[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] from high tech to tap dancing articles

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,
Sending a mixture of articles, from high tech to tap
dancing. The first article is about a Swedish visually
impaired artist teaching art in Viet Nam to visually
impaired kids, very interesting. Also an article about a
artist from Oregon, it was very interesting to read about
her work. Have included additional related to an article
about the Spanish Once organizations' supported German
research about a new tactile display. Am not familiar with
the technology, so sent some links to firms who work with
such technology. I included a couple of articles that were
just about art, nothing to do with visual impairments, but
rather the art approach that seemed appropriate. The 3d map
sounded fun. And an article about pre-schoolers with a short
blurb about tap dancing. Tap dancing- that must be a VERY
tactile art! Anyone know anyone using it with visually
impaired indivuals? And there are a couple articles about
out door activities, play grounds, and trails.

All the best,
Lisa

The text of the articles follows the link list below.

Links

Swedish artist brings light to Vietnamese blind children
http://www.vov.org.vn/2004_12_25/english/baituan/phongcachsong.htm

Tactile trail
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/10489663.htm?1c

New graphic display

http://www.sciencenewsdaily.org/story-2474.html

http://www.dvhardware.net/article3709.html

http://www.caesar.de/  (german version)
http://www.caesar.de/822.0.html (english)

Pre-school 
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~10169~2614325,00.html

Students use Legos to build new future in robotics
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1574&dept_id=532542&newsid=13614463&PAG=461&rfi=9

Interactive art
http://www2.townonline.com/cambridge/artsLifestyle/view.bg?articleid=150190
http://www.artinteractive.org/

Visually impaired artist
http://www.oregonlive.com/metroeast/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/metro_east_news/110423899822150.xml


art education and 3d maps 
http://www.projo.com/education/content/projo_20041228_pskl28.a8946.html

Articles

Swedish artist brings light to Vietnamese blind children

Elizebethe Petersson has impressed those she met in Vietnam
with her friendly smile, warm manner and particularly her
love of painting.

Elisabeth Petersson, 58, is a visually impaired artist from
Sweden. For Ms. Patersson, it all started when she began
having eye problems and was experiencing a lot of pain in
both eyes.

She remembered how she was feeling at that time, "I have
weak vision and sometimes when I am tired I see even less
well. Because I am an artist, with weak vision and
perspective, I started to think about how to be an artist."

Meeting blind artists and she discovered that the creative
instinct doesn’t diminish as sight fades. In fact, the
senses merely re-adjust and perhaps a sixth sense she
referred to as perception on the side’ comes into play. Ms.
Petersson has brought this awareness to the people,
particularly children who experience similar circumstances.

Elisabeth Petersson visited Vietnam for the first time in
1997. Since that first trip, she has returned to Vietnam 12
times, working as a volunteer artist and sharing her
experiences with many young people who are partially or
wholly blind, including visually impaired artists finding
art beyond sight. Since 1999, Ms. Petersson has been working
with blind and weak vision students at Nguyen Dinh Chieu
School in Hanoi. She said she really enjoyed working with
something that would promote friendship and happiness as
well as art-exchange between the people of the two
countries.

"I decided to start a project which I call art by on the
side and this mini art school. I came to this school and
asked the headmaster, Mr Tech, whether we could do something
together with blind students. The headmaster was very nice
and thought he thought it wouldn’t be easy, he agreed to do
the co-operation in this. It started very, very slowly. Then
headmaster Tung Anh Dzung took over after Mr. Tech retired.
Mr Tung works freely with me and I come here every year and
with funds from myself and Swedish friends we keep the mini
art school going."

If teaching normal children is difficult, teaching art to
blind or low-vision children is ten times more difficult. It
requires not only patience but also some special tools,
Elizabethe Petersson recalled, saying that she had
introduced a Swedish method to Vietnam, using a soft rubber
mat, a piece of paper and a special pen. When drawing on the
soft mat, the visually impaired students can feel the lines
they make. Unfortunately the imported mats are quite
expensive. The then headmaster of the school, Mr. Dzung,
soon ordered a locally-made mat for the children and this
tool proves very useful. The students quickly learn how to
make fine pictures and they all know that they can draw,
too.

Working now for these years in Vietnam, with the students of
the Nguyen Dinh Chieu school, she has found not only
happiness but has also had few surprises.

