How does technology come into play in the art classroom?
A recurring theme that we have addressed in class is the idea of incorporating technology into the curriculum. Although I will say that I do see that uses and helpfulness of technology's incorporation in the standard academic subjects, I truly see very little place for it in the art room. Initially I thought that I was the black sheep in the class, the only one who thought that it was, not pointless, but highly irrelevant to what we are going to teach when it comes down to it. I learned, however, that I am far from the only person in the class that feels this way. While working together, I noticed small side comments about how technology in a classroom, although important, seems totally irrelevant to us. I can't help but to say that I agree. So where to begin?
SMART boards. Yes, they're helpful. Yes, they make going through class a lot easier. On the contrary however, WHEN IN HIGH SCHOOL OR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ART CLASSES DID THE TEACHER EVER USE A BLACKBOARD?! Maybe I'm an odd duck in this situation but I have never experienced and art class outside of college that involved the use of a blackboard more than once in an entire year let alone a computer. Any computer usage was always to find inspiration images or reference images. My teachers did occasionally throw in a good deal of art history to our lessons, but it was all spoken and never was something we had to commit to memory nor that we were tested on.
Every argument for technology in the classroom made thus far in our class has been extremely valid... but in the context of a classroom where you work at a desk. I don't feel like I will ever be teaching students to pain using a tablet or a SMART board. As an educator, if anyone is going to be making a power-point presentation in an art room it will be me in order to supplement a lesson.
Now, I get that we are required to prove and give examples of full evaluations and grading in order to show that the students have learned something. With this though, the product will be in their artwork and measured in a way that is subjective to each project. Furthermore, if there is a requirement for a more concrete form of something to grade, the most technology I can see being used is the internet for research if it is really needed. Even then, chances are that I'd prefer my students to get a book from the library because, from my experience in a college setting with college professors, getting a book from the library holds much more information and is an illustration of actually doing research.
Next comes the argument about certain art-forms springing from technology. Photoshop, graphic design, web design etc. Now to address these. First, I have rarely seen these classes offered in a class that was not on a collegiate level. I fully believe that in order to progress to utilizing these programs, one needs to have a strong grounding in the traditional methods. So many students come into college for art without a basic understanding of color theory and form discovery. Everything that we as art students learn in the foundations courses seems like the things that we should be initially introduced to in a high school setting. Learning these foundations BEFORE college seems to me to be a way to build upon knowledge in a consistent way. In order to use Photoshop, you need to be a photographer. So, students in high school should first know how to take a good picture before they learn how to alter them, right? Learning manual photography, for example, forces you to learn how to be a better photographer. With a manual camera, you have 24 shots and that's it. It's up to the student to use those 24 shots to create art. With Digital photography, the number of photographs that you can take is essentially limitless and it doesn't matter whether or not you can take a picture because you can just edit it anyway. With all this, I'm just saying that it just seems more logistical and to make more sense to learn the traditional way which may be more difficult before you learn to manipulate something that you can't even make to begin with.
On top of it all, I generally dislike the heavy reliance on technology in a classroom anyway solely because all you need is one power outage or an obnoxious kid to run up and pull the plug. Then you're left with nothing because it was all digital and nothing was concrete in front of them. Technology largely involves students looking at a screen and not working with something real and tangible. It turns art as a physical practice and craft and skill, into a theoretical subject that exists only when it is printed out.
