Goals and Objectives: The goal of this thematic unit is for every child in third and fourth grade to create their own digital multicultural art portfolio in Microsoft PowerPoint using the projects they created in art class. The third and fourth grade students in our school participate in an innovative program designed to correlate their art, computer and language arts skills. In an effort to work across the curriculum and to foster a more comfortable medium for exposing the young children to art, technology and language arts, the art and computer teachers infused the two disciplines. This is accomplished by using a combination of the children's art created in art class and Microsoft PowerPoint taught in computer class. By using the children's own artwork as the product to be presented, the children, at ages 8, 9, and 10 are actively laying out, designing, creating, and writing their own Microsoft PowerPoint presentations based on their actual art productions. At the end of the project, these very young children verbally and non verbally present their art creation using the Microsoft PowerPoint presentation as a modern, exciting and visually appealing technological tool. The digital art portfolios expose the children to many innovative practices such as learning to use a professional software package at a very early age (thus insuring proficiency sooner); increasing the ability to present oneself as a public speaker (increasing language arts skills); and taking a mental concept, bringing it conception through art, and translating it into a multimedia presentation. In addition, the children are exposed to various cultures from around the world during their art class. This helps to increase their social studies and geography skills and to advocate more tolerance among different cultures. As this project proceeds, a series of rubrics per component are used to assess each step of the project. These rubrics help the children assess their project as well as the teacher's assessment.

NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards :

Visual and Performing Arts:

• Standard 1.1: Through exposure to artwork from different cultures, time periods and geographical locations, the children will be taught to appreciate aesthetic awareness.
• Standard 1.2 and 1.6: By producing a piece of art relevant to certain culture, children will design and refine perceptual, intellectual, and technical skills. During the computer component, perceptual, intellectual, and technical skills will be demonstrated to manipulate Microsoft PowerPoint and create a visually pleasing, organized slide presentation.
• Standard 1.3: The actual production of the art work and slide show will reinforce common elements of art such as color, line, rhythm, space, timing, movement and mood. As the slide show is produced, technical aspects of production such as animation, sound and layout will be learned.
• Standard 1.4: As the art and computer components of the project are in the process of development, the teachers will critique each stage. The children themselves then critique the final product. In addition, when the writing component of this project is used, critique will be included as part of the written description.
• Standard 1.5: Various cultural, historical, social, and geographical influences, trends, and accomplishments through the ages and areas of the globe will be explored through the multicultural component of the art lesson. Each unit will be presented on one geographical location. Each geographical location studied will be broken into civilization, time period, art, social aspect, music, food, language and dance. The art of the area will be discussed, analyzed, critiqued and ultimately assimilated as the production of a piece of artwork in that culture's style is created.

Language Arts and Literacy:

• Standard 3.1 and 3.2: During the oral presentation component of the digital portfolio the students will speak for a variety of real purposes and to a variety of audiences. During the lecture part of the multicultural component, students will actively listen and see various situations from a variety of sources. Children will listen to cultural slide presentations presented by the teacher.
• Standard 3.3: After the component is complete, all students will write a visual description explaining the research process, their art development, personal critique and what they have learned from the unit studied. This will be transformed into a type written description, which will be placed into Microsoft PowerPoint at the appropriate slide. A pre-write and a final draft will be produced.
• Standard 3.4 and 3.5: As the children are exposed to various cultures, they will read about the art that they are producing by researching for appropriate information to use in their creative process. They will comprehend the information given, analyze it and create a project from their research. The non-textual information provided in the samples of artwork produced by each culture will reinforce understanding of the unit. In the computer component, the non-textual visual information will be manipulated by the students they put together and layout a visual slide presentation using their creations as the non-textual visual information.

Social Studies:

• Standard 6.2 and 6.3: All students will be exposed to four geographical locations throughout each year during the art component of this project. These geographical locations will be broken down into humanities, literature, art, history, social context and philosophy. Historical information understanding the political and diplomatic ideas of four cultures from around the world will be taught to the students during art.
• Standard 6.4 and 6.5: As the students learn about a culture they will better understand the social influences based in that society. Using the culture's art as a platform, the children will appreciate the history of a variety of cultures. As they progress through the elementary grades, their knowledge of history will increase cumulatively.
• Standard 6.7,6.8,6.9: The students will use the globe and maps to understand the geographical locations studied in spatial terms. They will discover and learn various aspects of the social human's life in each culture studied and will discuss the environment and society of each area.