"The most difficulty is the colour. The children here use
very bright colours. I’m very curious about what way they
choose the blue, green or red and why. I don’t think it’s
always the teacher showing them. They have a special feeling
about the colours. This is something to experience."

Mr Elizabethe further said that in order to create art,
everyone, both sighted and blind artists express 50 percent
of their feeling by tapping into something she calls ‘on the
side’. It’s not just physical sight, which propels the
creative instinct but also the artist’s feelings. It seems
that there is no connection between good art and sight or
lack of it. One can a good artist and be totally blind.

"When I first started doing art work 20 years ago," Ms
Petersson said. "It was a very high experience. I work in
the workshop all night and I felt happy all the time. This
feeling is a good thing and it has to do with energy and a
process that you use when you create because you are in
close contact with yourself – mind, feelings and the hands.
It makes you feel good. And I want these young blind
students to feel good." 




Posted on Fri, Dec. 24, 2004 
 
Path for the blind's a sensory treasure

Palmetto Trail section has crushed-rock track, trees for
learning hands

Associated Press

SPARTANBURG - Nicky Weilacher's impression of the newest
section of the Palmetto Trail might seem unusual to most
people, and that's the whole point.

"I like it because stuff is crunchy," she said.

The special 3/4-mile ribbon of crushed rock through the
campus of the S.C. School for the Deaf and Blind brings the
sensory world of trail hiking to people who seldom enjoy the
experience.

Nicky, like many of the students at the school, is blind.

The bubbly 11-year-old usually sticks to hard surfaces,
where footing is constant and her cane is more effective.
For feet accustomed to cement or tile floors, walking on the
crushed rock of the trail offers the same sort of relaxing
vacation that hiking under a blue sky does to a sighted
office worker.

The mat of fall leaves on the trail, while a distraction for
a cane, accentuated the "crunchiness" on a bright November
morning.

"Everything is tactile for them," said Mary Pope, a mobility
instructor who works with the students.

"It's like they're on all the time, analyzing their
environment."

The students who use the trail, which was finished this
fall, listen for the traffic on nearby state Highway 56 to
see how far away the road is. They feel the differences
among the crushed-rock trail, the metal border planted at
ground level and the grass on the other side of the border.

Some of the older students already have walked the trail
often enough to feel enough at home to stroll by themselves.
Youngsters such as Nicky and classmate Dalia Green, a
vision-impaired 11-year-old, must hike with instructors.

"The reason we like this is because it relaxes them out
here," Pope said. "There's no pressure. It's wide. There's
no drop-off. They can come out here and socialize."

The trail has been set up as a multifaceted learning
experience. In addition to learning about mobility in
different settings, the students can stop at the eight
Braille-encoded signs.

While working on their Braille-reading skills, they discover
that river birch trees have bark that peels off in
paper-like pieces and that white oaks have egg-shaped
acorns. Then they can take a few steps off the trail to
explore the trees.

The Palmetto Conservation Foundation, which coordinates the
cross-state Palmetto Trail, hopes to plant herbs near each
of the signs to heighten the sensory lessons, Assistant
Director Yon Lambert said.

When Lambert approached school officials about linking the
school with the statewide trail, they were skeptical, school
president Sheila Breitweiser said.

She loved the concept, but she didn't want strangers walking
through a campus filled with children.

As a compromise, the trail runs beside a running track
already open to the public. The only nearby building is the
guard house at the entrance.

Breitweiser loves the way it turned out.

"It gives our children the opportunity to enjoy their
environment as freely as possible," she said.

A few other public nature trails in the state offer Braille
signs, but none was built with the idea that vision-impaired
people would be the most frequent hikers.

Anyone is welcome to check out this Palmetto Trail segment.
It will serve as the southern terminus for the Hub City
Connector, a proposed 12-mile series of trails through
Spartanburg to USC Upstate on the other side of town.

When the entire 425-mile Palmetto Trail stretches from the
ocean to the mountains -- the goal is to have it done by
2010 -- people hiking likely will remember this section.

If they're lucky, they'll run into somebody like Nicky, who
can teach them a thing or two about viewing the world from a
different perspective.
 


