Media Art Documentation

Keeley introduced to us a lesson plan that included making finger puppets that represented our family and then creating a powerpoint presentation with photos that we took of our puppets with digital cameras. The intended outcomes of the project were to investigate family history, create a representation of our families and learn how to use power point to display our information. My impressions of this project was that the art experience was lost. The finger puppets were too small to allow for very much originality or creativity. The medium became very juvenile and the outcome looked a bit crafty. I could see 10-12 year olds feeling like this was a "kiddy" project and not feeling their artistic abilities were able to grow or be validated. As discussed in class, I believe making the medium larger (sock puppets) or using real people as the subject for the photos would create more success in this area. Also, the use of power point was well suited to the desired outcomes, however the artistic aspect of this could have been emphasized a bit more as far as discussing composition and design aspects. If more time could be allowed, using student generated backgrounds instead of images from the internet would be better. At first the power point experience was challenging as my Mac support Keynote. Adjusting to the new tools was a little frustrating, but I was able to figure it out in the end. I experimented with transitions and custom animations to make the presentation a bit more exciting. This lesson has a lot of potential, but I feel could use some reconsiderations as well.