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.
When I was in high school the availability of technology (besides what we brought into the class room) was scarce. I mean, there were COWS in the field across the street from us. This only added to my disability when i came to unt because not only could i not walk i was computer retarded!!! i had to be shown step by step just how to EDIT all of my works so they would be straight... just so they'd be straight. it wasn't the change from windows to mac it was just the general information overload of all the hings you could do with just a computer and a mouse. I think at the very least it is important for art teachers to make these lessons available
We had a program in elementary that was called AR, Accelerated Reading. Each book had a sticker and was designated as a certain level. When you were done reading the book you went to the computer lab and took a reading test. Based on what you got that was how many points you got. The point of this is that this program was the most interactive program with technology in elementary. We didn't have any other learning programs. We basically just played games in computers once a week. The other times we just did this AR program.
In High School we actually had a couple different computer based learning programs. It was fun to have the access in high school but the barrier was that there were too many restrictions. The teachers didn't trust us, you could tell by their instruction. The librarians and administrators banned so many websites from us. It wasn't the greatest resource for information or communication. As far as art production though, it was pretty wonderful.
As a high school senior, they introduced a "graphic design" class into our course offerings. It was taught in the computer programming/basic computer skills classroom. The computers in that room were older PCs, and the only program we used was Photoshop 7 or something outdated like that. There was a color printer and a black and white printer, and I don't remember a scanner. The instruction of that class consisted of links to Photoshop tutorials or printed packets of tutorials that we were supposed to follow along and mimic.
Generally speaking, no one knew how to do anything except for this one kid who was creating beautiful illustrations because he taught himself Photoshop throughout high school. I made some super lame comps of a CD cover and an "advertisement," which ended up placing in contests. Looking back, the expectations of my teacher AND that competition must have been pretty low.
The end of the semester could not have arrived soon enough, and I spent as many days as possible getting a hall pass to the art room so I could work on "real projects." Where the teacher (and maybe the administration) had intended for it to be a creative technology class, there was no training, instruction, or support in place for the educator. As students, the message we understood was that the class was unimportant, irrelevant, and inapplicable.
There were a lot of opportunities to use technology in my high school. In the art room were three computers, all for student use. We only ever really used them for editing pictures that we were going to draw. The was not much emphasis on learning how to use programs on it. However, it was required that we all take a multimedia class, for a semester. In that class we each had an individual mac computer, where we learned Photoshop, imovie, and garage band.
in high school, my art teacher was only provided one computer for all of his art students. i'm not sure how much this effected his other classes, but being in AP art i know it was past the point of infuriating. it was a fairly new program... if i remember correctly we were the first ap art class our high school accepted. when it came time to create our portfolios, all of us (the class was surprisingly big... about 9 students enrolled) had to use the computer to compile the images we wanted to submit. considering that we all had the same deadline to meet, this made it hard on us to patiently create a portfolio we thought worthy because of time constraints. we all managed to get them done and turned in on time, but it was more stressful than it needed to be.
In my high school there was one computer to every classroom, including the art room. You weren't allowed to get on the computer unless you had permission from the teacher for things like group work or research. In art you could only get on the computer in the art room to use the scanner, BUT we did have one project where we went into the school computer lab for a couple weeks as a class to use Photoshop. The computers in my school weren't up to speed at all and it wasn't uncommon for them to malfunction or have broken parts.
We actually did not have many tech barriers at my high school. It was a small private school with plenty of funding and a tech savvy headmaster who never went anywhere without his blackberry and ipad. We were generally aloud to roam around freely and we had lots of extra empty classrooms and space to do things like video or photography projects. We could even commandeer kids from other classes or from study hall to use as props for pictures. We had multiple computer labs and although there were lots of safety blocks on the computers, most everyone knew how to get around them, though we usually had better things to do than goof off on the Internet during our breaks. The only real barrier we had was that we only had one art teacher for the whole high school and she definitely wanted to focus on traditional art. She would teach the digital photography class and the yearbook class and that was really all we did in terms of Tech + Art in class. The librarian also thought a computer/information/tech class, but I’m not really sure what they did there. People did more technology-based projects outside of class for extra curricular things and for our daily assembly than they did in class. Though we didn’t have many barriers at all, we definitely did not take advantage of all the opportunity’s and projects that the technology could have provided.
