Newsletters 2013-14 Focus newsletter, [1] fall | Page 17

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Students explore art museum without
leaving their classroom
Virtual field trips are a first for MIA

W

ithout even leaving their classrooms,
students in art classes at Anoka Middle
School for the Arts (AMSA) got the opportunity to explore portions of the vast art collections at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA).

possible in the museum. Through a web conferencing tool, students were able to see Hagstrom
and the art on a large screen in their classroom.
They were able to ask questions and converse with
Hagstrom as if they were actually in the museum.

Last spring students took the museum’s very
first virtual field trip with Debra Hagstrom, senior
educator, when they viewed a number of pieces of
the Islamic art collection through the magic of
technology. Later in the year another class viewed
paintings by Georgia O’Keefe. “They had an
opportunity to learn from top specialists in the
field,” said Jolanda Dranchak, curriculum integration coordinator at Anoka Middle School.

She told students they would not see the large
paintings or sculptures that people commonly
associate with great art museums because they
simply were not characteristic of Islamic art.
Instead, she presented decorative tiles, architectural elements and beautifully detailed household
objects that featured precise, geometrical designs.

She first approached Katherine Milton, manager
of digital learning and special projects for MIA,
with the idea of a virtual field trip. “MIA has such
wonderful resources, but it’s expensive to take a bus
there,” said Dranchank. “As an art school I wanted
to find a way to bring our students more art.”

Students marveled at the intricacy found in an
ornamental window screen, called a jali. Its precise, geometric designs were delicately carved in
red sandstone some 250 to 500 years ago. They
admired the shimmer of a large, decorative bowl,
especially when Hagstrom told them the glow
came from gold mixed into the material from
which the bowl had been fashioned.
Much of the artwork
featured repeated
patterns found in
nature, such as gracefully intertwined vines and
flowers. Tiles with these
patterns were typically
displayed at the
entrance of mosques to
represent “the beauty
and wonder of paradise,” according to
Hagstrom.
Following the field
trip, students created
their own designs using
repeated geometric patterns such as those they
saw on the field trip and
in other resources.

Anoka-Hennepin’s
portable classroom
phase-out will pay for
elementary all-day-K
renovations

A

noka-Hennepin, like many other school
districts across Minnesota, is preparing
for next year’s state-funded rollout of
all-day kindergarten. The district currently offers
all-day kindergarten at 16 of its 24 schools. But
by 2014, every school will offer the program.
And as Anoka-Hennepin ramps up for that,
six of its elementary schools—Adams,
Eisenhower, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln and
Sand Creek—need renovations to add permanent
classroom space to accommodate the influx of
students they’ll see, according to the district’s
Chief Operations Officer Chuck Holden.
But how to pay for those without increasing
taxes?
There are 96 portable classrooms located at
schools around the Anoka-Hennepin School
District. They’re mostly used at the district’s five
traditional high schools and equate to the amount
of space a sixth high school would create.
And that was the point—to bridge higher
enrollment periods with future decreases in
student populations without building high
school additions or a even a new school.
All told, portable classrooms cost the district
around $4.5 million a year in annual lease costs.
But now that graduating classes are getting
smaller, the need for some of those portable
classrooms is waning and the district is going to
be able to use the money elsewhere, like elementary school renovations, Holden said.
Not all portable classrooms will be phased
out, Holden said, but just this summer, two 12classroom pods were taken away from two high
schools—one at Champlin Park and the other at
Coon Rapids—saving the district $200,000.

Art teacher Matt
Malette teamed up with
Dranchak on the Islamic
Want to see the art students created?
art unit. They were able
Check out the video and learn more about AMSA’s Islamic art. Go to our
to take advantage of
YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/anokahennepin, or go to
http://bit.ly/16fwECX to watch.
their own personal
experience with Islamic
art. Dranchak had lived in the Middle East for a
Milton was delighted to work with Anoka
year and had compiled many images of art she saw
Middle School because the project fit perfectly
there. Malette was exposed to similar art when he
into efforts to extend the museum’s reach into the
visited the Alhambra Islamic palaces in Spain.
community. MIA is now working on a grant project funded by the National Endowment for the
They wanted not only to expose students to
Humanities to use digital technology to more
this rich art, but also to give them a chance to
broadly share the depth of the museum’s holdings.
work with concepts of geometry as they developed
their patterns. Their colleagues from the math
“When it comes to our collection, out of sight
department helped them develop a brief geometry
doesn’t have to be out of mind,” she said. “There
quiz that students took at the beginning of the
are all sorts of ways to share the stories of this
unit and another one for follow-up at the end.
collection and make cross-curricular connections
They were pleased that students’ scores improved.
for students.” As a result of the experience with
Anoka Middle School, the MIA is now beginning
They felt the field trip enriched students’ expeto do virtual field trips with other schools. She
rience with Islamic art even though students didn’t
said the technical aspects of the field trip improve
travel to the museum. Milton felt it had some
with each experience.
advantages over a traditional museum tour. “With
the Islamic collection we are talking about patterns
“We are really excited about this outreach a