December 22, 2004

New graphic displays for the blind 

 
The micro robotic group at the caesar research center has
recently been awarded one of three research prizes by the
ONCE foundation in Madrid. The ONCE foundation is dedicated
to the social integration of the handicapped and blind in
particular. With this EUR 60,000 prize, the Spanish
organization acknowledges the invention of a new mechanism
for graphical tactile displays for the blind by the
researchers Dr. Bernhard Winzek, Dr. Sam Schmitz and Roman
Vitushinsky, thus promoting the technical implementation of
this principle. 

  
Image: One single module with 10 x 10 metallic films.
Graphic: Caesar 

María Jesús San Segundo, Spanish Secretary of Education and
Science, and Carlos Rubén Fernández, President of ONCE
foundation, awarded the prize to the scientists at the
historical Complutense University auditorium in Madrid.
Georg Boomgaarden, German Ambassador to Spain, also
participated in the festive award ceremony. 

The displays use metallic films featuring various shape
memory alloys which are produced layer by layer on silicon
wafers using thin film technology. Display pixels are
generated when the metallic film adjusts its curvature
partially, similarly to bimetal snap plates for temperature
switches. The movement of the films is then transferred to
the touch panel via plastic pins und thus can be detected by
the user. The combination of shape memory alloys is
innovative. It enables switching the film to stable
positions using different heat pulses without a permanent
heat supply. Thus, only the switching operation requires
electric current, whereas maintaining the status does not. 

The benefits vis-à-vis traditional Braille displays are the
display’s compact structure featuring thin film technology,
resulting in a cost reduction per pixel. Using conventional
Braille-cell technology, costs for the graphic display of
information emerging from the high number of pixels required
are beyond the price range of the blind. With these
innovative displays scientists make a significant
contribution to the freedom in daily life of the
handicapped. 

The Bonn-based international research center caesar (center
of advanced european studies and research) commenced
research in 1999. With over 220 employees, interdisciplinary
teams conduct research in the areas of biotechnology,
nanotechnology and medical technology. Research and
industrial application cooperate smoothly: caesar develops
innovative products and procedures, and supports scientists
in initiating new ventures. 

Source: Caesar  


 New graphic displays for the blind 
Posted on Thursday, December 23 2004 @ 20:08:54 CET by
LSDsmurf 

The micro robotic group at the caesar research center has
recently been awarded one of three research prizes by the
ONCE foundation in Madrid. The ONCE foundation is dedicated
to the social integration of the handicapped and blind in
particular. With this EUR 60,000 prize, the Spanish
organization acknowledges the invention of a new mechanism
for graphical tactile displays for the blind by the
researchers Dr. Bernhard Winzek, Dr. Sam Schmitz and Roman
Vitushinsky, thus promoting the technical implementation of
this principle.  



Links to thin film firms

http://www.ultra-source.com/
 


Article Published: Thursday, December 23, 2004  
Anchor Center a lifeline for blind kids

By Terry Frei 
Denver Post Staff Writer

 
Post / Lyn Alweis 
Johnnie Jean Duran, 4, left, and Maddie Stallman, 3, roll
out gingerbread for ornaments with the help of occupational
therapist Carol Spicer at the Anchor Center for Blind
Children. 
   
Toddlers Anton and Grace sat quietly together, a few inches
off the floor, in the criblike swing hanging from the
ceiling. Their tiny friends, Dakota, Skyla and Mariah, were
on the floor, under the care of adults. 

The five children are all visually impaired, ranging from
the shadows of "legal" blindness to being completely without
sight.

In this room at Denver's Anchor Center for Blind Children,
these youngsters - without even understanding it - are in
the early stages of coping with a handicap. The five
toddlers come to the center twice a week, for 90 minutes a
session, usually with parents or guardians who also are
learning what to do to help their children.

On this visit, the families of Anton and his friends were at
a parents' meeting, so the children were with the Anchor
staff and volunteers.

It doesn't take long during a visit to buy into the mantra
of Anchor Center director Alice Applebaum, who makes it
clear that sadness is inappropriate at the center's
headquarters, the Moses-Hallett Cottage on the Clayton
College Campus for Children and Youth.

"When people come here, they get over that pretty fast,"
Applebaum said.

The Anchor Center's 22-year history is about stories of
encouragement, about children and their families learning
that blindness doesn't have to define and darken lives.

