District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support Educational Technology
Technology Toolkit

Self-Portrait Series
Avon Public Schools

Evidence of Effectiveness

Instructional objective: Through the lessons in this unit, students will be able to create digital photographic self-portraits that reflect photographic portraiture, historic portrait paintings, and masks, as well as their own likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, and cultural heritage.

Evaluation: The quality of images the students produced revealed levels of mastery in technology skills. The visual impact and power of students' images showed the mastery of content. Rubrics were distributed with the introduction of each new approach so that students knew what was expected in the artwork.

Student improvement: Students were taught to use computer technology as a tool for making art in Digital Art Class. Many of these students would not normally have taken an art course, yet the use of technology allowed students to study visual art, acquiring a deeper understanding of the creative process, and thus visual art in general. Students began to understand how artists communicate through the visual language of art, as well as how one becomes a self-directed, self-evaluating learner. Most of the units in this class required a process of brainstorming/idea forming that was primarily self-directed, with a student-created plan of action in producing works that communicated ideas about the theme in question. Thus, students worked as "real" artists work and experienced the range of involvement with their work that was similar to what a real-world artist would experience. Students were invested and involved in their work and saw it through to completion/exhibition.

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