ishbel morag

In Susan’s Teen Culture Summary Susan talks about the fact that most teens are using MP3 and IPODs these days. I wanted to get a Walkman recently, as I still have a few tapes (does anyone remember these things?), and I listen to the radio, AM -band. The store keeper said “There are two left, we won’t be getting them in anymore.”

There is a dramatic influx of new technologies which, as Susan points out, is hard to keep up with. I have never used an IPOD, MP3 player, video games, cable or satellite TV and yet these are fairly common among most teenagers these days.

Darren Newbury (p. 80) in his chapter, in Richard Hickson’s book ‘Art Education 11-18′, looks at some ways of putting new technologies into good use. He examines the idea of the self-portrait, getting students to include images of themselves, and some written narrative; describing a few things about themsleves. They then post all this on a web-site.

I like the idea, the students can explore ideas of self-image, though as a teacher I would want to monitor the sorts of things posted and only have a closed web-site. Not one open to the public, or even so much the rest of the school. But interesting idea!

Sir Ken Robinson makes some very interesting points about creativity in his video. We are educating creativity out of people. He talks about Picasso stating that children are all artists and the trick is to stay an artist as one grows up. Robinson believes creativity is as important as literacy. The point is that children are willing to take a chance, they are prepared to be wrong, and to be creative one has to think like that and not be afraid of making mistakes.

We do not want to kill this creativity in students by over emphasising the information gathering, remixing and cut and pasting from the computer, in ways which do not stimulate creative thought and self expression. How can we use new technologies in more creative ways?