Cross Content Workplace Readiness:

• Standard 2.14: The students will demonstrate the skills needed to effectively use and manage technology. They will incorporate keyboarding skills to input their information into Microsoft PowerPoint. Students will learn to retrieve digital pictures of their artwork off of folders housed on the network. By completing these tasks, students will become familiar with how to manage information responsibly and effectively.
• Standard 2.17: Students will learn to use the Internet as a resource to retrieve culturally relevant material for their portfolios.
• Standard 2.19: As a result of creating multicultural digital art portfolios in Microsoft PowerPoint, students are learning to use a presentation program to produce a product. They will be using Microsoft PowerPoint as a medium to express their ideas both in a verbal and nonverbal format to their teachers and to their peers.
• Standard 4.38: As the students expand their cumulative multicultural digital art portfolio, they will need to be cognizant both the short and long-term goals of the project. The short-term goals will be to create slides that correlate with their completed art projects. From a broader perspective, students will have the opportunity to set long term goals and watch their portfolios evolve to fruition when they graduate. Students will monitor and critique they're goals with assessment provided by the teacher.

Part 1: The Art Component Objective By using a multicultural based art program, the objective for the art department is for all of the third and fourth grade children to develop multicultural pieces of artwork based on geographical locations studied during the year in art class. At that point, the finished pieces of art are digitally photographed. Language arts is then incorporated by having the children write about their finished piece. These pictures and copy are the basis for the children PowerPoint presentations. This information is given to the computer teacher.

Part 2: The Computer Component Objective The objective of the computer department is to teach the children Microsoft PowerPoint using something that the children themselves created (their artwork from art class), thus making it a more relevant and meaningful learning experience. The computer teacher takes the information provided by the art department and has the children create their own visually pleasing PowerPoint slide presentations

Summary of lesson: The Multicultural Art PowerPoint Portfolios for Young Children incorporate linking art and technology together to help the children become more technologically aware, as well as more comfortable in various disciplines including geography, social studies and language arts. In essence, the project is the infusion of two curriculums across the board. This project can be easily replicated by infusing the two curriculums (art and computers) together. The art teacher and the computer teacher would need to come together, prepare a format and work collaboratively on the project. Successful replication of the project would require a great amount of articulation between the teachers.

Equipment, materials and other technology needed:

• Appropriate art supplies, reference, samples for art component.
• Microsoft PowerPoint, computers, story board.
• Rubrics for assessment.

Detail of Activities: The project incorporates various facets from the two departments. Please find below a basic outline of the format used to produce the Multicultural Art PowerPoint Portfolios.

The Art Component : This is an ongoing process throughout the school year. There are four units per year. A unit is broken down as follows:

• Week 1: The multicultural unit is introduced.
• Week 2-6: Skills taught. The art project is created in art class.
• Week 7: An art rubric is used to asses the art component. A digital photograph is taken of completed art project.
• Week 8: Written copy is made to incorporate language arts skills. A language arts rubric is used to asses the written copy.

This is all given to the Computer Department. The Computer (Technology) Component:

This is approximately 4 months during the last part of the school year. Microsoft PowerPoint is taught.

Week 1: Introduce Microsoft PowerPoint, start up box and tool bars.

Week 2: Start blank presentation.

Week 3: Design title slide. A story board will be used.

Week 4: Choose design. Animate first slide.

Week 5: Create second slide. Begin adding text.

Week 6: Picture will be inserted.

Week 7: Animations and sound will be added.

Week 8: Video will be added.

Week 9-16: Remaining slides will be created and animated. A technology rubric is used to assess PowerPoint presentations. A public speaking rubric is used to assess the children presenting their PowerPoint presentations.

Student Feedback and Assessment: Student achievement is at a maximum level. Using higher level thinking skills, students augment their project to include multiple levels of cognitive development. The students learn to present their projects in a confident verbal and nonverbal format. They experience success as a result of their artistic and computer creations. All children reinforce their language arts skills through discussion and writing. All students increase their computer skills as they translate their work into a multimedia presentation. All students become more aware of the world around them in a global perspective. The skills learned are cumulative and reinforced each year as the child's digital art portfolio is advanced to the next grade level.

Every student will complete four art projects, four written descriptions and four series of slides for their digital art portfolios. Teacher critique and evaluation will occur formatively during each phase of the project. Once completed, the teachers and the students will view projects.

Assessment is based upon the grading rubrics for each component. A series of rubrics per component are used to assess each step of the project. These rubrics help the children assess their project as well as the teacher's assessment.