Divided into three groups - infants, toddlers and preschool
- the children can be in the building as much as 12 hours a
week, from infancy to age 5.

The youngest children learn how to eat on their own and also
get help with other life skills. The center's bottom-line
goal is to enable the visually impaired children to join
mainstream classes by the time they enter kindergarten.

The preschool children come three days a week. They each
have their own storage cubbyholes, marked in tactile (or
pre-Braille) raised symbols.

As they get closer to kindergarten age, they tackle the
Perkins Braille Machine, and the print magnifier that helps
children with some sight.

They sing and put on tap-dancing shoes to learn motor
skills, rhythm and sounds.

They participate in storytime, with props coming out of a
bin to provide sound and bright-colored visual effects. "We
are of the firm belief that if they have any vision, we want
them to use it," said Applebaum.

The center will have served nearly 400 children at its
building in 2004, and workers also make home and rural
outreach visits. Of the $1 million annual budget, only
$10,000 comes from the state, Applebaum said.

The rest comes from individuals, foundations, corporations
and special events. The center seeks funding from the Post-
News Season to Share campaign.

Preschool children pay nominal tuition, but most have
scholarship help. Applebaum proudly points out that many
families whose children came through make annual donations.

The center plans to move into a new facility at Stapleton in
a couple of years, and the Moses- Hallett Cottage sometimes
seems as if it's bursting at the seams.

One thing, though - there's no room for pity.

Staff writer Terry Frei 



Students use Legos to build new future in robotics 
 
   
By: CHEVALIER MAYES, Villager staff 12/23/2004 
 

A group of nine students from Collins Intermediate School
won first place at the First Lego League Robotics tournament
held Dec. 4 at Hogg Middle School in Houston.

A group of nine students from Collins Intermediate School
won first place at the First Lego League Robotics tournament
held Dec. 4 at Hogg Middle School in Houston.
The group, who picked RoboMatrix as their team name,
gathered research information by interviewing visually
impaired individuals, which included a 73-year-old visually
impaired Woodlands man and a visually impaired student from
David Elementary. 
Their research concluded that most children who are visually
impaired have a difficult time figuring out where playground
equipment is located at parks. So the group decided to
construct a playground for the visually impaired, and then
entered it into another part of the competition.
The group built a 3-D map of a playground, and a robot that
was able to locate the playground equipment through touch.
The students won a second-place trophy for their robot's
performance in conjunction with the playground built for
visually impaired children.
The group's robot, as well as all the robots in the
competition, was constructed with Lego blocks. The Lego
blocks contained multiple types of gears, pulley's, axles
and bushings, as well as light, touch and rotation sensor
motors. 
Each team that competed had to purchase an RCX, which is a
small computer, or brain, located inside a brick-sized,
yellow Lego block. That yellow block works as the computer,
or brains of the robot, and is where the sensors and motors
are attached.
To get the robot to perform certain tasks, the students had
to write a program code using software called ROBOLAB. 
RoboMatrix team member and CIS sixth grader, Mitchell Meyer,
said the most difficult part of the competition was writing
the program code, which was essential for the robot to
function appropriately. 
"It was fairly hard because the robot wasn't very accurate
at turning," he said. "We would have to keep changing the
programs for it to work properly."
Team member and fifth grade student at CIS, Laura Meyer,
said the project was researched thoroughly. She said some of
the group members put themselves in the shoes of the
visually impaired in order to fully grasp all that needed to
be included in their project.
"We walked around the park blind folded," she said. "It was
fun, but it was really scary. My thoughts about the visually
impaired changed because we learned a lot. We learned that
you shouldn't dislike someone just because they're in a
wheelchair or because they are blind or something."
The team was under the instruction of Mark Meyer, who headed
the same group of students at last year's competition. He
said the students started preparing for the competition in
September and they worked on it every week up until it was
time for the competition. 
"The kids would meet for two hours each week and on Saturday
mornings, but we met more frequently as the competition got
closer," he said.
Mark Meyer said a number of students from CIS became
involved in the competition after they took a class at
Montgomery College that taught them how to build a Lego
robot.
RoboMatrix was not the only team comprised of CIS students
to compete. Some of the other teams were Disability Bots,
Phantom Flames, RoboDocs, RoboTex, RoboLiberation and
RoboCobras. 
RoboLiberation won a first-place trophy for the Technical
Design category. The RoboLiberation team consisted of Zach
Broderick, James Kelly and Paul Stephens. The RoboMatrix
team consisted of Alexis Bruehl, Christopher Ditter, Brody
Duncan, Daniel Enyart, Chris Grijalva, Sean Jenkins, Stephen
Manz, Laura Meyer and Mitchell Meyer.
The research gathered on the visually impaired residents,
along with the idea to construct the playground, was sparked
by the competition's title, "No Limits," in which
competitors had to create a project related to overcoming
challenges. 
The six teams with students from CIS competed against more
than 70 other teams in the tournament. 
The First Lego League competition was developed to encourage
students to create and develop solutions to problems
associated with the real world. It is an international
program for children and was created in partnership with an
organization called For Inspiration and Recognition of
Science and Technology (FIRST) and Lego.
The FLL holds the robotics tournament annually and makes
announcements about the competition every September. FLL's
Web site states that the first robotic competition began 10
years ago with 28 high school teams and a single
14-by-14-foot playing field in a New Hampshire high school
gym. Today, FLL has more than 600 teams participating
nationwide and internationally, in 17 Regional events and a
Championship event. The FFL has expanded its reach from
2,000 to 17,000 children across the United States and to
more than 5,000 children from countries around the world. 
For more information about the FFL, visit
www.firstlegoleague.org. To contact Collins Intermediate
School, call (281) 367-2888.
Chevalier Mayes may be reached at
cmayes at mail.hcnonline.net.  



