This virtual space is an extension of AEAH 3770 Computer Art Applications and will be used to record class discussions and ongoing conservations relating to the course.
I transferred to UNT from a community college a year ago and my first art class I took was Design II. Community college had not really prepared me for how demanding the class would be of my time and money. After much frustration, I completed the first project and went into the classroom several hours before class to take a picture of it (documentation was required). I was using my iPhone since I wasn't able to afford a camera yet and I figured it would suffice until my financial aid went through. The teacher smuggly remarked that my phone was not going to cut it and I needed to get a camera. She was not the type of teacher that would listen to any explanation so I ended up just having to turn in the pictures from my iPhone. I was able to get a camera before the next assignment was due, but it was very frustrating not having the technology I needed and that there was no exception made for what I had at the time. I think that this can transfer over to the classroom because teachers should keep in mind that they must be flexible with art assignments. Not every kid is going to have access to the same technologies, some may not even have internet access outside of school. This is just a barrier that should be considered when making a lesson plan or assigning a project so that kids won't feel left out or frustrated.
I have never really been computer savvy. I have always owned a Mac loaded with a bunch of interesting and useful applications, but never really learned how to utilize them. In my undergrad years at the Corcoran, technology was left to the graphic designers, but I always felt that the information they learned was just as useful to us fine artists. I wanted to learn how to use Photoshop, manipulate images, and create mini movies for the sake of my art and personal knowledge. The overall attitude at my school towards fine artists was that we should not take away the "purity" of art by using computers. Teachers and students alike would complain about all the art jobs being taken over by graphic designers and digital photographers. I began to think the same as they did and then suddenly teachers, peers, and myself became technology barriers. Towards the end of my last year, a new teacher came to my school and he did not have such a small art bracket as some of the others. He encouraged me to explore my interest in movie making. So I did! Sadly, I did not know enough and he did not know enough about computer programs and technology. So for my senior thesis I did a series of drawings instead. The main barrier when it comes down to it was me. I needed to be more adventurous and do what I wanted to do, no matter what anyone says.
One of the main things in my student career that I recognized as a barrier was that I was never taught or given the resources to use technology in my art. I came from a small town where art wasnt seen as anything great. Going through my art classes we just did what we wanted and when projects were assigned all were studio based on techniques. Its nice to be here at UNT and have all the programs i could ever want and ive just now started exploring them!
In high school I took a web design class. The whole year I was in the class our projects were given on handouts. On these handouts were steps on how to create the web page for that project. The teacher would help every once in awhile but she told us to help each other before we asked her for help. It was interesting to know how people designed web pages but the class, teacher, and projects were boring.
The biggest technology barrier I have faced in a classroom was during my high school art class years. During my art 1 class, there weren't even any computers or mention of computers for us to use. Then during my art 2 and advanced art classes, where we had more freedom to expand projects and/or do what we wanted. We had one computer in our class and it was probably from 1998, it didn't have new software and barely held an internet connection. This was a class where we should have been able to explore a new means of artwork aside from just painting, drawing, and basic sculpture. The teacher didn't try to integrate any technology and if we wanted to do anything of that sort, it was up to us to do it on our own time and with our own computers. Needless to say, no technology was ever used during my years in that classroom.
For design 2 we were assigned a word association project where we were to visually define a word. Many of the kids in my class knew tons of computer applications to help make their projects more professional and appealing. I know absolutely NOTHING about computers or art technologies so I felt a huge disadvantage. I was so stuck that I actually printed out a photograph and wrote on it with a sharpie. When I turned it in my teacher said that it was acceptable, but would look nicer had I used photo shop or another computer program and digitally wrote on the photo. Since I didn't know to do that and wasn't given the time or attention needed to learn, I had to turn in my project as it was. I know my project would have gotten a better grade and would have been better received had I used photo shop. I am hoping this class will help me incorporate technology into my work, but so far I am still feeling intimidated.
I was never awful with computers; however, I have always neglected to be open to new ways of doing things on the computer. I tend to be a little obstinate when it comes to computers and new programs and will keep with old habits even though I know there is a simpler way of doing things. I believe that this really hurt me when I was a communication design major. For communication design, we had to learn Photoshop, InDesign, as well as Illustrator. Because it takes me a while to learn new programs and also because I did not have the motivation to learn and explore these programs on my own, the projects I was doing took me twice as long and eventually this technology barrier sort of forced myself away from communication design in general.
