Welcome to my site, my name is Lauren, I work as an artist, illustrator, designer, and teacher mostly in higher education. This site is set up to be a resource for teaching Visual Communication Design and Visual Arts and is tailored around the Curriculum for Secondary Schools, year 9-10 in Victoria, Australia.
There will eventually be two courses on this site with learning plans in a learning management system, one will be for Visual Arts and focusing on a theme of identity, viewed via digital media, games, interactive media and art. It will develop projects using paper, found objects and looking at a range of artworks by practitioners who are producing their own work. The pedagogical approach is classroom based, this web resource when completed could be used by students wanting to move ahead at different rate for skill development, as well as teachers looking for new ideas for their classrooms. In the classroom, the focus is on social constructivism, the value to the student being with others fostering a collaborative and enjoyable experience. The teaching is highly visible and transparent and at each stage combines skill development with art history and theory. The focus is on fostering a questioning mind, and uses high impact teaching strategies.
The other course will be for Visual Communication Design, focusing on ideas about the body. This program differs from the visual arts course as it uses digital programs to develop the projects and asks students to think about who their audience is and has a more clearly defined output. This learning design will reference illustrators, designers and include works by commercial animation houses. The pedagogical approach for this unit is also classroom based, this web resource when completed could be used by students wanting to move ahead at different rate for skill development, or if they are keen to explore Illustrator and finish the character and then start an extension which will be how to animate. In the classroom, the focus is again on social constructivism, the value to the student being with others fostering a collaborative and enjoyable experience. The teaching is highly visible and transparent and at each stage combines skill development with art and design history, theory and practical considerations. The focus is on fostering a questioning mind, understanding the importance of following a process and uses high impact teaching strategies.
Both of these courses are designed to use contemporary references as a way to engage with students. The outlines, with content examples for the visual arts one is here and the visual communication design one is here.