A digital picture frame looks stylish. Present all types of artwork in a rotating slide display. What a great way to motivate and affirm students.

Digital frames make a great addition to the Arts classroom. All kinds of artwork can be presented in the simple to use digital hardware. The presentations can be arranged to look exceptionally attractive. This motivates the artist to put a lot of effort into the quality of the art that they produce for the slideshow. Galleries of work can be uploaded and presented as a display of class achievement. This looks so good that a snowballing motivational effect can fuel enthusiasm about Art.

What Can Be Presented?

Anything that can be digitalized is suitable for this style of presentation

• Digital photographs of paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations can be cleaned, enhanced, and framed in Photoshop or another computer art package
• Students can upload photographs that have been part of an assignment
• Digital art created in computer art packages that has been saved and uploaded
• Still shots from kinetic works can be uploaded as a single image or as a series in sequence

A Gallery of Memories

The end of the year is a time of memories and classes or individuals often want to see the year in review. Art classes can offer to take up the challenge and create a digital display of the year in retrospect.

This slide presentation can be a showcase in a variety of settings, such as

• the foyer of the school so that parents and prospective parents can see the quality of work
• the classroom so that students can look back over the year and parents can join in the memories
• closing celebrations so that when there is downtime family and friends can look through the revolving album
• class parties as part of "wandering down memory lane"

Useful Throughout The Year

Having used this celebratory activity for the end of year closure period, well-prepared teachers can use the album again to kick off the next year. Have incoming students view the album as an induction exercise. Then ease the students into a brainstorming session about how they might use the album in the coming year.

Organiser for Assessment

This framing innovation also makes assessment for the classroom teacher easier to manage and to organise.

• From the beginning of the year, the class can be planning, organising and editing a thematic body of work.
• By the end of the year, an excellent body of work will have evolved. This will have a measurable effect on the motivation and enthusiasm of the students as they see their work presented in such a polished manner.
• As the year goes by students will want to “upgrade” their contribution to the album. As they see their work slide through the growing selection in the show, they may see that their first works are not as mature as the ones that come later. This can become a point of negotiation with the teacher. Encourage them to take pieces of work out of the album and replace them with images that they think better represent their skills level or “how they are thinking now”. When the work is finally assessed, it will be a true representation of the fullest and latest information about the progress of the student. You will be proud of the authentic nature of the work done by your Art class.

If you would like to share work you are proud of please post it to the discussion boards.