As a student my biggest barrier in technology has been my past educators. I've had numerous exercises demanding that I make complicated Excel spreadsheets and scavenge through new websites. However, after I walk away from these assignments I feel that I do not actually retain the knowledge. My teachers would give out extensive directions on hot printer paper noting special buttons and browsing options but when it came to a point where I wanted hands on help, I was out of luck. Either the teacher had not followed the group into the computer lab or simply told us once more to refer to the verbose demands on the stark sheet of paper. Thus leaving me a sense of darkness when it came to technology.
My Dad is an architectural Engineer, and I have always been around computers growing up. He designs bridges on the computer at work and builds computers for fun. There are five people in my family and we had six computers...I never really took advantage of that fact. Yes, my dad taught me basic computer skills like how to calculate the cost of living on excel and documenting things. Because that's all I knew, computers weren't very interesting to me. I never took art classes growing up, but I tend to choose hobbies that involve using my hands and have no relation to computer technology. I wish that I didn't make my disinterest in what my father uses computers for, a barrier that kept me from exploring how to use computers for my artistic hobbies and projects. I definitely want to teach my students about all the fun things you can do with animation, photography, or even drawing on the computer.
The best illustration I have of teachers tapping in to the potential of technology but never fully utilizing them was my professor for a science class here. We were all required to buy those clickers, and we all had to have them at each class, but the professor used them only for- wait for it- attendance. It was a bad idea in multiple ways because all of us wasted money on those clickers and people could could just send their clicker with someone else and never attend class. There were so many other things that professor could have done with the technology and the fancy receiver and projector but instead she just used it for lousy attendance.
In addition to this, after reading fellow classmate's comments, I have also missed the technology bus and although I've been exposed to technologies a little, I have never been really been taught their usefulness and their wide range of possibilities. My high school was one of those schools that wasn't extremely blessed, but did have two small computer rooms on campus (we were 5A, so this was barely enough to have BCIS) and a gift from Dell of a few laptop carts, and I feel that the school could have done a lot more to utilize the fact that there were computers for the students to use, instead of none at all in the cases of a lot of schools today.
The technology barrier that I have experienced was in my high school computer skills class. The class was to teach us different skills on the computer that we didn’t know. At the beginning of class we were given an assignment and it had step-by-step instructions on what to do, down to the exact buttons to push. The teacher did not teach anything new to us and was only there to answer questions. Halfway through the class I found myself explaining how to do things on the computer to the teacher because she knew less about computers than I did. After that she had me helping the students so that she could get her own work done. Instead of learning and being able to explore anything new on the computer I was stuck doing the teachers job by helping out the other students with the assignments.
Since I was introduced to the art world via a digital graphics and animation class in high school, its hard for me to say that I've had boundaries with technology in art. I love technology and trying to incorporate it into art, because its made my life easier in a number of instances. However, all I knew from high school was Adobe Photoshop, so I guess I had a boundary against other creative programs. I would always do everything in Photoshop even if took twice as long, rather than doing a project in a different program unknown to me. I think I still have a boundary with expensive cameras. I can handle my own digital camera, but as soon as I get a DSLR or something in my hands that costs a lot, I get intimidated. I have a lot of friends that are all into different creative mediums, so being around them has helped me break my own barriers with different technologies, as well as educate myself about other technologies and mediums.
One of my first projects in 2D design AP in high school was to create a collage which would be scanned and manipulated on photoshop. I had never used photoshop before, and was at a loss for what to do. I asked my teacher, but his answer wasn't that clear. He asked me what I would like to do; I had no idea photoshop's capabilities. I was then given a semi-demonstration that went way over my head. I asked a fellow student who was very skilled at photoshop to help, but he just told me I should do multiple layers (again over my head). I ended up just playing around with photoshop and simply changing a filter on the top of my piece. To this day, I am unsure of how to use photoshop. A prelesson describing the different editing techniques would have been very helpful.
A technology barrier that I experienced was in my science class in high school. My class was learning about different types of bacterias, fungi, etc. The teacher just gave us the microscope without really teaching us how to use them which made it very hard to understand what I was looking at. On top of all of that my class was given a test. The test consisted of pictures of different types of bacterias, etc. and we had to label each one. This was VERY difficult to me considering that I did not know how to use the microscope correctly and ever thing I observed looked like a blurred dot.
