ishbel morag

Allentown Art Museum’s interactive educational web site. The Renaissance Connection is supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and The Rider-Pool Foundation. This is a quirky web site, full of information and visuals, to keep students and teachers occupied for ages. It has some very interesting lesson plans as well. One on Egg tempera, good experiment to engage in. This could be directly linked to artists of today, using these older techniques, for instance Peter Godwin. Other lesson plans such as on Printing could be related back to todays advances in the media and internet, email use and software technology. Thank you Mariella for this link!

Dr Geoff Romeo, Faculty of Education Monash University suggests 4 basic principles- Learner centred environments, Knowledge centred environments, assessment centred environments and community centred environments.

Learners are encouraged to be active and “take charge of their own learning” – for instance looking out for web sites that are of interest and engaging in the educational material that they present. “Potential technology in education to bring real-world problems into the classroom” for the visual arts would be streamed audio and video -for instance through the Art Gallery of NSW – Monet and the Impressionist exhibition: smh.com.au has put together an audio/visual with a small portion of interactive content. This interactive segement has interesting possibilities for Photoshop use- looking at textures and close-ups etc. The Art Gallery of NSW also has an educational kit which has web site link for instance to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where the works originate and other links. Other interactive websites which are not so educational but just for fun, include a memory game from Linda B’s site.

In terms of ‘Knowledge Centred Environment’ making connections and commenting on the experiences through blogs or school discussion boards, etc is a good way to convey interest and ideas. Through ‘Assessment Centred Environment’ self-evaluation and peer-assessment is important and of course teacher feed-back which can be on-going through emails.

‘Community Centred Environment’ can include broader issues and being involved in blogs sites and other online communication sites.

HUI-HUI CHEN makes the comparison between Instructional and Constructivist learning. He sites traditional sources as media, being of instructional value, such as television, print materials and computers; the learner taking a passive role in the learning process. Constructionist learning is more student centered- students taking a active role, exploring, asking questions and solving problems.

I had an idea for a mindmap – to brainstorm all the learning areas in the visual arts with the students – such as theories- colour theory, historical movements- isms- Impressionism, Cultural areas- Indigenous- Aboriginal peoples, Frames in the art curriculum- Cultural, Structural, etc. This brainstorming would take place together in the class, students participating, forming the categories and areas of study. Later, toward the end of the year, the students would get together in groups of about 4 and brainstorm again – see how the mindmap have evolved and the sorts of ideas that have come about over the year. Just a thought!

Marc Prensky talks about the fact that Digital Immigrants always “retain to some degree, one foot in the past”, “an accent”. He worries: “this is not a joke”, “this is the biggest problem facing education today” – “that Immigrant instructors speak an outdated language and are struggling to teach an entirely new language”.

Well we can only try to work with what we have, and guide even while using their knowledge. Learning is always about learning from each other and teachers are guides, not know-alls! However, it is very disconcerting trying to keep up and it is hard not to feel inadequate in the face of lots of new technology.

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!

“Tokyo has become a victim of its own rush to go broadband. In the past six weeks, hundreds of homes and offices have reportedly been left without high-speed internet service after the crows discovered that broadband cable can be pecked into usable strips more easily than power cables or telephone copper wire ever could. Crows have discovered that the broadband cables, which are strung from telegraph poles across Tokyo, are the perfect consistency for building nests.” There are other sorts of hackers in the world! Ravens and crows are from the Corvid family and are considered very intelligent and inquisitive.

My picture – Raven walking the streets of Glebe!

Professor Susan Greenfield talks about the way cyberspace can damage the brain, its deadening effect. It creates a loss of certain cognitive stimulation with no character development, no story line, just process as an aim in itself. She talks of a good book having a beginning and a conclusion, where we follow the story creating images in our brain, and picturing the characters, from descriptive narrative, but in cyberspace these are not important. Our brains need creative stimulation to develop understanding, through making connections and realising consequence. This is not so in cyberspace.

Phelps and Maddison in their article talk about technology enabling “the establishment of communities of practice and cooperative learning with communication not only between students and teachers, but between students from different schools, countries or cultures, and with practicing artists from around the globe.” This is quite exciting and if it gets the children writing and thinking and exploring all well and good. Though lots of practising artists are probably not going to respond too much, as from what I have experienced they are usually working none stop.