Ikat and Indigo Across the Globe
This project was my favorite of the class, for a few reasons. First I knew the moment I saw Thinglink it was the Visualization tool for me! I love the idea of annotating images, and creating rich content, layering stories within stories. On a personal level I feel it is a bit like using Instagram, sharing these snapshots and some words about what they connect tot in your life. Professionally, it feels like a relatively simple tool to use but also one that could be used in nuanced and exciting ways. I would love to see my students add tags to selected art works as a form of research of as a way to embody the piece. Finally, something about Thinglink just feels in sync with the ways my brain and process works. Years and years ago we took a learning style or personality type quiz in a class I had and I registered as Abstract Random. I have loved making collages as long as I can remember and this feels very similar. I choose images of Guatemala because the trip this summer that I took there had a profound effect on me and was the first trip I have taken since being an official teacher, so I was always looking at things with multiple lenses. My own experience of an image or a weaving, and then thinking how I could apply I to my classroom, or how it may translate into something my students would be interested in. Creating the visualizations made me thing about the many nuances of textiles and what it is that I actually love about them. It forced me to sit back and think, what is it about this process and art form that fascinates me so, and how can I best share that story? I do love to read but I am also quite visual, so having the ability to connect that in an instant ay to larger portals or information is very gratifying. Often I will be reading a book and then looking things up or writing down in a journal something that the text might spark. I love that in this instance you can embed it right then and there. I had not thought about visualizations as a teaching tool in this sense before, which seems odd as I am an art teacher but I don’t believe I have ever been exposed to the concept as we are employing here. I do have National Standards I align my curriculum to and I see this being a great asset especially in the Responding and Researching analysis sections. I know there are many ways to use visualizations that are not necessarily reliant on technology but I do feel this particular one would be quite engaging. I could also see Thinglink being an interesting way to lead a critique for more mature students, or for students to annotate their own works in a comparative analysis with a chosen work. I see using this in the future in a few ways. One, as a tool I can build to give students more depth of a subject we are studying, and another as a tool students can use to build their own annotated visual text. For example, there is a large Mayan exhibit coming to the Public Museum in February, apparently the larges tin the United States and I am hoping to take some students on a field trip. This could be a fantastic way to research before hand, or to talk about what we learned after. It was hard to choose just a few images and I think I may continue to build my Thinglink portfolio as a form of blogging!
Along The Ikat Trail 
You have a rich set of images displayed here in this post. Each could be annotated in so many different ways.
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