Thinking a lot lately about the parallels among and intersections between the arts and education.
As an artist who teaches, this is one of those things that comes up often in conversations with colleagues in both fields. Some of those conversations are pretty funny... like the one where a new high school art teacher was asking me if I thought she should remove her nude self-portraits from her website.
But some of those intersections can be quite gentle and inspiring as well: like the time a very great, but very troubled artist friend of mine living in a far off place made a short video for one of my students -- considering a career in the arts -- telling her quite honestly and powerfully about what it takes to make it in art school and in the art world on your own terms.
It is humbling to be one of the lucky few whose life and work bridges art and education. And so, as I'm just finishing up a new website where for the first time I am trying to bring into full view both aspects of my life, I of course thought to myself that one of the things that would make the site most meaningful to me would be a forum where artists and teachers could share ideas, observations, and stories both humorous and telling of the difficulties of each vocation -- and the links between them.
The new site is called Practically Impossible (it's still in beta form... not that it won't always look like it's in beta form given my challenges with graphic design) and it'll serve sort of as the nerve-center for all of my work in the arts, organization, and education.
TeachPaperless will continue being a daily blog -- you don't have to worry (or do have to worry) about that. But the Practically Impossible forum I see as both a meeting place and a place to post responses to life's most vexing questions as well as a place to take many of the great questions and conversations that pop up here via reader comments as well as in the Friday Chats and continue them in a forum accessible to everybody.
Showing posts with label arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arts. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
On the Natural Connection between the Arts and Technology
ASCD practically researches ancient history with this post today:
I love working in the Department of Fine Arts. I've got a little desk in the television studio's control room littered with computer paraphernalia and a small collection of jazz cds; I teach Art History and a course on Digital Audio Production; and I help maintain a lab of Macs including some in the hall where we project student work.
To me, the Fine Arts -- especially in an academic context -- are all about problem solving. To 'make' something is to make a series of decisions. In almost no other discipline is the line between 'getting it' and 'not getting it' so clear. Either you've learned how to make a pot or you haven't. Either you can edit a video or you can't. Everything else is a matter of style and character.
And that's why it's so invigorating to teach. Because, in a way, you get the basic stuff out of the way early. What's left is the real stuff of the soul.
I would also say that in no other department is technology so naturally intertwined with our everyday work. As I write this, the student TV crew is preparing a live production. It's all a blur of kids hurrying about plotting the digital mixers, switchers, multi-monitor set-ups... let alone setting up the cameras, lighting rigs, and everything else. Across the hall, the drawing teacher is projecting enlarged digital versions of classwork for crit. Next door, a dozen students are busy laying out the school newspaper in digital format. My class is down the hall working on a collaborative blog project that I'm monitoring from over here in my office.
More and more, the arts and technology are being merged in completely naturally and beneficial ways. That's the way it should be.
All too often, arts education is regarded as a whimsical activity rather than a serious academic subject. In the December 1987/January 1988 issue of Educational Leadership, former U.S. Commissioner of Education and President of the Carnegie Foundation Ernest Boyer argues that the arts should be considered in both an intellectual and imaginative context.
I love working in the Department of Fine Arts. I've got a little desk in the television studio's control room littered with computer paraphernalia and a small collection of jazz cds; I teach Art History and a course on Digital Audio Production; and I help maintain a lab of Macs including some in the hall where we project student work.
To me, the Fine Arts -- especially in an academic context -- are all about problem solving. To 'make' something is to make a series of decisions. In almost no other discipline is the line between 'getting it' and 'not getting it' so clear. Either you've learned how to make a pot or you haven't. Either you can edit a video or you can't. Everything else is a matter of style and character.
And that's why it's so invigorating to teach. Because, in a way, you get the basic stuff out of the way early. What's left is the real stuff of the soul.
I would also say that in no other department is technology so naturally intertwined with our everyday work. As I write this, the student TV crew is preparing a live production. It's all a blur of kids hurrying about plotting the digital mixers, switchers, multi-monitor set-ups... let alone setting up the cameras, lighting rigs, and everything else. Across the hall, the drawing teacher is projecting enlarged digital versions of classwork for crit. Next door, a dozen students are busy laying out the school newspaper in digital format. My class is down the hall working on a collaborative blog project that I'm monitoring from over here in my office.
More and more, the arts and technology are being merged in completely naturally and beneficial ways. That's the way it should be.
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