The biggest barrier for me when it came to technology in the school setting was just my high school art teacher. She was the only AP certified art teacher at the school, so I was stuck with her throughout Drawing and 2D Design. My classroom had 4-5 Macs, stocked with up-to-date art programs that we were free to use whenever we wanted. But I had the teacher who couldn't understand technology no matter how hard she tried. She wasn't against using the computer, and she even wanted us to embrace technology. She would assign us open projects in photoshop, but she didn't know how to use the program, so she wasn't any help to the students who didn't already know how to use it. Lucky for me, I already knew how to use photoshop, but many of my friends had never used the program in their life. And then on top of everything, in my senior year of high school, our AP Portfolio review went digital. Let's just say I had to do everything by myself at home because my teacher made everything a thousand times more complicated than it was, and I wasn't going to let her screw up my portfolio submission (like she did for a few of my classmates).
It's hard for me to think of technological barriers. I'm 25, just old enough that most of my time in school prior to college was when it wasn't quite financially feasible yet for there to be many computers in most schools, much less having a Mac with photoshop installed in the art room.
I suppose an art technology barrier for me could be how my last technology class was taught. We learned 3 programs in as many months. Yes, I understand that they want to teach a lot in a very short time, and to that I say we should have individual courses for this sort of stuff. I went into this course fairly computer savvy, I am self taught in flash, illustrator, and photoshop. If I walked away from that class without having retained anything new, it's hard to imagine the other 25 or so students in my class who were not savvy at all anything out of the course.
Or I guess it boils down to, I feel we need more technology courses for individual programs, rather than trying to do an overview of several in one course and expecting people to walk away with meaningful understanding of the many programs they learned.
Throughout my high school career I was introduced to a wide variety of state of the art technology, but, unfortunately, my teachers lacked the knowledge to use any of this new equipment. I did not view this as a negative, however, as my teacher allowed me to constantly experiment and explore this new technology. I believe this ultimately allowed me to become much more adept with technology.
Considering my education at Cimarron Memorial High School in Nevada did not have enough funding for every classroom to hold computers, I never had much experience with computers. Our High school art class just had tables, chairs, and a blackboard. There were no computers for students to use except for in BCIS Computer Class my freshman year of High School. BCIS was a class where students learned Excel, Word, Powerpoint etc. I did not even get the opportunity to use a computer to produce art until I transferred from UNLV to UNT. University of Nevada Las Vegas did not have art computer labs like we do here at UNT. I never used photoshop, imovie, or adobe until I moved to Texas in 2008. The barrier I have always held has been between myself and the computer now that I have full access to them at UNT. This class is actually opening my mind to the world of technology and art.
my middle school and high school in Irving Texas, had tech ed classes.... the worst part about it though was that those classes were the ones that turned my outlook on technology in a negative way. Our school district actually gave all of the high school students laptops, after I entered the 10th grade. But we were not allowed to use them in the majority of our classes because of teachers who turned away technology in the classroom. We ended up having to take a computer class in high school so i decided to take tech ed. Unfortunately our tech ed teacher was always too busy helping with our in school news station that he gave us worksheets, and told us to make movies on the computer and we had approx. 2 weeks to do so.... most of the students were so frustrated most of the time, because most of the students did not know how to use the programs... I mean for most of us this was a blow off class, that we didnt want to be stuck in for 2 hours a day. In high school, i have to say i totally hated technology... other than surfing the web of course.. but as i advanced and have teachers that will actually explain things to me, it has gotten better.. but im still not in love with it!
In my art classes in elementary I cannot recall using technology nor creating art involving technology. In this case the technology barrier was that technology was not planned into the curriculum. In high school, unless you were enrolled in an advanced studio class in high school or were enrolled in the new media course, students did not have access to computers. When an assignment did involve a printer or computer, the computer lab would get really crammed with other classes. The art department only had two printers available for thirty students or more per class. In this case the technology barrier in high school was the limit in technology supply.
