and Mathematics with Computers in 1st Year
Powerpoint Golden Mean
Barchart Diary of Classes
main aim of this part of the project was to enable First Year students
to become aware of the associations between Art and Mathematics,
while also familiarising them with the Windows environment and some
The following Software was available for students
Explorer 5 and
the course of using Paint, students become familiar with the concepts
of Files and Folders and get to understand how to use the Computer
Local Area Network and Printer.
collaborative learning environment needed to be created, where students
would feel free to interact with and help each other.
content would never be required from students.
aim here was to show that pleasant drawings could be made from basic
Mathematical shapes. Students used Paint to draw a Picture,
using the basic Mathematical shapes, a square, a circle, a triange,
a rectangle. Students were asked to make a non representational
picture using only the primary colours and to fill the page with
Folder, called 1 Blue 2001 (the class name )was created on each
All student's images were saved to this folder.
a picture of the class with their pictures
demonstrated to students how to install Paintshop Pro on a computer
with a view to using the more advanced features of this package
for the Art work.
the Internet to build a search "learn to draw". Students
were allowed to choose one of the sites to explore. They were asked
to find a picture that appealed to them and try to draw it in Paint.
Then students saved a picture from the Internet into their own Folders.
at this stage had compiled at least three pictures. To introduce
students to Powerpoint, a decision was made to compile all their
images into a Powerpoint presentation. In
the course of this exercise, students were introduced to the use
of the network.
introduction to Tesselations. I demonstrated a rectangle, with a
portion cut out of it, which was then tessellated. In their own
practice, most students used the tessellation, which was demonstrated
to them and coloured it in their desired colours. The intention
was to prepare students for an understanding of some topics, they
will later study in Geometry. Though the words Symmetry, Translations
and Rotations were not used at this stage, students began to grasp
were shown how to draw an equilateral triangle. They then used Copy
and Paste to form the tessellation.
them the tessellation with the hexagon and the little square
work with Folders was needed as some students had not been properly
saving their files into the 1 Blue Folder. Demonstrated the Vase
and the Face drawing in black and white from Betty Edwards book.
This exercise would provide a foundation for future understanding
of Axial Symmetry. Amanda D produced an excellent example of her
at the site
students to start a journal in Word, describing what they had studied,
learned and enjoyed or not.
up e-mails for the class. Sent e-mails.
Gave them my school e-mail firstname.lastname@example.org and asked them
to e-mail me. Set up address books with each e-mail address.
Used Publisher to create Christmas cards. Used the wizard. One card
used preset clipart. The second card used their own previously created
images. Allowed them to print out and keep their cards.
each student informally to talk to me about her picture, which I
had on the overhead screen. Asked them to say what they had learned
a picture of the class with their cards.
made a Video of their class and interviewed each other about their
drawings and the Software packages, which they had used.
class returned to Computers again after Easter.
measured each other's forearms and hands. They used Microsoft Excel
to divide the length of the forearm by the length of the hand. They
illustrated the results on a Barchart. This
exercise would be useful for future work in Art and illustrated
the concept of the Golden Mean.
during this exercise, the Bodily/Kinesthetic, the Interpersonal,
the Logical/Mathematical and Visual/Spatial intelligences were activated.
details of the Golden Mean can be viewed at