Thinking back I can remember having a mac lab in elementary school but only getting to go there once a week. We played math games and used kid picks and another program to create stories. Later on when I was in GT (gifted and talented) we where allowed to use camcorders and film commercials. We did a little stop motion animation with characters we crated out of this clay that was very light weight when it dried. We also created an almanac with a program called publisher in GT. Id have to say that it was a lot of fun but all of it was outside of the class room. Later on in junior high we had a typing class and in one of my history classes we had a computer. However it was only to be used to play this storm the Alamo game or blow up the outhouse with a cannon ball and the teacher usually was the one controlling it. There where TVs in many of the class rooms that we used for educational videos. So technology was used in our school system but not to the extent that it could have been.
When I was going to elementary school computers and technology were still developing. We did not have computers in the art room at all. In fact my art classes were pretty boring. I hated drawing still life. I didn’t understand it and sometimes I still don’t. We did have a computer lab were we got to go and practice our typing by playing this typing game. I always loved that. I can only imagine how much I would have enjoyed art if technology was introduced there.
As far as the technology barriers are concerned in the school systems, I lucked out. When I was in High School, years ago... If a student wanted to learn about animation, then there was a course offered, but it was not the same class as AP ART. AP ART and Animation were two completely different classes, but each were offered. Luckily for me, I went to a huge highschool, It was actually larger then my University I went to for my undergraduate degree. Of course, that was several years ago, so the technology at that time was not at all what it is today. But,I think at that time my school was at the same speed of what technology had. However, currently in my life I have made the desicion to take a few classes in the hopes to pursuing a MA. Although, it has only been 4 years, since college graduation, but I am very dissapointed to admit that after getting back into school I have realized my previous college was very out-dated in terms of using technology in art. I mean yes, there was the Graphic Arts class, but technology was never really taught or discussed in regards to the relevant use of technology in art. But I am a major believer in traditional art mediums, simply because I love painting and drawing and recognize those media's as my strength. However, it is highly important to recognize technology in art and to incorporate this form into art curriculum. So, then even us skilled traditional artist may be able to broaden our' knowledge and skills, which could be used in so many different fields of technology related to art. Such as the obvious career in Graphic, video, design, clothing design, and so on. Today, there are so many different art related fields within the technology curcuit, and allow artists other career options. But only if we as teacher's are able to communicate the skills needed in technology will more young artist understand and feel more confident in their talents.
There was absolutely no technology in the art class rooms in the public schools that I attended. My art classes are the canon of a high school art class with vase and ap art.
the biggest barrier for me was in high school. There was no interest whats so ever in technology in art, it was focused on painting and drawing. In the art room there was one computer that didn't really work and a scanner that was horrible. My teacher didn't even know how to truly work Photoshop he was just trained in Microsoft Office and was o use to me. It wasn't till college that i learned from a peer of mine not even a teacher.
When I was in high school the only availability to a computer was in the library or in a BCIS class which each student was required for graduation to this class at least once throughout high school. All of the other class rooms had computers but only for the teachers. My art class also only had a computer for the teacher.
When I came to UNT all of the computers on campus are Macs. I have not transferred to mac yet so I have a hard time operating when I use the computer labs at school. The computers on campus, however do have a PC setting but it does not communicate very well. When I save documents on my PC at home and try to print them at school on the PC setting, the printers never cooperate. When I have tried to print them on the MAC setting, the document's format gets reconfigured. I guess I just need to buy a MAC. :-/
I didn't really have that much exposure to technology growing up, unfortunately. When I got to high school, my world completely changed. I fell behind at first because I couldn't type. I would get so frustrated because my teachers would demand that I type up a paper and it would take me a couple hours to finish a page. Then I took keyboarding and it was a huge breakthrough for me. I also took a computers class in high school, where I was taught to use programs such as photoshop and excel. I was really engaged by these classes. They taught me how to approach problems in new and different ways. Im still trying to catch up, honestly. This is my first time using a mac. I just got an iphone a month ago. It's changed my world. I'm constantly googleing stuff. I think its important to embrace technology, especially when it comes to teaching. We are obviously headed in that direction. Some children are extremely advanced when it comes to computers. So, we as teachers should take advantage of this fact and use technology to relate to them and engage them in lessons.
