Dream Streets

Project URL: http://www.teachersnetwork.org/teachnetnyc/mmeisler/dream_streets.htm

How it works:
Sixth grade students use web-based resources to learn the principles of drawing using one and two point perspective. Students view selected street scenes by Edward Hopper and postcards of Main Street USA in Disney, then write about and design their own "dream streets." The project culminates in an animated drawing of their own “dream street” accompanied by their writing which is published online.

Standards addressed:  

Visual Arts:

• Understands and applies media, techniques, and processes related to the visual arts.

• Understands what makes various organizational structures effective (or ineffective) in the communication of ideas.

• Chooses and evaluates a range of subject matter, symbols, and ideas

Language Arts:

• Uses content, style, and structure (e.g. formal or informal language, genre, organization) appropriate for specific audiences and purposes (to entertain, to influence, to inform).

Materials used:
Networked Macintosh lab with Internet connection, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Dream Weaver.

The students:
This program was created for sixth grade digital art students at the Institute for Collaborative Education, a small, diverse, New York City public school for grades six through twelve. The project was a culmination of a year-long curriculum where students learned to use the computer as a creative tool for self-expression and learning the principles of art.

Overall value:
Kids' sense of “freedom” and "coming of age” is sometimes defined by their ability (or permission) to go, walk, play on their street by themselves or with friends. As they approach adolescence they become more aware of the limitations of their own immediate street or neighborhood. With Dream Streets, each kid becomes an author, web artist, and architect, imagining and bringing to virtual live the street of their dreams.
 
Tips: 
Help the students create their own straightedge tool and triangle by cutting up used tag board or file folders. Download a free trial of Flash at http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=flash

You can adjust the length of this unit by decreasing the amount of sites the students view in sessions 1 – 5.

About the teacher:
Meryl Meisler, Digital Art teacher at the Institute for Collaborative Education, began teaching in 1979. She has received a Disney American Teacher Award in visual arts and serves on both the Teachers Network  and Art and Science Collaborations (www.asci.org) Board of Directors. Meryl is an accomplished artist in her own right.

E-mail: merylart@earthlink.net 

Subject Areas: 
Visual Arts, Language Arts                        

Grade Levels: 6-12