Today’s students have grown up with computers and the internet and are desirous of fast-paced, simultaneous access to a broad range of information through a number of devices. Because these students are as likely to create and design digital information as they are to use it, effective art teaching should include interactive and engaging use of technology by students. The engagement factor of media art is powerful and compelling for you and your students.
The circumstances of an ongoing pandemic and the resulting need for social distancing has required art teachers to quickly learn new media and technology to address the various needs of in-person, hybrid, and remote teaching. To respond to this challenge, many teachers have embraced learning to teach with digital media.
Just what does media arts include? I like this description from Digital Museums Canada:
Media art refers to artworks that depend on a technological component to function. The term media applies to any communication device used to transmit and store information. By incorporating emerging technologies into their artworks, artists using new media are constantly redefining the traditional categories of art.
Because of the technological component, media art provides a meaningful and natural connection between art and science. In both art and science, students are furnished opportunities to develop competency in decision-making. Technology in both content areas necessitates that students develop fundamental abilities associated with the process of design or planning. Students who can isolate a design problem, state it, and then think it through to a logical solution are applying critical thinking skills.
Technology holds fundamental applications for the correlation on art and science, as it may be addressed through graphic, structural, and organizational design, or using media. The computer can be used for the presentation on content or as a medium for creating art. The rapid growth of the internet and related technologies has already created a demand for the expertise of people knowledgeable about both art and science.
Today’s students have grown up with computers and the internet and are desirous of fast-paced, simultaneous access to a broad range of information through a number of devices. Because these students are as likely to create and design digital information as they are to use it, effective art teaching should include interactive and engaging use of technology by students. The engagement factor of media art is powerful and compelling for you and your students.
Many thanks go to Kasmira Mohanty, my co-editor of this issue, contributing editor of SchoolArts magazine, and teacher extraordinaire at Huntington High School in Huntington, New York. She recruited authors, edited articles, and shared the amazing work of her students. Don’t miss her article “Delicious Design” on page 22.
Resources
SchoolArts Collection: Media Arts
Media Arts Standards
NAEA Position Statement on Media Arts
Art teachers incorporate technology and new media into their lessons. Young students become subjects of historical American artworks through digital projection, elementary students create outer space-themed LED circuit-enhanced drawings, middle-school students research the art of printmaker Barbara Jones-Hogu and design posters with powerful messages, high-school students digitally illustrate food recipe layouts, and more.
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