Jason A. Leath
Hello, my name is Jason Leath and I am a member of Pepperdine's MALT program, Cadre 15. I also teach art and technology courses at an independent school just outside of New York City. I coach various sports at my school, work at a summer out reach program and with the remaining time, make as much of my own artwork as I can.
I have always been an artist. From as early as I can remember I have been drawing, photographing or building. In fact, one of my earliest memories is receiving a camera from a family friend as a birthday present. That camera lead to a life long passion for the arts, especially photography. Upon completing my undergraduate education at Denison University I worked as a freelance newspaper photographer and a professional artist. While these were fun pursuits at 22 years of age, I needed something else; and so I followed my father's footsteps and went into education.
I have been teaching art courses for ten years, and during that time I have found it challenging to create effective assessments for art students. This challenge lead me to my action research project of creating a better way to assess art students though video.
I believe that art assessments needs to effectively discuss the nuances of the artwork, be clearly understood by the student, be able to review the work in context of the rest of the students work (or the assignment), and above all else, help motivate the student. Before video I believe that portfolio reviews were the best way to accomplish these goals, however there were challenging to schedule at the grade levels I was teaching. This lead me to the idea of using screencasting to provide the same information to my students without the challenge of scheduling an appointment or losing class time that could be used for skill building.
Seeing What Matters is an action research project designed to create a better method of artistic assessment, which hopefully improves the way I educate digital artists. Now that I have completed the MALT program I plan to continue using this method of assessment and hopefully add a few new ideas to the process.
I still work as a photographer and you can see my work or follow my daily blog at my website: Blurred Eye Vision.com. You can also contact me through email HERE.
I have always been an artist. From as early as I can remember I have been drawing, photographing or building. In fact, one of my earliest memories is receiving a camera from a family friend as a birthday present. That camera lead to a life long passion for the arts, especially photography. Upon completing my undergraduate education at Denison University I worked as a freelance newspaper photographer and a professional artist. While these were fun pursuits at 22 years of age, I needed something else; and so I followed my father's footsteps and went into education.
I have been teaching art courses for ten years, and during that time I have found it challenging to create effective assessments for art students. This challenge lead me to my action research project of creating a better way to assess art students though video.
I believe that art assessments needs to effectively discuss the nuances of the artwork, be clearly understood by the student, be able to review the work in context of the rest of the students work (or the assignment), and above all else, help motivate the student. Before video I believe that portfolio reviews were the best way to accomplish these goals, however there were challenging to schedule at the grade levels I was teaching. This lead me to the idea of using screencasting to provide the same information to my students without the challenge of scheduling an appointment or losing class time that could be used for skill building.
Seeing What Matters is an action research project designed to create a better method of artistic assessment, which hopefully improves the way I educate digital artists. Now that I have completed the MALT program I plan to continue using this method of assessment and hopefully add a few new ideas to the process.
I still work as a photographer and you can see my work or follow my daily blog at my website: Blurred Eye Vision.com. You can also contact me through email HERE.