Exhibit forces viewers to get intimate with art
Thursday, December 23, 2004

"Intimachine" at Art Interactive is on view through Jan. 30,
2005. A closing party will be held Friday, Jan. 28, from 6
to 9 p.m.
 
     "Intimachine" presents eight artists who explore
intimacy, behavior and expectation through machine-mediated
interactive experiences. All of the artworks in
"Intimachine" require the active participation of gallery
visitors to complete their meaning. The artists include
Brian Knep, Shawn Lawson, Daniel Peltz, Simon Schiessl,
Victoria Scott, Benjamin Chang, Silvia Ruzanka and Dmitry
Strakocky.
 
     Visitors to the show are invited to touch the art
(Peltz's "Digital Quilt"), walk on the art (Knep's "Healing
Series") and even to fight with the art (Schiessl's "Haptic
Opposition"). By opening up new possibilities for the
art/viewer relationship, "Intimachine" is a groundbreaking
show that features the works of some of the most exciting
young and established artists in the field of digital
interactive art today.
 
     Art Interactive is a nonprofit art space founded in
2001 by Boston-based entrepreneurs Emanuel Lewin and Irene
Buchine. Its arts advisory board members include Joe
Paradiso, associate professor of media arts and sciences and
co-director of the "Things That Think" research consortium
at the MIT Media Laboratory; George Fifield, director of the
Boston Cyber Arts Festival and new media curator at the
DeCordova Museum; Joseph Ketner, director of the Rose Art
Museum at Brandeis University; and Kathy Brew, new media
curator at Eyebeam Atelier.
 
     Its mission is to provide a public forum that fosters
self-expression and human interaction through the
development and exhibition of art that is contemporary,
experimental and participatory. Situated in Central Square,
Art Interactive provides artists a supportive venue for
showing cutting-edge work. It also offers the community in
the greater Boston area unparalleled opportunities for
experiencing innovative art forms.
 
     Hours are Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to
6 p.m. or by appointment. The gallery is at 130 Bishop Allen
Drive, at the corner of Prospect Street. For more
information, e-mail info at artinteractive.org or call
617-498-0100.



Painting from her heart and mind Visually impaired, Deborah
Snow can barely see the canvas, but she finds painting
fulfilling 
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
ERIC MORTENSON 
B y nature but also by necessity, Deborah Snow is drawn
close to her work. She leans in, dabbing rapidly at the
canvas. Thick oil paint sometimes splatters her dogs, her
hair and, of course, her magnifying glasses. 

She paints landscapes she remembers or that others describe.
The Columbia River Gorge, the Oregon coast, the Cascades,
the Jamaican home of her partner, Dennis Black. 

