Technology on the Water; Keeping a balance of technology in the art classroom

There is always a free San Francisco Examiner for you when you get off at the Bay Area Rapid Transit at Montgomery Station.

photo credit Zarko Drincinc External link  under CC-BY-ND

A man at the top of the escalator hands the paper to anyone who will take one, reminding them it is free. It has the look of a traditional paper, a paper of substance. I’m always surprised how it feels when you take one, a handfull of pages. Just the same it has a beautiful nostalgic aesthetic, an attractive font announces the name of the paper and bold fonts announcing the headline below.  A faint echo of a media that was once thick with news and advertisements.

There are many parallels that can be drawn as technology changes industries and institutions. One institution that has seen little changes over the year but now seems poised for change is that of teaching. This is one of the more striking things I have found so far from what we have been learning in the Integrating Technology into Art Education Settings course at the Academy of Art University

This past Tuesday as I got off the escalator at the Montgomery Station, I grabbed the paper because the headline resonates with what we are studying in class. Headline for Tuesday, February 10th, “Technology Timeout; SF Teens To Take A Break From Devices”.  How appropriate, the article by Laura Dudnick, spells out why schools are making a push to put more technology in the classroom while at the same time trying to retain a balance.

I am of two minds about the beauty of all of this technology. I greatly enjoy media. I have made media technology a part of my world for a long time. I enjoyed working with 8mm film and then portable reel to reel video recorders in the seventies. Personal computers, smart phones and the internet has just made all that I enjoy, just that much easier.

While I enjoy new media technology I also find it overwhelming and resistant to limit setting. My perspective comes in large part from being the parent of a teenager. There is  an overwhelming side of new media technology. Phones, iPads, laptops and other computers are taking over all aspects of our lives. When setting a limit for my teen it’s hard to make that same limit for myself. I have online assignments to complete, articles to read, banking to do, taxes to pay, all the business of managing a home, train as a teacher, develop as an artist and oh so much more.

I couldn’t resist drawing a comparison between changing industries like that of the newspaper and institutions like teaching with changes on the horizon. Seeing Laura Dudnick’s article in the Examiner seemed poignant in light of this class but I’m really very excited to get started.

In these first weeks of Integrating Technology into Art Education Settings we have looked at an overview of Web 2.0 tools and how they are expected to impact the classrooms of today and of the future. Specifically we looked at Google Docs. We created a document on our own and, defying space and time, we created a document with a fellow classmate online.

I greatly enjoyed the process of creating a project with fellow student Charelese Thomson. We shared and developed ideas with a surprising amount of ease. We drew inspiration from the Philip Scott Johnson’s Visages d’Art and colorful portraits such as this one.

tony a.k.a ironman

, by doepicshitt

From that we toyed with ideas for developing a lesson plan that would take advantage of students from various backgrounds sharing and morphing their self portraits using Google Docs.  You can see that lesson here.

Moving forward, I am excited about opportunity to creating a balanced lesson plan that integrates technology. As part of a Richmond Art Center Art in the Community Program I developed a stop motion animation curriculum that is ready for an update. I am hoping that this is an opportunity to more successfully integrate new media technology into that curriculum. As part of that effort I look forward to documenting my process in this Blog.

At the Contra Costa County STEAM Colloquium doing stop motion animation

At the same time I am looking for ways to keeping a balance of technology in the learning experience. I think there is much to be learned by the experience of schools like Convent of the Sacred Heart High School who are experimenting with having their students take breaks from the same technology they are advocating in the classroom.

What do you think? As a class member or a community member, I invite you to share your feedback and suggestions here.