In high school there weren't any computers that students had access to on a regular bases. The only time that computers were used was when teachers wanted students to complete mandatory online assessments. There was one computer room for the entire high school to use for such events. We were not encouraged to use computers except for in one class and that was my psychology class. My psychology teacher, Mr. Player, was a huge apple fan and incorporated his laptop into discussions as often as possible as well as promoting the fact that we should all get some type of computer for ourselves. However I didn't really find myself becoming increasingly interested in technology because it was still such a foreign thing to me.
I've actually had technology barriers in some of my college courses. Mostly I had problems in photography, because my teacher said that we could edit on PCs, but everything we did in that class involved Photoshop specifically, which I didn't own and didn't have the money to buy. Also we had to make contact sheets of our pictures using only a program on macs. There was a barrier, because I didn't own any of the programs that we had to use. Of course, there is the art computer lab, but the week that we had to do this was "art finals" week so everytime I went it would be full of students trying to use the macs and then they had a three hour time limit. It took hours for me to edit photos. It was just hard with the PC/mac division created in the course.
So I have a couple of experiences I want to share about technological barriers.
First is my experience in high school when I was trying to get out of taking PE, I took a class called Ad Design at DHS and because I was attending Ryan High School, for some reason there was some loop hole where I could fill that in instead of PE. This class was the thing that changed my life. I kind of always knew I wanted to be a teacher but I never realized how interested I was in art until I took this class, actually I still seem to find new aspects of this interest as years go by. Anyways, my teacher Ms. Moss, who is still teaching in the DISD program but has since gotten married, was a graphic designer going to night school for certification who just got hired to teach the class. Now we didn't have great computers, I think my XP Dell at home was 2 years ahead of the crappy black box computers we had, but we had updated programs like Photoshop, Flash, and Illustrator. Within the two years I was in the class, Ms. Moss had taken the program to a dying computer class to an award winning class. The last time I talked to Ms. Moss she had moved to the new building out on Loop 288 that houses all the extra curricular, non-sport programs and her set up is NICE; nicer than the graphic design labs I frequented in my undergrad degree. It was her class that got me into graphic design at UTA, which lead me to glassblowing, and well, now I am here in art education.
My other experience happened today when I went to the DMA with my mother for her birthday. We finished viewing the main exhibit and decided to look around some more and we passed by this room that had an exhibition called something like exploring space. My dad and I are fascinated with science and its incorporation with art, however my mother loathes it. She refuses to go to any natural history or science museum. She looked at the sign and said, "No, I don't like the sound of space and art. It sounds too much like science to me. Lets go look at the European Art." I thought this was perplexing and tried to explain how this is the direction that art is going, but she didn't want to have anything to do with it. I find this to be a response to most innovative or scary new ideas with older generations or generations brainwashed by older or non-cooperative individual.
I wasn't really pushed to use a lot of technology in high school. We had computer labs for printing out papers for english class or a research project, but it wasn't until my senior year that my school added a computer class that was required for graduation. That class was an awful experience for me because of the how the class was structured/taught and that it was mostly "business" technology- LOTS excel and writing formal business letters.
Every day consisted of a short "lecture" by the teacher, in which she went through the programs on her own computer as it was projected onto the wall for the entire room to see (like in this class, except faster). So if you got behind, you were on your own because she wasn't exactly the most patient person and would get easily agitated if we interrupted her presentation because we didn't understand. I don't think she even came over to anyone's computer to help a student. And then after the demo, we would have the rest of class to do the assignment/ ask other students for help/ do typing exercises.
I found out through other students that there was a graphic design class, but I was never personally encouraged to sign up for it. I think it was for advanced art students.
I really wish that technology was offered in my beginning art classes because it wasn't until I was already in college for a couple years that I learned about all the different jobs out there that incorporate an education of art and computers. I think that by showing high school students those kinds of opportunities - like a career day - will make them more excited to engage in using the computer for art class.
In my private school, there was little funding given to technololgy. We had a computer class with five computers in it. We had no computers for teacher use or student use. My art teacher tried to help by inviting us out to her house for "workshop" weekends. I remember wondering why we had to go to the art teachers house to do anything on the computer. She wanted to use photoshop. She was in her late fifties and early sixties, but she still wanted us to digitally alter our work. I think that the biggest barrier for technology in my life was financing.
