Transient Transfer Greensboro

Our Canterbury stars were out Friday night at the Green Hill Center for NC Art in downtown Greensboro. Fatimah Tuggar, an artist in residence at Duke University opened her show Transient Transfer Greensboro, which featured many pictures and recorded sounds of the city of Greensboro captured by Canterbury 7th and 8th graders from our Art Elective taught by Molly Stouten and Vicki Johnson.

The idea came from this year's Innnovator's Challenge, which asked faculty to "upgrade one of your classroom assessments so that students demonstrate learning through a real-life application: a contemporary performance or product created using 21st century tools. "The main components in the lessons needed to:

1. "involve students in collaborating with someone outside of our community, preferably using 21st century tools such as Skype, email exchanges, and blogs,
2. solicit student ideas as you plan the project,
3. incorporate a variety of 21st century skills, such as creativity, collaboration, media literacy, global awareness, adaptability, self-direction, and empathy,
4. require students to share the performance or product with a real audience (audience similar to the audience experienced by contemporary professionals in the field),
5. make the project interdisciplinary and collaborate with at least one other professional, from our staff or from the outside, and
6. be ready to explain how the upgrade leads to enhanced learning outcomes and how you will measure the learning."

Molly and Vicki were able to gear the fall semester Art Elective to fit into the Innovator's Challenge. First, they contacted and worked with Fatimah Tuggar at Duke University and Mary Young at Green Hill Center Center for NC Art to frame the project. Second, the students learned the keys to digital photography, file organization and labelling, sound recording using iPods, and stop-gap animation. Third, the students met with the artist twice (once on Skype and once in person) to show their work and receive feedback from the artist. Ms. Tuggar was able to offer both artistic insights and technical pointers our students could use in their personal projects (currently on display in Stafford Arts Center).

The real-life product was Ms. Tuggar's work Transient Transfer Greensboro, currently on display at Green Hill. Molly Stouten, Vicki Johnson, and a number of the art students were on hand Friday for the premiere of the work. The students had a lot invested in this project because it was a professional piece to be displayed in a professional manner for a real audience. It is the perfect example of 21st Century teaching and learning.