieve.
52% of the students are looking at the Art Gallery.
52% of those who look show someone else.
At least 67% of the students like having the top 5 pieces of work named.
I have good feedback on what types of rewards the students prefer.
I know that the students don’t need the Art Gallery to have a place where a comment
can be posted.

The Balmacewen Art Gallery Online achieves what I set out to do which is providing
an easy to view website which is viewed by the community.

Future Developments

The next thing for me to do is to design and make my Blogger.com site arty and
reflect the work we do at school. Predominantly I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop and
students’ art work to create it. Iain Cook-Bonney has given me some examples of
banners and good websites to get interesting computer art.

Appendix

• Table of results for Questionnaires One and Two

• The three different coloured copies of laminated instruction notices to be

placed in the library and classrooms to advertise BAGO during the different
parts of the research.