She paints as much by sound and feel as by sight. She can
tell by the tap of the brush, the weight of it, how much
paint she is putting on. Leaning close, with bright lights
trained on the easel and with her glasses in place, she can
discern and create the contrasts that distinguish
impressionistic art. 

Because of macular degeneration and the onset of glaucoma,
her view of the world is like looking through a crumpled
plastic bag. She has trouble appreciating her own work,
visually. 

"When I stand back a few feet, I can't even see it," Snow
says. 

In every other sense her art completes her, flooding a void
she'd forgotten was there. 

The result is striking: Landscapes that range from
explosions of heaped colors to scenes captured with delicate
nuance. 

About 10 of Snow's paintings are on display at the Walnut
Park branch of Wells Fargo Bank on Northeast Martin Luther
King Jr. Boulevard in Portland. 

"The reaction to these paintings has been incredible," says
Bob Kavanaugh, the branch manager. Customers who read Snow's
biography -- which is part of the display and explains that
she is visually impaired -- are particularly impressed. 

"A lot of our customers have struggles, and, quite frankly,
it's inspiring," Kavanaugh says. 

Snow knows about struggles. She had poor vision as a child,
and by the time she was 23 she could no longer drive. 

"I was a little housewife with two very young sons and
losing my vision -- I was in a panic," she says. 

That realization spurred her on. Guided by caring doctors,
she connected with the Oregon Commission for the Blind, took
mobility training and learned to travel on her own. Mobility
led to classes at Mt. Hood Community College and Portland
State University. 

She earned a bachelor's degree and a master's, and she
discovered a calling. 

"I knew I was going to be a classroom teacher," she says. "I
had a vision -- to coin a phrase -- in my heart." 

Snow won a one-year appointment at Buckman Elementary,
replacing a teacher on leave. By the time the teacher
decided not to return, the job was Snow's. She spent 20
years teaching first- and second-graders in Room 104 at the
Southeast Portland school. She couldn't do playground duty
or even keep her own attendance book because she couldn't
see well enough but otherwise was able to do the job. 

When Buckman became an arts magnet school, Snow and the rest
of the staff underwent arts training that awoke Snow's
childhood artistic bent. 

"I realized I still had a talent," she says. 

The advent of computers in the classroom forced her out of
teaching. Although she could use large print screens for
herself, she could not help multiple students using
computers in class. 

Depressed after leaving teaching, she found herself in
downtown Portland on her 55th birthday, looking for a piece
of art to buy. She found a Monet-like painting that would
have been perfect for her home but gulped at the impossible
price tag of $3,500. 

While she was staring intently at the work, it struck her:
"I could paint this." 

For a fraction of the price, she loaded up on paints,
brushes and an easel. She set to work at a frantic pace,
working for a month before she got it right. "I just kept
painting," Snow says. 

"I discovered that oil -- as a big, thick, gooey medium --
is perfect for me," she says. 

That first painting, "Dotty's Pond," named for her mother,
is among the works on display at the bank. 

Snow is associated with an organization of blind and
visually impaired artists called Through the Mind's Eye. She
admires the work of Claude Monet, the French impressionist.
He developed cataracts and was nearly blind by the time he
died in 1926. 

Snow says she does not "look" visually impaired and that
people occasionally think she is "ditzy" because she does
"visually incorrect things." She had a guide dog at one
point to help her travel at night and now carries a folding
white cane in case she is out after dark. Otherwise, she is
able to make her way during daylight. Her partner, Black,
who works as a catering supervisor at the Rose Garden,
serves as manager, navigator and soulmate. 

They are such partners that Snow signs her paintings "Snow
Black." 

She says her vision is 20-400 in her left eye. With her
right eye she can count fingers at about three feet, but any
detail beyond that is lost. 

But at her easel, with bright light and magnifying lenses,
her focus becomes clear. 

"You can paint from your mind," Snow says. 



Art project helps stir students' imaginations
 
01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, December 28, 2004
 

BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer
 
PROVIDENCE -- Even the teacher, Elizabeth Hefferman, learned
something new when she and her fifth-grade class at the
Veazie Street Elementary School explored the significance of
making maps over several weeks during the fall.

Hefferman, a veteran elementary school teacher, worked with
two graduate students from the Rhode Island School of
Design, who showed her how to use art as a teaching tool in
ways she wouldn't have thought of, she said.

