Unwind: Interactive Fish Straightening

The ScanAllFish project is a large-scale effort to scan all the world's 33,100 known species of fishes. It has already generated thousands of volumetric CT scans of fish species which are available on open access platforms such as the Open Science Framework. To achieve a scanning rate required for a project of this magnitude, many specimens are grouped together into a single tube and scanned all at once. The resulting data contain many fish which are often bent and twisted to fit into the scanner. Our system, Unwind, is a novel interactive visualization and processing tool which extracts, unbends, and untwists volumetric images of fish with minimal user interaction. Our approach enables scientists to interactively unwarp these volumes to remove the undesired torque and bending using a piecewise-linear skeleton extracted by averaging isosurfaces of a harmonic function connecting the head and tail of each fish. The result is a volumetric dataset of a individual, straight fish in a canonical pose defined by the marine biologist expert user. We have developed Unwind in collaboration with a team of marine biologists: Our system has been deployed in their labs, and is presently being used for dataset construction, biomechanical analysis, and the generation of figures for scientific publication

Fused: A Study of Cultural Encaustic Art, History, and Educational Strategies for Middle School Art Students

Encaustic Art, Middle School StudentsFused: Encaustics in the Middle School Art Studio is a thesis study that examined one 8th and two 7th grade art studios classes. The study questioned if lecture presentation of the history, culture and times of Egyptian Greco-Roman Fayum Mummy Portraits combined with the creation of a hands-on activity using encaustic medium increased the knowledge acquisition of students more than a lectured only presentation. Analysis of a pre-formative and post-summative assessment, student self/peer evaluation rubrics, reflection questions, informal and formal interviews, and student exemplars of the final project indicate that by combining lectured presentation and hands-on activities showed to be the more effective method of instruction rather than lectured presentation only. The results showed an overall average increase per student of 12 points. The positive outcome of the study shows that hands-on application in art education does make a significant difference for middle school students at Tukes Valley Middle School. The researcher hopes that this study will act as a resource and reference guide for others who hope to establish an encaustics lecture presentation and hands-on lab for their art studios

Understanding How the Role of an Artist-Teacher May Impact Student Learning and Teaching Practice

Art Education Research ProjectThe definition of an artist-teacher has been an ongoing debate amongst many within the fine arts and art education. The following research is the journey of a newly proclaimed artist-teacher as she finds meaning in her newfound declaration with the dual identities. The action based research documented the happenings and insights of an artist-teacher, along with nineteen high school art students in Central Illinois. The researcher sought to discover whether an artist-teacher may work alongside students in a studio setting, investigating and analyzing both the positive and negative results. The goal of the research was to understand how the role of an artist-teacher may impact student learning and teaching practice. As a result of a triangulation approach to data collection, the researcher uncovered that an artist-teacher working alongside learners in a studio setting promoted a comfortable working environment that increased student interactions and dialogue. Additionally, the importance of an artist-teacher being reflective of practice was revealed as the researcher found such reflections to be a resourceful tool in order to better balance the dual roles that at times may become overwhelming

Measuring Youth Program Quality: A Guide to Assessment Tools

Thanks to growing interest in the subject of youth program quality, many tools are now available to help organizations and systems assess and improve quality. Given the size and diversity of the youth-serving sector, it is unrealistic to expect that any one tool or process will fit all programs or circumstances. This report compares the purpose, history, structure, methodology, content and technical properties of nine different program observation tools