Exploring Artism at the Yale Center for British Art
FOR FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN AGES 5-12 ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM
The Collaborative Learning Center is pleased to announce that it has donated a dozen iPad 2s to the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) for its Exploring Artism family program. To read the full article from Yale’s ITS Monday Morning News, click here. This in addition to the generosity of private donors has allowed the Education Department to expand its teaching to include digital apps and interactives.
This last weekend our Exploring Artism program looked at the various kinds of headwear and crowns on the sculptures in the Sculpture Victorious exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art.
We began our session by looking through our social story on our new iPads! Our warm up activity consisted of various crowns that we had the option of decorating with markers. HERE are some examples of the warm up activity.
Next, we used the Hats&Caps app on our iPads (find it here) to get a chance to “try on” some crowns. Here are some photos from our Hats&Caps activity:
Next, we headed into the gallery to look at some crowns on the statues in our temporary exhibition. Sitting around each sculpture, participants were asked some of the following questions: Is there anything you notice on the head of the sculpture? What do you see? What colors? How many? What are they made of? How do you think the artist made this? Why is this person portrayed in this way? Who gets to wear a crown?
Next, we played a crown matching game in the gallery. The game, which you can find here, consisted of 20 cards which can be matched to create 10 pairs. Participants had the option of laying all of their cards face up and making matches by looking at the different crowns OR laying the cards face down and playing a memory matching game. Once everyone had a chance to play the matching game, we went back into the Docent Room to make our own crowns. 
Back in the Docent Room, participants were able to make two different crowns our of paper plates. The first, explained here, was a six-prong crown made by cutting a paper plate and folding the points. The second, explained here, was a tiara-style headpiece which was made by cutting a paper plate in half, removing the semi-circle center, and adding holes at each end. To save time for our activity, we had all of our crowns pre-cut; all the participants had to do was decorate (using metallic paint, fake jewels, and foam pieces) and assemble.
Everyone had the chance to share their finished crown with the rest of the group. 
The Center’s Education Department has received a donation of 12 iPads to be used for our Exploring Artism program from Yale’s Instructional Technology Group in partnership with the Bass Library.
In the past, we have used one iPad in our Artism sessions. Realizing the difference that 1 iPad made with 12 participants with ASD, we began a search to acquire more electronic tablets. This fall, the stars aligned, Instructional Technology Group and the Bass Library iPad Borrower program came to the rescue. Now, Exploring Artism participants can each use an iPad, and we are excited to adapt our teaching and develop lessons more fully utilizing apps and the iPads for participants.
We’ve been in the prep stage where we are downloading apps in preparation of our next Exploring Artism on Oct. 18.
Autism Apps and Real Chalkboard are two apps we are working with. Autism Apps is a great resource which compiles a list of apps that work well with children and adults with autism or developmental disorders. Real Chalkboard takes the place of paper and pencil and participants will be able to draw in the gallery. We also were able to download our social story into iBook and the kids can read it on the iPad rather than a hardcopy printout – it is easier to swipe for those with fine motor control challenges than turn a paper page. We also have purchased Proloque2, a communication app that allows participants to use customizable buttons to communicate. We will add images relevant to the lesson.
We are very excited to start using our iPads in the galleries with our Exploring Artism participants. We hope this addition will enhance the museum experience and provide new avenues of learning!