provide focus to your Digital Visual Journal by choosing a concept that emerged for you throughout the unit. Some examples of concepts for your inquiry might be… Movement, Encounter, Ecologies, Assemblage, or Time (the concepts in the Encounters with Materials book) Specific concepts like: ‘Using Natural materials’ or ‘Embedding Indigenous perspectives’ Broader concepts like: Form (What is art?), Function (How does art work?), Change (How is art changing?), Connection (How is art connected to other things?), Responsibility (What is our responsibility as ECEs when teaching art?) Any other concept that has emerged for you throughout the unit! Be creative! Post ideas on the discussion board if you’re not sure You should title your journal ‘An inquiry into…’ (and complete the sentence with your concept) Your Digital Visual Journal will examine this concept through your artistic inquiries with sound, music, movement, drama and materials. You will use a range of media – photography, written or audio narratives, videos, drawings, music, sound recordings and other creative media in this journal. You will reflect on your own learning as an artist and discuss how this learning can be applied to your practice as an educator, making connections to the unit readings and resources. PLEASE NOTE: While you should start with a collection of your explorations and material inquiries in the unit, your visual journal is NOT a collection of everything that you have done through the unit. It should be carefully prepared around the concept that emerged for you through the unit. Remember: this journal is about: You as an artist and your personal experiences with materials How you connect those experiences to the unit readings and resources How you will use this knowledge and applying it to an Early Childhood Setting, in your work with young children. INSTRUCTIONS To get started on your assessment task, please follow the below instructions. In week 1, start a Padlet or similar digital tool to start collecting examples of your artistic explorations throughout the sessions. If you are completing in-class activities throughout the unit, you will be doing a lot of the work for this assessment task as you go. As you work through the sessions, document, document, document! You will document your activities, responses to readings, artistic explorations and material inquiries. Document your own explorations as if you would a child’s – observe yourself! This documentation will form the raw data for your journal. Decide on a concept, theme or idea (see list of examples in the ‘Details’ section above) that has emerged throughout your studies in this unit. Think about your journal as “An inquiry into…” that theme/concept/idea Refine your documentation from step 1 so that it relates to this concept. Give your Journal a title starting with ‘An inquiry into…’ Write an introduction that outlines your concept, how it connects to the unit material and how you will explore it. Each entry includes ‘documentation, discussion, implications’ Documentation of your artistic explorations: Consider what documentation you will include, such as samples of the art you created, your documentation of your own play and experimentation and how you created it. This could be: Sketches, plans, drawings, paintings, sound recordings, video, photographs, aural documentation Notes about the materials, techniques and processes used Discussion: For each entry: a written discussion making connections to early childhood education research and literature. Use the unit text (Encounters with Materials), other unit readings, the content and resources in the unit to support your discussion (and your own further research, if you wish (use the VU library to research). Implications for practice: For each entry: provide a written description (with images if appropriate) of a rich, multidisciplinary learning experience, using the language in the artefact and showing how your artistic learning and understanding of the readings can be reflected in an early childhood setting. The recommended number of entries is 6 – 8. For example, you may choose one thing from each session, or you may choose 3 things from one session and none from another, as they relate to your inquiry concept. Prepare short conclusion that ties everything together. Ensure you have included a reference list, (check your in-text citations!) in line with apa 7 style
