Artistic Thinking: Week 5

Artistic Thinking: Week 5, Read and Respond:

What is the role of art education (or art educators) in teaching students to be media literate digital citizens?

 How to be an informed, responsable Digital Citizen

According to author, Mar Prensky, I am a “digital immigrant” since I am of the older generation that had to learn how to use the internet and other evolving technology. I like that term and the one he gives to the IGen kids that, “seem to know intuitively how technology works.” Prensky refers to them as “digital natives” (Rosen, 2010) Being a digital immigrant I am constantly learning the lay of the land, the nuances and dialects of the language and the cultural and social norms, rules and regulations. I may have the basics down and can confidently navigate my way, yet I still rely on the natives, at times, to tell me about new routs. However, I must rapidly learn and abide by the rules so that I can become a responsible citizen, assimilate with the natives and be able to teach other immigrants and new born natives how to be positive contributors to this worldwideweb we weave.

While watching the videos for this week, I was reminded of the sick and twisted nature of our media’s power to persuade, manipulate and assert their will over us with their subliminal and blatant images and messages. Visual Literacy is imperative and should be a national emergency! I will do my part to combat these visual assaults made on our students by equipping them with the best discerning knowledge of how to deconstruct, comprehend and defend themselves against these parasitic subliminal messages.

While reading the readings assigned, I felt somewhat relieved that I have almost erased all of the negative programing I received from being a young viewer of TV and believing that my tomboy attitude and my very fleshy body was not acceptable for a teen girl or a grown women. George Gerbner, the late communications scholar, states how, “TV influences people’s attitudes and behaviors,” and that the, “cumulative effect of watching TV is that people begin to believe that its messages represent the real world, whether it is the amount of violence, sex or crime, or something as simple as……” (how a girl or women should look and behave).  (Rosen, 2010)  I can attest to the fact that this is true. I still struggle with my own insecurities and body issues due to being an uninformed, young, passive viewer of TV and magazine adds. Even though I understand how this affected me the damage is done and for many years I have been striving toward rejecting and replacing those negative ideas and feelings with more appropriate and realistic ones.

We are bombarded with a constant stream of images that carry all kinds of hidden or written messages and at the same time we are creators and executors of them as well. Weather we are viewers, authors or casual, social posters, we have to be careful of how we receive and send out these different types of messages. In The Digital Diet the authors remind us that, “The Internet is a little like the proverbial elephant that never forgets, Our digital footprints are not like the footprints on the beach, washed away by the next wave or rising tide, Rather, they are like footprints left to dry in the wet concrete of the footpath-permanent” (Churches, Crockett, Jukes, 2010) Unfortunately know one ever taught me how to be a responsible, ethical Digital citizen and I know for sure, early on, that I have said and posted things that I now regret. I felt like a teenage punk rocker again and that I could be incognito or assume a character when interacting and having creative repartee with other strangers or MySpace friends. I thought of it as a form of improv. It was innocent and fun yet those inappropriate, rude or suggestive posts are part of the archival database and forever etched in Web history.  Researchers term this kind of behavior as, “online disinhibition” (Suler, 2004).  “Being thoughtless, unintentionally or on purpose, is the basis of many of the problems that arise when using Web 2.0 tools. Basically, “online disinhibition”, means that, “people will say and do things online they would never dream of saying or doing in person.” (Brooks-Young, 2010)

When thinking about ways to teach students how to be responsible users of these tools I know the lesson has to have a real, relevant impact on them for it to have a lasting effect.  Showing documentaries, reading news reports, studying the laws of copyright and copyleft, teaching security measures, and giving students plenty of current examples of what can happen as a result of online misuse, poor representation and abuse will be an important first step in changing the negative connotations and misstrust that schools and their students cannot use these technologies safely and responsibly.

