VSA Florida Modern Skills Program

Modern Skills for Success- VSA Florida My Art My Way Residency Program

UnitingArtThread Online Technology and Creative Expression

VSA Florida seeks to identify transition classrooms to facilitate 8-week Modern Skills artist residencies concentrating on the use of ArtThread, an interactive online gallery, and Splash, the integrated art-making tool. The program encourages participants to engage in art to art conversations by creating and adding to a network of “threads”. This residency program will provide the transition student incremental yet substantial steps toward self-reliance.

  1. Increase skills with digital image manipulation and specialized web applications
  2. Increase presentation and communication skills which lead to improved self-confidence and self-reliance
  3. Improve peer-based support and community involvement
  4. Receive training in entrepreneurship and micro-enterprise development by learning about the business of e-commerce

The classrooms to be selected are very specific in nature and must include the following specs for successfully using the VSAFL Modern Skills galleries:

  1. Classrooms must contain students of transition age with any developmental, intellectual, emotional or behavioral disability. Students without a disability may be included to promote inclusion.
  2. Computer lab availability
  3. Must include enough computers for each student to either have their own or share with one other student.
  4. All computers must have broadband access to the Internet with browsers already installed on either Mac or PC.A dial-up connection will not work.
  5. Browsers that can be used:
  6. Internet Explorer (version 7 or up) IE6 will not work
  7. Safari (version 2 or up)
  8. Firefox (version 3 or up)
  9. Access with upload and download permissions for our website: vsafl.artthread.org
  10. Keyboard, mouse, and monitor working properly
  11. Adobe Flash player installed and enabled in the browser
  12. Accessible USB port (should trainers need to upload art from a flash drive)

The VSA Florida teaching artist and classroom teacher will decide on the dates and times for the classroom visits. The artists will visit the classroom one hour/week for eight (8) consecutive weeks, which are the VSA Florida residency norms. If we need to tweak the visits to 1.5 or 2-hour sessions for fewer weeks, it can be done as long as we keep the service to a total of 8 hours.