I grew up with my dad working as an architectural drafting teacher in high schools. He first started teaching when he left the drafting industry when I was a kid living in Seattle. He worked at an old inner city school where the teacher before him had only taught hand drafting(this was during the early 90's, so producing with CAD was industry standard by then). There was computers in the room that had never been used. So he had to start from scratch developing a new program for this drafting class. In present times, he is the Wylie, TX ISD drafting teacher for both high schools. At the old high school where he's been for 14 years, things are going well. At the new one, things are different. In his 2 intro classes, there are 40 students, but only 30 computers. There's only 28 chairs. What is comes down to, is that the school has not opened enough elective classes, so students have no where to go. Both money and planning are barriers, but he's adjusting and working with the administrators to get things straitened out.
As a high school student my main experience with technology was a class I was required to take that involved designing a website as well as learning the basics of Microsoft Office. At that time in my life I was very self centered and felt I had more priorities than that class. The teacher tried to keep my class interested in the subject the best she could, but unfortunately she wasn't well trained on what she was being asked to teach either. She was also head of a large school organization so her time was very limited too. So the barriers I've experienced were my teacher, and myself.
I have always had and used a Mac. In a great number of art classes some of these Mac programs could be a wonderful asset. If only I knew how to use them to their full extent. Photoshop and Indesign are the main two that I am talking about. More than once in the past year have I had a great idea for a project and been unable to bring it to complete fruition because of my inability to utilize these programs in their entirety. I'm hoping this class will assist me in overcoming that barrier.
I went to a performing arts high school in Houston, and the art department was much like this one at UNT. Foundation and drawing classes the first year and various studio classes as we progressed. We were required to take this computer class about art, the main objective of the class was to teach us about documenting our work properly using digital means instead of photo slides, and the program often used was Photoshop. But our teacher was a photography teacher who never worked in a high school setting, and I would go as far to say really didn’t know very much about the medium either. We were giving work sheets to follow that we weren’t allowed to keep that drew out the process instead of giving the simple version. Another semester we had to create an animation on the computer, but once again the class was giving worksheets that were confusing and had a teacher that was very ambivalent to the process. So to sum my experience are teachers who were not willing to work with the students that were lost, and also not teaching short cuts to make the process easier to manage and complete properly.
I transferred to UNT from a community college a year ago and my first art class I took was Design II. Community college had not really prepared me for how demanding the class would be of my time and money. After much frustration, I completed the first project and went into the classroom several hours before class to take a picture of it (documentation was required). I was using my iPhone since I wasn't able to afford a camera yet and I figured it would suffice until my financial aid went through. The teacher smuggly remarked that my phone was not going to cut it and I needed to get a camera. She was not the type of teacher that would listen to any explanation so I ended up just having to turn in the pictures from my iPhone. I was able to get a camera before the next assignment was due, but it was very frustrating not having the technology I needed and that there was no exception made for what I had at the time. I think that this can transfer over to the classroom because teachers should keep in mind that they must be flexible with art assignments. Not every kid is going to have access to the same technologies, some may not even have internet access outside of school. This is just a barrier that should be considered when making a lesson plan or assigning a project so that kids won't feel left out or frustrated.
ReplyDeleteI have never really been computer savvy. I have always owned a Mac loaded with a bunch of interesting and useful applications, but never really learned how to utilize them. In my undergrad years at the Corcoran, technology was left to the graphic designers, but I always felt that the information they learned was just as useful to us fine artists. I wanted to learn how to use Photoshop, manipulate images, and create mini movies for the sake of my art and personal knowledge. The overall attitude at my school towards fine artists was that we should not take away the "purity" of art by using computers. Teachers and students alike would complain about all the art jobs being taken over by graphic designers and digital photographers. I began to think the same as they did and then suddenly teachers, peers, and myself became technology barriers. Towards the end of my last year, a new teacher came to my school and he did not have such a small art bracket as some of the others. He encouraged me to explore my interest in movie making. So I did! Sadly, I did not know enough and he did not know enough about computer programs and technology. So for my senior thesis I did a series of drawings instead. The main barrier when it comes down to it was me. I needed to be more adventurous and do what I wanted to do, no matter what anyone says.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main things in my student career that I recognized as a barrier was that I was never taught or given the resources to use technology in my art. I came from a small town where art wasnt seen as anything great. Going through my art classes we just did what we wanted and when projects were assigned all were studio based on techniques. Its nice to be here at UNT and have all the programs i could ever want and ive just now started exploring them!
