Are you ready for the new visual arts course?

The new DP visual arts course starts in August. I hope that this news doesn’t come as a surprise (?) and I also hope that you are ready.

With this in mind, the IB have been suitably proactive in terms of running (or linking up with providers who also run) visual arts teacher training workshops ***Don’t forget that since DP visual arts is a two year course, the current cohort will still be following the current course for another year – final exams in 2015.

The next cohort – for example the new grade 11 boys and girls who I will start to teach grade in August – will follow the new course. At the very least, you should download the new guide from the OCC, but the best option is to attend a workshop.

There have already been quite a few of these but between the beginning of June and the end of July there are 15 visual arts workshops, all categories and all over the world (including online).

I have already been involved leading one workshop for the new course and will be leading three more between now and the end of the year.

There are significant differences between the old and the new courses and I will be talking about the different components of the new course – and how to tackle them – in upcoming blogs.

But here are the top four (and again, hopefully you already know this) –

1. No more option A or B
2. Three rather than two components (these are the comparative study, the process portfolio and the exhibition)
3. It’s a 20/40/40 weighting (rather than 60/40)
4. The teacher marks the exhibition (i.e. the exhibition is the internal assessment component)

But I suggest you seriously consider attending a workshop and to help you decide here is a list of visual arts workshops – locations and dates – in June and July. If you want further information visit http://www.ibo.org/events/workshops.cfm?DP=Y&keywords=visual+art&workshop_level_1=Y&workshop_level_2=Y&workshop_level_3=Y&region=&language_of_delivery=all&events_country=&event_in=01%2F05%2F14&search_events=Search