Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Cool new App for Art Education


         Cool new Art App for your classroom: Huedoku. The application is a color puzzle that puts Josef Alber’s experiments into practice. Alber’s insisted that education should be a practice of search vs. research. This app finally puts his ideas into motion at a teenagers pace. Students search for the solve to the color puzzles without realizing they are discovering color theory. The app works for all learners. While advanced learners may solve the puzzles more quickly, special education and ELL students are pulled in by the visuals and excited to play along. By using apple TV to project the game on the large white board, students can play as a large group or table by table. 
        After studying Albers theories and practices on color for a full class period, I needed a fun in-between to pull students into the concept of working with color for a 3-D project. This app was the perfect solution. It incorporated all students and was immediately engaging. We started by completing the three sided puzzles together, as a large group. Using my iPad and a projector, I picked up the color and students would tell me where to place it in projected puzzle. As soon as the puzzle was solved, we moved on to the next one. The students loved the app. We solved all three sided puzzles together, as modeled practice, then we went into small table groups for the four sided puzzles. I gave the first table the iPad and they worked as a four person group to solve the puzzle. While this group was actively working on the puzzle, the classroom was watching them solve the projection on the large screen. More importantly, they observing how colors change when they are placed next to a new background. It was Albers in action and the students had no idea how much they were learning as they played along. These were the strengths of the activity. I ran into only one challenge, after students played a first time with their table groups, they really wanted to play again. It led me to contemplate how I could get more iPads so we could have students playing at each table simultaneously. This was a small challenge considering that by observing and waiting, these students were gaining so much from watching the color interaction. 

I will continue to use this app. I will also use this success as an opportunity to grow. I would like to find more apps like this to use in the classroom. I believe students today need relatable, technology to be included in their learning. It allows me to increase understanding using a familiar, everyday item (iPad) that students utilize and comprehend. It was exciting to see the energy and camaraderie in the classroom. I would love to grow by finding more art application opportunities for the 3-D classroom.  Check it out: http://huedoku.com/

1 comment:

  1. Can't believe this was over a year ago!
    Let's customize some puzzles for color curriculum.
    Great article.

    ReplyDelete