ReplyDeleteIn high school I took a web design class. The whole year I was in the class our projects were given on handouts. On these handouts were steps on how to create the web page for that project. The teacher would help every once in awhile but she told us to help each other before we asked her for help. It was interesting to know how people designed web pages but the class, teacher, and projects were boring.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest technology barrier I have faced in a classroom was during my high school art class years. During my art 1 class, there weren't even any computers or mention of computers for us to use. Then during my art 2 and advanced art classes, where we had more freedom to expand projects and/or do what we wanted. We had one computer in our class and it was probably from 1998, it didn't have new software and barely held an internet connection. This was a class where we should have been able to explore a new means of artwork aside from just painting, drawing, and basic sculpture. The teacher didn't try to integrate any technology and if we wanted to do anything of that sort, it was up to us to do it on our own time and with our own computers. Needless to say, no technology was ever used during my years in that classroom.
ReplyDeleteFor design 2 we were assigned a word association project where we were to visually define a word. Many of the kids in my class knew tons of computer applications to help make their projects more professional and appealing. I know absolutely NOTHING about computers or art technologies so I felt a huge disadvantage. I was so stuck that I actually printed out a photograph and wrote on it with a sharpie. When I turned it in my teacher said that it was acceptable, but would look nicer had I used photo shop or another computer program and digitally wrote on the photo. Since I didn't know to do that and wasn't given the time or attention needed to learn, I had to turn in my project as it was. I know my project would have gotten a better grade and would have been better received had I used photo shop. I am hoping this class will help me incorporate technology into my work, but so far I am still feeling intimidated.
ReplyDeleteI was never awful with computers; however, I have always neglected to be open to new ways of doing things on the computer. I tend to be a little obstinate when it comes to computers and new programs and will keep with old habits even though I know there is a simpler way of doing things. I believe that this really hurt me when I was a communication design major. For communication design, we had to learn Photoshop, InDesign, as well as Illustrator. Because it takes me a while to learn new programs and also because I did not have the motivation to learn and explore these programs on my own, the projects I was doing took me twice as long and eventually this technology barrier sort of forced myself away from communication design in general.
ReplyDeleteAs a student my biggest barrier in technology has been my past educators. I've had numerous exercises demanding that I make complicated Excel spreadsheets and scavenge through new websites. However, after I walk away from these assignments I feel that I do not actually retain the knowledge. My teachers would give out extensive directions on hot printer paper noting special buttons and browsing options but when it came to a point where I wanted hands on help, I was out of luck. Either the teacher had not followed the group into the computer lab or simply told us once more to refer to the verbose demands on the stark sheet of paper. Thus leaving me a sense of darkness when it came to technology.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad is an architectural Engineer, and I have always been around computers growing up. He designs bridges on the computer at work and builds computers for fun. There are five people in my family and we had six computers...I never really took advantage of that fact. Yes, my dad taught me basic computer skills like how to calculate the cost of living on excel and documenting things. Because that's all I knew, computers weren't very interesting to me. I never took art classes growing up, but I tend to choose hobbies that involve using my hands and have no relation to computer technology. I wish that I didn't make my disinterest in what my father uses computers for, a barrier that kept me from exploring how to use computers for my artistic hobbies and projects. I definitely want to teach my students about all the fun things you can do with animation, photography, or even drawing on the computer.
ReplyDeleteThe best illustration I have of teachers tapping in to the potential of technology but never fully utilizing them was my professor for a science class here. We were all required to buy those clickers, and we all had to have them at each class, but the professor used them only for- wait for it- attendance. It was a bad idea in multiple ways because all of us wasted money on those clickers and people could could just send their clicker with someone else and never attend class. There were so many other things that professor could have done with the technology and the fancy receiver and projector but instead she just used it for lousy attendance.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to this, after reading fellow classmate's comments, I have also missed the technology bus and although I've been exposed to technologies a little, I have never been really been taught their usefulness and their wide range of possibilities. My high school was one of those schools that wasn't extremely blessed, but did have two small computer rooms on campus (we were 5A, so this was barely enough to have BCIS) and a gift from Dell of a few laptop carts, and I feel that the school could have done a lot more to utilize the fact that there were computers for the students to use, instead of none at all in the cases of a lot of schools today.
