Fourth grade art students have recently been working with Sketch Up for Schools Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software on their Chromebooks to create sailboats in an environment.  Many of the fourth graders' finished works are shown in this presentation.  Several of the fourth graders will continue working on their boat scenes next week.  

Sketch Up for Schools is a free cloud-based software that students access through their school Google accounts.  Sketch Up Pro is widely used by architects and structural designers.  The student and professional versions of Sketch Up are very similar. As Sketch Up for Schools is geometry-based, students are provided with an educational opportunity in math, as well as a stepping stone toward various professions which employ engineering and architectural 3D modeling software.

Our students make all of their forms with the tools of the program, and are never allowed to use downloaded or pre-constructed forms in their Sketch Up work. The tools the fourth graders have been using include line, rectangle, push-pull, select, flip, offset, rotate, move, scale, and bucket fill (for colors).

One of the photos below shows the steps that Muna Akubue of 4P used to create her boats.

This week's student art is from the 7th grade mini-golf lane design project. The basic shape tools of Tinkercad computer-aided design software were used to make the complex forms in these virtual 3D models. This math-art assignment, which involves creative engineering and math calculations, was developed and is taught by Mr. Bell and Mrs. Cvetan.

The beautifully creative and innovative images produced by students for this project have been made entirely with Tinkercad software, except for the work of Austin Ju. He created a laptop computer model with the basic shape and text tools of Tinkercad. However, the images on his virtual computer's monitor are screenshots of his Tinkercad work for the mini-golf project, which he made on his iPad. He arranged photos of his mini-golf lane on a photo of his laptop model in the Sketchbook app on his iPad.  

In the world of Austin's image, the mini-golf design was created by the laptop computer. The laptop computer was created by Austin on his iPad. If we consider this image in the context of recent advances in computer technologies and artificial intelligence, we might ask ourselves who created the mini-golf design in Austin's picture. Was it made by Austin or by the virtual model of the laptop computer?     

This week's student art features watercolor paintings by 2nd graders.  Students drew, cut, and assembled relatively simple paper shapes to make the more complex structures of the birds.  The watercolor shapes and crayon line patterns in the sky echo the shapes of the birds, thus helping to create compositional unity in the paintings. ​