 “They must understand the repercussions of irresponsibly using social and digital media and what affects it may have on their future…When you are presenting social media and digital responsibility, don't lecture your students on why it is bad to post inappropriate pictures on Facebook, but have them search for examples. Allow the students to not only find examples of inappropriate use, but also allow them to teach each other. Even though they have a Facebook account, do they really understand all that comes with Facebook? Do they understand their privacy rights on Facebook and other social media sites? Did they read the fine print?” (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-digital-media-citizenship)
 

 As an educator I firmly believe it is the duty of the schools and teacher’s to design and implement a user friendly interactive Web 2.0 media site that explains, trains and tests parents and students to prepare them for our 21^st century curriculum's that will take place in the classroom as well as within asynchronous and synchronous web sites. This type of training should be mandatory and incorporate each type of Web 2.0 examples, rules, regulations and a final test along with a contract stating that the adult or student agrees to be a thoughtful, ethical and responsible digital citizen. After passing the test there will be a ceremony with certificates awarded and membership into the 21^st Century Digital Citizen Resource and Safety network. Each 21c-DCz will be asked to be an advocate, guardian and guide to help spread the tenants and principals of exemplary 21c-DCz practices.
Having reviews and updating the guidelines will be needed throughout the year along with awarding nominated 21c-DCz’s with prizes for being good role models that report abuse, show respect, cite sources, ask permission, and create and share their own materials. This kind of education is needed and should be part of our standard expectations within each school so that we can easily transition and assimilate cutting edge technologies to aid us in our pursuit for more engaging, current, learning tools and skills. This is the age of connectivity and if we don’t stay connected we will loose our students and our abilities to relate to the worlds' technical evolution.

Here is the link to the PBS Teachers Website with 18 different links to various resources such as:

Digital Citizenship
http://digitalcitizenship.net/
Digital Citizenship helps teachers, technology leaders, and parents to understand what students/children/technology users should know to use technology appropriately and prepares them for a
society full of technology.

Education World: Technology Integration
http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/
This site gives examples of successful technology integration in the classroom and provides a back-to-school tech checklist as well as other free resources for teachers.

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/digital-media-literacy/the-digital-media-landscape/how-do-i-use-it/

And now for some more Fab info from our wonderful NAEA: This was taken from a PDF and was hard to copy and paste into Blogger but I did my best.....Credits for this are under the article.

In the future, the POTENTIAL range of digital worlds for art teaching is endless…

Digital media, created using electronic communication


tools, surrounds us as a paradigm shift in education


simultaneously is taking place (Alexenberg, 2006; Lu, 2010;


Stokrocki, 2007; Sweeny, 2011b). Children as young as 6


years old are dressing their avatars (visual persona that they


customize), decorating their rooms, and networking with


friends on Club Penguin and the Pet Society (just two of


many popular virtual worlds for children). For adults, one of


the most prominent digital sites created almost entirely by


its “inhabitants” is Second Life (SL), with “an all time high of


126 million users hours in …2009” and an economy of “half


a billion US dollars, making Second Life the largest virtual


economy in the industry” (Linden, 2010). Even senior citizens


are starting their own geezer brigades on SL. Aside from


their entertainment value, these worlds offer art, business,


and educational opportunities for adults and youth, as well


as occasions to network with people around the world. The


educational resources are endless, including components


such as cultural understandings, medical advice, library


components, and artmaking and exhibiting artwork, to


name a few possibilities. By the end of 2011, Gartner Inc.


(2007) predicted, 80% of active Internet users would have a


presence in some virtual world. Teaching therefore requires


uncertain and changing pedagogical practices that are open


ended, daring, and risky (Barnett, 2007). So how do we teach,


learn, and assess results in these new digital worlds?

Digital Culture

Players participate and immerse themselves in the new


digital worlds through building digital culture. Digital


implies electronic technology and its major components.


Jenkins (2004) includes behaviors such as “play performance,


simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distribution,


cognition, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking,


and negotiation” (pp. 3-4). Intellectual practices range from


collaborative problem-solving to computational literacy, and


even informal scientific reasoning (Steinkuehler, 2009) that


involves several diverse types of digital media. These range


from serious video games (Parks, 2008) and digital animation


(Davenport & Gunn, 2009) to virtual worlds (Stokrocki &


Andrews, 2011), to name a few. These media enable students


to form various virtual communities that are linked with


Web 2.0 tools. Digital media are emerging into new complex


pedagogical learning sites that are products of informal visual


culture influences that support equal, collaborative efforts


from group members (Wilson, 2008). Contemporary culture


can be viewed as“the collective heritage of a group, that is, as


a catalog of ideas and practices that shape both the collective


and individual lives and thoughts of all members,” as well as


something that“only exists in the act of being performed, and


it can never stand still or repeat itself without changing its


meaning” (Bauman, 2004, Note 1, p. 21). Such digital culture


immersion requires use of new literacy forms.