The technology barrier that I have experienced was in my high school computer skills class. The class was to teach us different skills on the computer that we didn’t know. At the beginning of class we were given an assignment and it had step-by-step instructions on what to do, down to the exact buttons to push. The teacher did not teach anything new to us and was only there to answer questions. Halfway through the class I found myself explaining how to do things on the computer to the teacher because she knew less about computers than I did. After that she had me helping the students so that she could get her own work done. Instead of learning and being able to explore anything new on the computer I was stuck doing the teachers job by helping out the other students with the assignments.
ReplyDeleteSince I was introduced to the art world via a digital graphics and animation class in high school, its hard for me to say that I've had boundaries with technology in art. I love technology and trying to incorporate it into art, because its made my life easier in a number of instances. However, all I knew from high school was Adobe Photoshop, so I guess I had a boundary against other creative programs. I would always do everything in Photoshop even if took twice as long, rather than doing a project in a different program unknown to me. I think I still have a boundary with expensive cameras. I can handle my own digital camera, but as soon as I get a DSLR or something in my hands that costs a lot, I get intimidated. I have a lot of friends that are all into different creative mediums, so being around them has helped me break my own barriers with different technologies, as well as educate myself about other technologies and mediums.
ReplyDeleteOne of my first projects in 2D design AP in high school was to create a collage which would be scanned and manipulated on photoshop. I had never used photoshop before, and was at a loss for what to do. I asked my teacher, but his answer wasn't that clear. He asked me what I would like to do; I had no idea photoshop's capabilities. I was then given a semi-demonstration that went way over my head. I asked a fellow student who was very skilled at photoshop to help, but he just told me I should do multiple layers (again over my head). I ended up just playing around with photoshop and simply changing a filter on the top of my piece. To this day, I am unsure of how to use photoshop. A prelesson describing the different editing techniques would have been very helpful.
ReplyDeleteA technology barrier that I experienced was in my science class in high school. My class was learning about different types of bacterias, fungi, etc. The teacher just gave us the microscope without really teaching us how to use them which made it very hard to understand what I was looking at. On top of all of that my class was given a test. The test consisted of pictures of different types of bacterias, etc. and we had to label each one. This was VERY difficult to me considering that I did not know how to use the microscope correctly and ever thing I observed looked like a blurred dot.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest barrier for me when it came to technology in the school setting was just my high school art teacher. She was the only AP certified art teacher at the school, so I was stuck with her throughout Drawing and 2D Design. My classroom had 4-5 Macs, stocked with up-to-date art programs that we were free to use whenever we wanted. But I had the teacher who couldn't understand technology no matter how hard she tried. She wasn't against using the computer, and she even wanted us to embrace technology. She would assign us open projects in photoshop, but she didn't know how to use the program, so she wasn't any help to the students who didn't already know how to use it. Lucky for me, I already knew how to use photoshop, but many of my friends had never used the program in their life. And then on top of everything, in my senior year of high school, our AP Portfolio review went digital. Let's just say I had to do everything by myself at home because my teacher made everything a thousand times more complicated than it was, and I wasn't going to let her screw up my portfolio submission (like she did for a few of my classmates).
ReplyDeleteIt's hard for me to think of technological barriers. I'm 25, just old enough that most of my time in school prior to college was when it wasn't quite financially feasible yet for there to be many computers in most schools, much less having a Mac with photoshop installed in the art room.
ReplyDeleteI suppose an art technology barrier for me could be how my last technology class was taught. We learned 3 programs in as many months. Yes, I understand that they want to teach a lot in a very short time, and to that I say we should have individual courses for this sort of stuff. I went into this course fairly computer savvy, I am self taught in flash, illustrator, and photoshop. If I walked away from that class without having retained anything new, it's hard to imagine the other 25 or so students in my class who were not savvy at all anything out of the course.
Or I guess it boils down to, I feel we need more technology courses for individual programs, rather than trying to do an overview of several in one course and expecting people to walk away with meaningful understanding of the many programs they learned.
Throughout my high school career I was introduced to a wide variety of state of the art technology, but, unfortunately, my teachers lacked the knowledge to use any of this new equipment. I did not view this as a negative, however, as my teacher allowed me to constantly experiment and explore this new technology. I believe this ultimately allowed me to become much more adept with technology.
