Virtual School

"Are people really using virtual worlds to teach?" That's the question I wanted to answer today, so I Googled and sure enough--loads of "virtual" classrooms are out there. What about art? Again, Googling (this time with online printmaking search term) turned up several pages. One caught my eye and it was WAVA, standing for Washington Virtual Academy. Not a very friendly UI, since they make you give your contact information before you can explore.

But, oh well, I do have a middle-school age granddaughter who might want to take a class via WAVA, so in I went. What I noticed right away is that it is "Powered by K12." In other words, Washington State licensed the software so students all over Washington in public schools can take courses at almost no cost.

By now I had answered the question about teaching in virtual classrooms, so I clicked on ART to see what WAVA offers for art courses. As I suspected, they were art history courses, with some hands-on opportunities to paint and draw, quilt, sculpt, etc.

I am looking for a metaphor to compare Emeralda, so I clicked on a Math lesson. I tried to imagine how a Middle or High School printmaking course can be built using my ideas; instead of a subtraction problem in the guise of a karate lesson, I'd imagine a card. I cut-and-pasted an image from my exercise, and pasted on one of my early card designs. Of course, I had to practice with my Wacom tablet, too--getting ready to turn the textbook for Emeralda into a comic book.