Media Literacies

Traditionally, art education literacy usually involved reading


and writing to obtain knowledge, even including vocabulary


involving video game terminology. New forms of graphic


literacy now are emerging that are referred to as digital or


media literacy (Snyder & Bulfin, 2007). Media literacy can


be integrated with text-based forms to participate in a new


global society that is currently emerging (Delacruz, 2009).


Duncum (2004) argues for multiliteracies, “the making of


meaning through the interaction of different communicative


modes,” including music, gesture and motion, sounds, and


pictures (p. 253). Virtual worlds, including video games,


require operational, cultural, and technological literacies


(Guzzetti, Elliott, & Welsch, 2010). For example, operational


literacies include translating tutorials, procedures, and


applications using Photoshop; cultural literacies involve


understanding meanings within a given context, such as


a video game in leisure activities; technological literacies


contain visual and print texts, rules, and play maneuvers as


found in digital storytelling. Such practical understanding


entails soliciting peer cooperation and collaboration to try


out new games, critiquing them, offering suggestions, giving


advice about character and thematic building, and soliciting


contributions from peer audiences.

So HOW do we teach, learn, and assess results in these new digital worlds?

Using SL as an example, art educator Lu (2010) offered practical


learning principles for designing digital events for students in


virtual worlds. Those principles include learning by exploring,


developing a sense of self through avatar identity, collaborating


with others, collecting or uploading individual artworks,


creating personal rooms and sculptures, and expressing


and recording adventures through snapshots and writing


reflections. Other art educators also have presented virtual-


world learning experiences for students; Liao (2008) focused


on avatar identity, and Carpenter (2009) designed a classroom


where students could be observed continuously without the


teacher interfering in their individual learning modes.

Digital world users communicate through chat and instant


message functions, discover new sites, design new spaces,


share services, and exchange goods (Wilbur, 2008). They


also learn to communicate in a form of hybrid sentence


structure that contains abbreviations, facial expressions


pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, shortened


words, and specific vocabulary with spelling errors (Black &


Steinkuehler, 2006). Similar to video games, virtual worlds do


not substitute for literacy activities, but rather produce new


ones collaboratively (Gee, 2007).

New Communication Arenas and Visual Literacy

With literacy forms and functions rapidly changing in


today’s postmodern world, multimedia fluidity in different


communication arenas have expanded into multi-literacies


that include video, pictures, music and dance, computer


languages, Internet casual speech, and games, as well as


in print (Thomas, 2007). Most of the May 2009 issue of


Educational Researcher involved discussions over how to


expand on these new literacies that “include new skills,

strategies, dispositions, and social practices that are required


by new technologies for information and communication”


(Burns, 2006). Such new literacies are multifaceted, multi-


dimensional, and include multiple points of view.


Students also must be visually literate to navigate the


real world, which includes decoding, understanding, and


analyzing the meanings and values communicated by


images. “Just as readers of text draw inferences and construct


meaning from written representations of language, viewers


of images also draw meaning”(Burns, 2006, p. 2). Art teaching


and learning contexts are the primary place in today’s schools


where art students discuss the elements and grammar of


images, composition and camera perspectives, symbols,


props, clothing, color, light, text, and similar concepts. They


learn to read digital instructions as well, and create their


own Web pages and digital journals (Thomas, 2007), all of


which require diverse forms of learning. Higher education


art educators are in the process of inspiring schools to


adopt some of these ever-expanding educational forms in


a variety of ways for students to explore and experiment by


promoting imagination and immersion in cultures otherwise


inaccessible, and to integrate their art learning with other


technologies and disciplines (Salman, 2009).

New Forms of Visual Art Learning

Learning involves processing new knowledge, behaviors,


skills, values, or preferences in different ways. The formation


of learning based on the written word is changing, as images


dominate text and as screens overtake paper as the most


frequentmeansofdistributinginformation(Kress,2003).Since


digital worlds can be game-like, Gee (2007) presents three


kinds of current modes of learning in which art education


plays a major role: situated cognition (that is, contextual


learning including material, social, and cultural forms); new


literacy study that involves economic, historical, and political


concerns; and connectivism that stresses human powers of


pattern recognition. This call for networks of people, tools,


and technologies, as well as school programs to build better


modes of learning through media literacy, matches well with


future goals set for contemporary art education theory and


practice.

A number of questions arise about art education’s role in this new digital culture environment.