ReplyDeleteConsidering my education at Cimarron Memorial High School in Nevada did not have enough funding for every classroom to hold computers, I never had much experience with computers. Our High school art class just had tables, chairs, and a blackboard. There were no computers for students to use except for in BCIS Computer Class my freshman year of High School. BCIS was a class where students learned Excel, Word, Powerpoint etc. I did not even get the opportunity to use a computer to produce art until I transferred from UNLV to UNT. University of Nevada Las Vegas did not have art computer labs like we do here at UNT. I never used photoshop, imovie, or adobe until I moved to Texas in 2008. The barrier I have always held has been between myself and the computer now that I have full access to them at UNT. This class is actually opening my mind to the world of technology and art.
ReplyDeletemy middle school and high school in Irving Texas, had tech ed classes.... the worst part about it though was that those classes were the ones that turned my outlook on technology in a negative way. Our school district actually gave all of the high school students laptops, after I entered the 10th grade. But we were not allowed to use them in the majority of our classes because of teachers who turned away technology in the classroom. We ended up having to take a computer class in high school so i decided to take tech ed. Unfortunately our tech ed teacher was always too busy helping with our in school news station that he gave us worksheets, and told us to make movies on the computer and we had approx. 2 weeks to do so.... most of the students were so frustrated most of the time, because most of the students did not know how to use the programs... I mean for most of us this was a blow off class, that we didnt want to be stuck in for 2 hours a day. In high school, i have to say i totally hated technology... other than surfing the web of course.. but as i advanced and have teachers that will actually explain things to me, it has gotten better.. but im still not in love with it!
ReplyDeleteIn my art classes in elementary I cannot recall using technology nor creating art involving technology. In this case the technology barrier was that technology was not planned into the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteIn high school, unless you were enrolled in an advanced studio class in high school or were enrolled in the new media course, students did not have access to computers. When an assignment did involve a printer or computer, the computer lab would get really crammed with other classes. The art department only had two printers available for thirty students or more per class. In this case the technology barrier in high school was the limit in technology supply.
I grew up with my dad working as an architectural drafting teacher in high schools. He first started teaching when he left the drafting industry when I was a kid living in Seattle. He worked at an old inner city school where the teacher before him had only taught hand drafting(this was during the early 90's, so producing with CAD was industry standard by then). There was computers in the room that had never been used. So he had to start from scratch developing a new program for this drafting class. In present times, he is the Wylie, TX ISD drafting teacher for both high schools. At the old high school where he's been for 14 years, things are going well. At the new one, things are different. In his 2 intro classes, there are 40 students, but only 30 computers. There's only 28 chairs. What is comes down to, is that the school has not opened enough elective classes, so students have no where to go. Both money and planning are barriers, but he's adjusting and working with the administrators to get things straitened out.
ReplyDeleteAs a high school student my main experience with technology was a class I was required to take that involved designing a website as well as learning the basics of Microsoft Office. At that time in my life I was very self centered and felt I had more priorities than that class. The teacher tried to keep my class interested in the subject the best she could, but unfortunately she wasn't well trained on what she was being asked to teach either. She was also head of a large school organization so her time was very limited too. So the barriers I've experienced were my teacher, and myself.
ReplyDeleteI have always had and used a Mac. In a great number of art classes some of these Mac programs could be a wonderful asset. If only I knew how to use them to their full extent. Photoshop and Indesign are the main two that I am talking about. More than once in the past year have I had a great idea for a project and been unable to bring it to complete fruition because of my inability to utilize these programs in their entirety. I'm hoping this class will assist me in overcoming that barrier.
ReplyDeleteI went to a performing arts high school in Houston, and the art department was much like this one at UNT. Foundation and drawing classes the first year and various studio classes as we progressed. We were required to take this computer class about art, the main objective of the class was to teach us about documenting our work properly using digital means instead of photo slides, and the program often used was Photoshop. But our teacher was a photography teacher who never worked in a high school setting, and I would go as far to say really didn’t know very much about the medium either. We were giving work sheets to follow that we weren’t allowed to keep that drew out the process instead of giving the simple version. Another semester we had to create an animation on the computer, but once again the class was giving worksheets that were confusing and had a teacher that was very ambivalent to the process. So to sum my experience are teachers who were not willing to work with the students that were lost, and also not teaching short cuts to make the process easier to manage and complete properly.
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