Katherine Spinella
About...
I am an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design at Portland State University, where I work with Core students in the Art Practice Program. As a practicing visual artist, I actively produce, research, and exhibit my work in both solo and collaborative settings, which is central to my professional and personal life. I am invested in the local art community, serving as a volunteer director of Well Well Projects. I am committed to lifelong learning in both micro and macro ways. Currently, I am enrolled in the part-time Graduate Teacher Education Program (GTEP) at Portland State University, as well as a beginner Italian course at Scuola Italiana di Portland.
Technology + Learning
In my digital tools courses, we discuss technology is any tool, object, or system designed to solve a problem or make something easier. The alphabet and the ability to sharpen rocks were once cutting-edge technologies. Some animals use technology and we humans engage with digital technologies in nearly every aspect of our daily lives.Technology is ever-changing and always relative.In the visual arts classroom, digital technologies are used for research, sketching, idea development, and collaboration. They help students connect across distances and in real-time, while assistive technologies support diverse learning needs. For these tools to be effective, educators must integrate them with purpose. Guiding students to navigate their benefits and drawbacks fosters more meaningful learning and critical engagement.At the same time, digital tools contribute to distraction, misinformation, and information overload, both inside and outside the classroom. The constant stream of content can lead to fatigue, negative self-image, and superficial engagement, impacting mental health and learning. This calls for a more intentional approach that embraces technology’s complexities while creating space for critical reflection and creative exploration.
This I Believe...
I prioritize empowering students through visual literacy to nurture engaged creators of visual culture who have the power to transform and contribute to their lives, families, and communities. In the classroom, I use analytical and imaginative techniques to spark our senses through tactile and visual learning, play, curiosity, introspection, and collaboration. Fostering mutual respect is fundamental to creating a learning environment that activates connections to the deep cultures of the student body while valuing and respecting diverse learning and communication styles. My approachability and engagement as a learner with students about their experiences, perspectives, and world views are key to building a responsive and connective arts-based curriculum. Flexibility and humility guide me in creating a space for introspection, reflection, and empathy in the learning process.I aim for a space where autonomy and collaboration overlap in artmaking. Through project-based learning, group discussion, critical dialogue, hands-on, collaborative, and discovery learning, students gain technical and conceptual skills that help them build sustaining practices. Together we tie art historical methods, movements, and histories to personal and communal arts-based activities. I encourage my students to bring their whole selves to the assignments and to see their classmates as valuable resources for learning. I hope for students to experience a visual arts community where our differences can be our strengths as we work together to analyze, grapple with, and become producers of visual culture.I view the classroom as a microcosm of the public sphere that engages with real-world models for creating, organizing, and sharing as part of a dynamic arts ecosystem. I hope my students come to see themselves as empowered artists and active community members, inspired to shape the world around them.
Incorporating Technology for Diverse Learners
There are many technological tools to support diverse learning in the classroom depending on the needs of the learners. As a learner myself, I need and utilize several such tools such as NaturalReader and Grammarly, among others. Below I will explore the use of Grammarly in the classroom. Additionally in CLO 4, connected to diverse learning, I will explore the use of alt-text resources, how they can be used in the classroom, and an application in which students can learn how to build these supports into their own projects.
< How can we leverage technology to increase access to learning?>
Grammarly
Grammarly is a free AI assistant tool that checks for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and tone in your writing and provides suggestions. This would be used as a support tool in class for peer editing and teaching students how to edit written artist statements, essays, and reading responses connected to visual art learning, and the like for clarity in communication.Grammarly can be installed as a Chrome Extension or in Google Documents.
This use of Grammarly connects to Fink's Taxonomy of learning how to learn. With this tool, students learn about technological resources that help them to learn. Through repetition and modeling with the AI assist they can track and build confidence in their ideas and ability to express themselves through writing. By seeking out editing support from AI assistants they are able to more succinctly be able to communicate their ideas about art to others.6. Creative Communicator: Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools,
styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.A. choose the appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the
desired objectives of their creation or communication.
Planning, Implementation, and Assessment
For my planning, I use common tools such as Google Documents, Canvas features, Canva, and, more recently, Google Forms. Below, I will highlight the benefits of Google Forms in pre-assessments that help inform the implementation of a subject or lesson in my planning. The example I use is a survey about art critique, but it could be applied to pre-assessments in various types of courses. In the spring, I plan to adapt a previously used color theory assessment quiz using this tool.Additionally, my example use of Google Forms can be applied to assessments, such as student self-assessments, which I aim to incorporate in the future for both critiques and collaborative assignments.