Rafael Rodriguez, one of her students, said he learned a
lesson that transcended the importance of maps or any other
single idea.

"I learned that more than anything, [that] if you put your
mind to it, you can do it," no matter what the project.

And working at Veazie, the RISD graduate students, Donna
Charging and Frank O'Toole, got a reality check on the
theories they've been learning about art education and
curriculum design in their own classrooms.

Hefferman was one of three teachers at Veazie who received a
grant last summer from the Goff Institute at the Rhode
Island Historical Society, which encourages elementary and
secondary school teachers to use innovative approaches in
exploring Rhode Island history and contemporary events and
places with their students.

Hefferman said she wanted to use mapping and geography as
one way of helping the children understand the concept of
community.

Veazie's principal, Nanci Fitzhugh, matched Hefferman with
RISD's John Chamberlin and two of his students, Donna
Charging and Frank O'Toole.

Chamberlin has been sending art education students to do
field work at Veazie for 11 years.

He is an associate professor in RISD's Department of Art and
Design Education, which offers graduate programs for art
students seeking careers as art teachers or in positions
that combine the arts and education.

He says his advice to Charging and O'Toole was to "bring
your expertise to the classroom teacher, to integrate it in
whatever they are working this with."

Heffernan brainstormed with Charging and O'Toole, focusing
on the concept of community the children know through their
own experience -- the different neighborhoods where they
live and the community they belong to at school.

The two graduate students responded with a proposal for each
student to build a box that explored the "form and function
of maps," as Charging put it.

The six sides of each box provided separate canvases. The
top of each box featured slices of thin cardboard stacked
one on top of the other in a three-dimensional rendering of
a topographical map, giving the children a tactile sense of
the concept of elevation.

Most of the children's research went into the routes they
take each day between home and school.

"We went home with a sheet of paper and wrote down what we
saw," said Victor Batista.

Christina Cady emphasized that "as we looked at our house we
wrote what we see first."

The children's notes became the basis for drawing that
mapped their individual journeys, by bus or on foot.

Rafael Rodriguez made sure to include a "little field by my
house" on Greeley Street in the North End, as well as a
convenience store and a stop sign on the way to school.

Caterina Callahan, for one, didn't have far to go. She lives
within shouting distance of the school.

Between her home and Veazie she sandwiched Iola French Park
at the rear of the school, one of the landmarks in her
neighborhood.

Thanks to O'Toole and Charging, the different shapes of city
parks as they appear in Providence street maps served as a
bridge to flights of the imagination for Hefferman's class.

O'Toole said he and Charging provided the students with
cut-outs of the shapes and told told them to select one to
use as the basis for a creature of their own making. The
RISD students also provided cutouts from magazines depicting
eyes, noses, mouths, legs, hands and arms.

Rafael came up with the Won Skot Basketball Player, who
plays basketball every day.

Caterina assembled a creature with horns, shod in one high
heel and one sneaker, who "helps kids who have trouble with
animals in the woods."

And Daphne Brown created a dog with a puffy tail she says
"it uses for makeup."

On the bottom of the box each student wrote what they liked
best about the project.

Daphne said she liked making up the creature and cutting the
pieces for her project.

"I learned maps weren't as hard as I thought they were,"
said Caterina.

Rafael concurred. He said that when the project began, he
was frustrated. He thought he would never finish. But he
discovered that the step-by-step instructions O'Toole and
Charging had posted made the project manageable.

For Charging and O'Toole, planning and teaching the box
project, one hour a week for several weeks, provided a
preview of what they will face next semester as student
teachers, when they will have to plan ahead, and be "on" in
front of students, for prolonged periods of time.

Chamberlin, who was away on sabbatical last year, said he
noticed when he returned to Veazie in the fall that the
children were much more responsive than he remembered --
respectful, quiet, and attentive. He attributed the change
to the tone set by Fitzhugh, who knows the children in the
building by name and doles out hugs to whoever needs one.

O'Toole indicated he found it a little awkward to work with
the children until he got to know them.

Fitzhugh then told O'Toole that "getting to know the kids"
is all about success in the classroom.

And she said he and Charging had done their job well. The
box project was "a very powerful experience" for Hefferman
and her class, Fitzhugh said.

"You created that for them," she said.