In elementary we had a few computers in the art room. We were allowed to use them occasionally for art research about projects we were doing in class. So although availability was limited, we got to have self-directed learning through research. The barrier faced was that in elementary was that the art teacher changed almost every year or so. I am unsure as to why but this had a very paralyzing effect on our art education. Some would be amazing art educators who gave a a sort of structured freedom to explore and learn while others would rather turn on the tv and pop in a movie.
(I know this is probably too late, but I really wanted to post it anyways.)
In my high school we had a decent inflow of money so there was both a Digital Graphics, and an Advanced Animation class, I ended up taking both. In Digital Graphics the teacher had to spend all summer learning the processes we learned, however she taught it well, and we learned a lot. The next semester in Advanced Animation the teacher knew a lot less, and asked me several times to help her with the subject matter, on top of that, most of the students would not take her seriously. Her barrier was that the students knew more about what she was trying to teach than she knew herself, and therefore caused unnecessary classroom drama.
When I was in high school the availability of technology (besides what we brought into the class room) was scarce. I mean, there were COWS in the field across the street from us. This only added to my disability when i came to unt because not only could i not walk i was computer retarded!!! i had to be shown step by step just how to EDIT all of my works so they would be straight... just so they'd be straight. it wasn't the change from windows to mac it was just the general information overload of all the hings you could do with just a computer and a mouse. I think at the very least it is important for art teachers to make these lessons available
ReplyDeleteWe had a program in elementary that was called AR, Accelerated Reading. Each book had a sticker and was designated as a certain level. When you were done reading the book you went to the computer lab and took a reading test. Based on what you got that was how many points you got. The point of this is that this program was the most interactive program with technology in elementary. We didn't have any other learning programs. We basically just played games in computers once a week. The other times we just did this AR program.
ReplyDeleteIn High School we actually had a couple different computer based learning programs. It was fun to have the access in high school but the barrier was that there were too many restrictions. The teachers didn't trust us, you could tell by their instruction. The librarians and administrators banned so many websites from us. It wasn't the greatest resource for information or communication. As far as art production though, it was pretty wonderful.
As a high school senior, they introduced a "graphic design" class into our course offerings. It was taught in the computer programming/basic computer skills classroom. The computers in that room were older PCs, and the only program we used was Photoshop 7 or something outdated like that. There was a color printer and a black and white printer, and I don't remember a scanner. The instruction of that class consisted of links to Photoshop tutorials or printed packets of tutorials that we were supposed to follow along and mimic.
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking, no one knew how to do anything except for this one kid who was creating beautiful illustrations because he taught himself Photoshop throughout high school. I made some super lame comps of a CD cover and an "advertisement," which ended up placing in contests. Looking back, the expectations of my teacher AND that competition must have been pretty low.
The end of the semester could not have arrived soon enough, and I spent as many days as possible getting a hall pass to the art room so I could work on "real projects." Where the teacher (and maybe the administration) had intended for it to be a creative technology class, there was no training, instruction, or support in place for the educator. As students, the message we understood was that the class was unimportant, irrelevant, and inapplicable.
There were a lot of opportunities to use technology in my high school. In the art room were three computers, all for student use. We only ever really used them for editing pictures that we were going to draw. The was not much emphasis on learning how to use programs on it. However, it was required that we all take a multimedia class, for a semester. In that class we each had an individual mac computer, where we learned Photoshop, imovie, and garage band.
ReplyDeletein high school, my art teacher was only provided one computer for all of his art students. i'm not sure how much this effected his other classes, but being in AP art i know it was past the point of infuriating. it was a fairly new program... if i remember correctly we were the first ap art class our high school accepted. when it came time to create our portfolios, all of us (the class was surprisingly big... about 9 students enrolled) had to use the computer to compile the images we wanted to submit. considering that we all had the same deadline to meet, this made it hard on us to patiently create a portfolio we thought worthy because of time constraints. we all managed to get them done and turned in on time, but it was more stressful than it needed to be.
ReplyDeleteIn my high school there was one computer to every classroom, including the art room. You weren't allowed to get on the computer unless you had permission from the teacher for things like group work or research. In art you could only get on the computer in the art room to use the scanner, BUT we did have one project where we went into the school computer lab for a couple weeks as a class to use Photoshop. The computers in my school weren't up to speed at all and it wasn't uncommon for them to malfunction or have broken parts.