< How can we leverage technology to increase access to learning?>
Google Forms
This is an example of a pre-asessment survey to learn about my student's critique experience this term. I made a general one-page survey that was given to my students in week three before their first critique this term in ART 104. I will use the responses to make changes and assessments and help me guide the Action Research I am engaging with in our other class as well as more immediate adjustments in the class. This is a tool I hope to use every term and can be adjusted and applied to high school students. Since the original form was a single form I learned some things about the form itself from student responses. So with this example, I created and learned how to make sections with questions that were more aligned with their critique experience from the first question. I have not used this section function before and it was helpful in refining more specific questions for students with more or less experience with critique.This is an example of a pre-assessment survey designed to learn about my students’ critique experience this term. I created a general one-page survey, which was given to my ART 104 students this week before their first critique. I will use these responses to guide my Action Research in ITP 551 and make more immediate adjustments within the classroom. This is a tool I hope to use every term, with the flexibility to adapt it for high school students in the future.Since the original survey was a single-page form, I gained insights from student responses about how to improve its structure, including a few definitions I needed to explain more. With this example, above and below, I learned how to create sections with questions that aligned more closely with students’ critique experiences from the first question onward. I had not used the sectioning function before, and it proved to be a valuable tool in refining more specific questions for students with varying levels of critique experience.
This use of Google Forms as a tool for pre-assessment connects to Fink's Taxonomy of Application because it allows me to gather information about my students' experiences with a particular skill or subject. This helps me better understand how to tailor my teaching to the diverse needs of my students through various methods, tools, and subjects. These pre-assessments serve a practical purpose by providing data analysis that enhances instruction and aligns it with the specific needs of each student group.7. Analyst: Educators understand and use data to drive their instruction and support students in achieving their learning goals.B. Use technology to design and implement a variety of formative
and summative assessments that accommodate learner needs,
provide timely feedback to students and inform instruction.
Engaging Teachers & Students in Communication, Collaboration, Creation, Visual Design, & Media Production
This is my main wheelhouse! Communication, collaboration, creation, and production are the many ways in which I teach digital tools in the classroom. Adobe Creative Suite programs, Carrd website building, and many adjacent tools for such activities. I chose tools that I thought would be a good fit for a wide variety of classrooms.Below, I will explore the use of alt-text resources, how they can be used in the classroom, and an application in which students can learn how to build these supports into their projects. The example below is connected to both CLO 4 and CLO 2.For CLO 4, I have explored a way to teach the use of alt-text as a tool for accessible communication in creation, production, and visual design. By integrating alt-text into assignments, students can engage with clear and inclusive communication, fostering collaboration and developing a deeper awareness of accessibility in digital media.
Questions:
What tools help to generate more descriptive alt-text for visual art images?How can alt-text be used in the classroom?How can students learn to apply the use of alt-text in their creations or research presentations?
How can we leverage technology to increase access to learning?
Tailwind, Canva
Canva is an online design platform that allows users to create visual content such as presentations, posters, and more. This program has an alt-text feature built into it with an auto-generated feature. However, with several of the art images I use in my course this quarter, I found the generated alt-text descriptions lacking quite a bit of visual nuance when translated into descriptive language. With this, I sought other resources via Google and found the Tailwind alt-text generator. This allows you to drag and drop an image into the tool and auto-generate a description you can copy/paste into the alt-text for your images in Canva and publish the presentation as a website to be accessible to a screen reader. The idea is to use these tools together.The goal is to teach students how to incorporate alt-text into their projects and presentations to enhance accessibility and facilitate more inclusive, shareable communication among their peers. Additionally, this allows students to share their visual designs and/or presentations with a wider audience. This ensures that peers in the classroom or community members on the web who rely on alt-text can access detailed visual descriptions through screen readers like ChromeVox and Apple VoiceOver, which function with websites.Below is an example with an image from my ART 104 Digital Tools course to compare and contrast the alt text.
a red credit card with the words discover on it (Canva)
A satirical Discover credit card features "Cristobal Colon" and "1492." The card shows Columbus ships and colonization imagery, blending finance and history. (Tailwind)
Possibilities for application in the classroom...
