Keeping with the New Year's resolution to get focused back on e-notebooking with the kids for homeschool, I thought that I would create a "Getting Up To Speed' post for the category of 'E-Notebooking - Art'. This post's purpose is to help fellow bloggers see how we have designed this year's art e-notebook.

The basic layout of the sections of this year's art notebook:

 A picture is worth a thousand words, so let's begin with one. Here is a page from Timothy's (6th grade) art notebook. Just click on the thumbnail to see the image full size.

The major sections of the notebook are indicated by the tabs that run along the top. The Artistic Heritage tab leads you to the section dealing with art history. In this year's notebook we are concentrating on artists and movements in America from the end of the Civil War to modern times. Since the thumbnail above is from that section, look to the subtabs listed along the right side. This shows you how we have subdivided 'Artistic Heritage'. On each page Tim has summarized what he learned about that artists or movement. In a few years he might return to his notebook and expand his entry. This is easy to do using this electronic format.

The next section is "Elements and Principles'. In this section Tim records what he learns about studio techniques such as the use of line, color, shape, etc.

In the last section, 'Portfolio', he will make entries on assigned art projects and artwork that he pursues independently throughout this school year. Here are a few of them (click on them to see the image full size):

We use PrintMaster Platinum (version 15 is on most of the systems) software as the primary tool for making our e-notebooks because it is very easy to learn yet has many powerful features. One feature is that you can chose to publish the e-notebook as a webpage. These can be uploaded to the internet or burned to a disk to run offline. The tabs along the top are basically designed as hyperlinks to help readers to navigate quickly to where they want to go in the art notebook. But, you can hyperlink to much more than just other pages in your notebook. You can also hyperlink to files. Just add a hyperlink into your e-notebook page to a sound file of your kids reading or performing and the clickable link will open your player and you will be listening to it right from your e-notebook. The same can be done for other file types besides sound files. Got a video of some homeschool lab. Well, just link it in. E-Notebooking really is a very diverse medium to communicate what you are doing in your homeschool. These make for excellent portfolios and keepsakes!