How do art teachers and school systems find a workable


balance between digital learning and real-life fact/process


learning? Digital learning can supplement real-life teaching


since it offers unique art instruction skills for diverse


audiences. These new technologies enable average people to


archive, add comments to, and alter content. Innovative and


pervasive networking forms, personified by weblogs, have


blossomed from the bottom up, and participation requires


that art teachers and art students mutually learn together


(Kellner & Share, 2005). There now is a remix of old and new


media constructed to respond to demands of novel ways of


communication through combination of recycled pieces of


information and materials.


For example, when art educators Stokrocki and Andrews


(2011) mentored disenfranchised youth to use SL to develop


their future art careers, the educators provided steps to


achieve discrete goals: learn basic communication skills,


acquire computer and digital literacy competence, develop


life skills, imagine a place for dreams, envision a home, and


build a business. One participant advertised his “in-game


architecture” via poster, and built a twisted tent-like form as


his sustainable home. (See Figure 1.)

How can art education help teachers with instructional assessment?    

U.S. education is dominated by standardized

curricula, instructional systems, and assessment procedures.


Due to the complex and rapidly evolving technologies,


standardized assessments have overlooked the richness and


unpredictable nature of inquiry that includes experiential


and uniform reactions alike (Dewey, 1938). Learning evidence


need not be only standardized, it can be holistic, multi-


methodological, and qualitative, full of experiential evidence.


That experience encompasses the visual, audio, verbal, and


now kinesthetic, as virtual worlds enable art teachers to


view their students’ three-dimensional accounts of learning.

Students also must be VISUALLY LITERATE

to navigate the real world, which includes


decoding, understanding, and analyzing the


meanings and values communicated by images.

Many art educators are examining these newer literacy


communication modes of engagement that can include


accounts of individual technological experiences or personal


learning environments in art (Castro, Danker, Delacruz,


Fuglestad, Roland, & Stokrocki, in press). Art education is


situated to be in the forefront of building practical arguments


and new assessments for success and interdisciplinary


connections (Salman, 2009). In her case study of three art


teachers using technology in midwestern high schools, Lin


(2009) noted that when making podcasts with Latino youth,


the teachers learned with the students about art content and


mastering digital media technology.

How does art education help students become more criticalof digital culture? 

Art educators see the role of digital media

not only as an expressive exchange, but also as embodying

socio-cultural change (Garber, 2004; Keifer-Boyd, 2004;

Stokrocki, 2007). Gude (2007) argued for“reconstructing social


spaces by transforming [them] with images and texts and a


space that stimulated wonder in the process of learning” (p.


13). Young people, however, as “digital natives may be skilled


with social networking …[but] they are not generally skilled


with online information use, including locating and critically


evaluating information” (Leu, O’Byrne, Zawilinski, McVerry,


& Everett-Cacopardo, 2009, p. 266). Critical digital literacy,


advocated by Buckingham (2006), is a means for eliminating


marginalized peoples, misinformation, commercial predators,


and cyber-bullying. Sweeny (2004) critically examined the


nature of privileged forms of visual culture, and explained


that art educators who teach about these new social creations


and critical forms should critique those aspects “that are


exclusionary, biased, and retrograde” (p. 210) in order to build


democratic art education theory and practice.


Whatever the future brings, digital worlds will be vibrant sites


for investigating these new participatory multi-literacies in art


education. Art educators Lily Lu (2008), creator ofThe Art Café,


and Sandrine Han, founder of the International Art Education


Association (InAEA) on SL, have designed their own meeting


transcend individual expression to incorporate collaborative


design, exhibition spaces for uploaded artworks, three-


dimensional constructions built by avatars, and virtual field


trips to different sites for building career awareness in the


arts. In the future, the potential range of digital worlds for art


teaching is endless, as art educators enable their students to


learn, plan, construct digitally, and transform their plans into


real-world possibilities.

TAKEN FROM:

Visual Arts and Multiliteracies in a Digital Age


Mary Stokrocki


Professor of Art Education, Arizona State University


Mary.Stokrocki@asu.edu


Living in Actual and Digital Visual Worlds:


One Big Goal for Art Education


Brent Wilson


Professor Emeritus of Art Education,The Pennsylvania State University


bgw1@psu.edu


Envisioning a Future Techno-Infused


Eco-Pedagogy


Karen Keifer-Boyd


Professor of Art Education andWomen’s Studies


The Pennsylvania State University


kk-b@psu.edu