The application of these digital tools serves multiple purposes, supporting both multimedia creation and collaboration (CLO 4) while also fostering diverse learning experiences (CLO 2).These tools can be introduced and applied in the classroom through artist presentation projects or personal, digital image-based projects. In many of my undergraduate courses, students conduct a presentation on an artist of their choosing or from a curated selection, engaging in independent research and delivering a concise, five-minute visual and oral presentation.This project could be adapted for high school students by having them work in pairs to present on a single artist while incorporating these digital tools for accessibility. Through this approach, students would learn how to research, collaborate, and explore technological tools for making visual art more accessible to their peers.Additionally, these tools could be applied in an educational setting to create instructional materials and presentations that are both accessible and easily shareable for future reference.
This use of Tailwind and Canva in these contexts would connect to Fink's Taxonomy of caring and the human dimension. In this scenario, students would learn how to engage with alt-text tools for visual images as a way to make their artwork and the art historical works they are learning about inviting and accessible to more people on the web and in our classroom, school, and community. Additionally, they would be collaborating with another student to carry out this project and the use of these tools.7. Global Collaborator: Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally.A. Use digital tools to connect with learners from a variety of
backgrounds and cultures, engaging with them in ways that broaden mutual understanding and learning.
Digital Media Dissect:
Evaluating & Analyzing Social Media Messages
Part 1: Evaluating Digital Messages
I’ve selected a few ads that are closely connected. The target audience is primarily middle-aged and younger women, aiming to stop or "cure" the aging process. While some newer ads are becoming more gender-inclusive, a significant portion still heavily targets female-identifying individuals. The ultimate goal? SELL, SELL, SELL.These ads falsely equate healthy skin with a healthy body, relying on editing, AI, and makeup tricks we all recognize. KOA LIFE embodies a cool, young LA aesthetic, while EVE GLAM leans toward an elegant, older demographic—though it has a bit of an infomercial design, complete with FaceTune-heavy “after” images.The visuals are glossy, smooth, and highly polished, reinforcing beauty ideals through symbols of love—hearts, kisses, and product worship. They push the message that staying young and beautiful means being loved. Even if you don’t consciously engage with these ads and know it's mainly bogus, they still seep into your peripheral awareness, influencing how viewers scrolling by feel about themselves and subtly urging us to buy more products.
Part 2: Analyzing Impacts & Ethical Implications
These advertisements have both emotional and psychological impacts on the viewer, particularly in relation to self-image. As discussed above, they reinforce harmful ideas such as the notion that being loved is tied to looking anti-aged. These messages promote insecurity, subtly pressuring consumers to buy into beauty products that promise youthfulness. Even if someone isn’t consciously engaging with these ads, they still seep into peripheral awareness, shaping how people feel about themselves over time.Many of these ads and companies predominantly feature white women, further reinforcing racialized beauty standards. While these advertisements affect individuals on a personal and psychological level, they also have broader cultural implications. In the United States, this predominantly eurocentric approach perpetuates white supremacy and colorism by upholding whiteness as the beauty ideal. Even when anti-aging ads target multiple races and genders, they still promote the same negative impact on self-image - suggesting that aging is something to be "fixed" rather than embraced.On a larger scale, these advertisements are misleading and can have harmful consequences. Through digital manipulation, AI editing, and selective representation, they create unattainable beauty standards that equate youth with health and desirability. This not only affects how individuals perceive themselves but also reinforces exclusionary ideas about who is seen as worthy of admiration and love. Social media algorithms further amplify these messages, targeting users who may already feel vulnerable to these insecurities, making it harder to escape these toxic beauty narratives.Ultimately, these ads serve as a powerful example of how media shapes personal and collective perceptions of beauty, self-worth, and desirability. Recognizing these tactics is the first step in challenging them.
Part 3: Creative Reflection
I took a hands-on approach and did an actual redesign, focusing on the first image in my trio. This process felt quicker and more effective than simply describing what I would change. Compared to the original design, my version seeks to better align with ethical standards while still serving the goal of selling a product with a more positive impact. The emphasis is on nourishing, protecting, and celebrating the skin you’re in as you age, rather than promoting unrealistic beauty ideals and the false ideas that you can reverse the aging process.This was also my first time experimenting with Photoshop’s AI features to generate photographic images. That experience itself was telling. I had to carefully refine my language to avoid overly smoothed results and noticed that the AI exhibited colorism tendencies in its outputs. This reinforced how deeply biased beauty standards are embedded in AI-generated content.In my redesign, I aimed to highlight the beauty of wrinkles while maintaining the "cool" aesthetic of the original ad. I also wanted to reframe the love themes by shifting them away from external validation and instead celebrating self-care, self-love, and the natural aging process. While I know some brands are attempting to move in this direction, these messages are still far less prevalent than the dominant approach of beauty ads in these spaces.