These days, media arts include digital design, website design, virtual reality, 3D printing, robotics, digital photography and film, animation, and game design. Why teach media arts? Your students live in a digital world that is incredibly engaging to them. Why not take advantage of that engagement by teaching media arts?
The other day, a few of my friends who also have degrees in graphic design (often called “commercial art” or “advertising art” back in the day) were comparing what we did in school then as opposed to what students do and learn now in graphic design and media arts. We had to draw or paint everything by hand, take hand-lettering classes (in one assignment, we had to letter our names in the style of the Rolling Stone masthead), and use press type and Amberlith to prepare work for printing.
Today, most art students graduate college well-versed in Adobe computer programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. These days, media arts include digital design, website design, virtual reality, 3D printing, robotics, digital photography and film, animation, and game design.
Resources from SchoolArts
A useful resource for teaching media arts is SchoolArts Collection: Media Arts, available from Davis Publications. It contains studio lessons from experienced art educators specializing in media arts, digital processes, and new technologies that were previously published or soon to be published in SchoolArts magazine.
Though the collection is primarily aimed at middle- and high-school students, I do think the availability of smartphones and digital cameras has made media arts available for even the youngest students. Our SchoolArts Collection: Early Childhood has a chapter on media arts that includes the use of tablets, scanners, digital cameras, animation, and electroluminescent lights.
In This Issue
In “Adapting with Digital Content” (p. 14), Christopher Taylor creates a YouTube channel with art-making demonstrations for students in-class and learning remotely.
At the elementary level, in Brian Imfeld’s “Video Games as Interactive Art,” (p. 17) students design and produce meaningful digital games.
In “Drawings in 3D” from middle-school teacher Annemarie Baldauf (p. 36), students turn their drawings into 3D-printed bas-reliefs and 3D-printed models.
And at the high-school level, Kasmira Mohanty’s “The Floral Folk Art Project” (p. 29) explores the relevancy of folk art today as students investigate their personal heritage to create a digital floral folk art piece of their own.
Why teach media arts? Your students live in a digital world that is incredibly engaging to them. Why not take advantage of that engagement by teaching media arts?
Art teachers share lessons that focus on media arts, digital processes, and new technologies. Students design and develop meaningful side-scrolling video games, learn light painting techniques to capture long-exposure photographs, turn 2D drawings into 3D-printed models, create a digital floral folk-art piece inspired by their heritage, and more.
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