ReplyDeleteWe actually did not have many tech barriers at my high school. It was a small private school with plenty of funding and a tech savvy headmaster who never went anywhere without his blackberry and ipad. We were generally aloud to roam around freely and we had lots of extra empty classrooms and space to do things like video or photography projects. We could even commandeer kids from other classes or from study hall to use as props for pictures. We had multiple computer labs and although there were lots of safety blocks on the computers, most everyone knew how to get around them, though we usually had better things to do than goof off on the Internet during our breaks.
ReplyDeleteThe only real barrier we had was that we only had one art teacher for the whole high school and she definitely wanted to focus on traditional art. She would teach the digital photography class and the yearbook class and that was really all we did in terms of Tech + Art in class. The librarian also thought a computer/information/tech class, but I’m not really sure what they did there. People did more technology-based projects outside of class for extra curricular things and for our daily assembly than they did in class.
Though we didn’t have many barriers at all, we definitely did not take advantage of all the opportunity’s and projects that the technology could have provided.
Thinking back I can remember having a mac lab in elementary school but only getting to go there once a week. We played math games and used kid picks and another program to create stories. Later on when I was in GT (gifted and talented) we where allowed to use camcorders and film commercials. We did a little stop motion animation with characters we crated out of this clay that was very light weight when it dried. We also created an almanac with a program called publisher in GT. Id have to say that it was a lot of fun but all of it was outside of the class room. Later on in junior high we had a typing class and in one of my history classes we had a computer. However it was only to be used to play this storm the Alamo game or blow up the outhouse with a cannon ball and the teacher usually was the one controlling it. There where TVs in many of the class rooms that we used for educational videos. So technology was used in our school system but not to the extent that it could have been.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was going to elementary school computers and technology were still developing. We did not have computers in the art room at all. In fact my art classes were pretty boring. I hated drawing still life. I didn’t understand it and sometimes I still don’t. We did have a computer lab were we got to go and practice our typing by playing this typing game. I always loved that. I can only imagine how much I would have enjoyed art if technology was introduced there.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the technology barriers are concerned in the school systems, I lucked out. When I was in High School, years ago... If a student wanted to learn about animation, then there was a course offered, but it was not the same class as AP ART. AP ART and Animation were two completely different classes, but each were offered. Luckily for me, I went to a huge highschool, It was actually larger then my University I went to for my undergraduate degree. Of course, that was several years ago, so the technology at that time was not at all what it is today. But,I think at that time my school was at the same speed of what technology had. However, currently in my life I have made the desicion to take a few classes in the hopes to pursuing a MA. Although, it has only been 4 years, since college graduation, but I am very dissapointed to admit that after getting back into school I have realized my previous college was very out-dated in terms of using technology in art. I mean yes, there was the Graphic Arts class, but technology was never really taught or discussed in regards to the relevant use of technology in art. But I am a major believer in traditional art mediums, simply because I love painting and drawing and recognize those media's as my strength. However, it is highly important to recognize technology in art and to incorporate this form into art curriculum. So, then even us skilled traditional artist may be able to broaden our' knowledge and skills, which could be used in so many different fields of technology related to art. Such as the obvious career in Graphic, video, design, clothing design, and so on. Today, there are so many different art related fields within the technology curcuit, and allow artists other career options. But only if we as teacher's are able to communicate the skills needed in technology will more young artist understand and feel more confident in their talents.
ReplyDeleteThere was absolutely no technology in the art class rooms in the public schools that I attended. My art classes are the canon of a high school art class with vase and ap art.
ReplyDeletethe biggest barrier for me was in high school. There was no interest whats so ever in technology in art, it was focused on painting and drawing. In the art room there was one computer that didn't really work and a scanner that was horrible. My teacher didn't even know how to truly work Photoshop he was just trained in Microsoft Office and was o use to me. It wasn't till college that i learned from a peer of mine not even a teacher.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in high school the only availability to a computer was in the library or in a BCIS class which each student was required for graduation to this class at least once throughout high school. All of the other class rooms had computers but only for the teachers. My art class also only had a computer for the teacher.
ReplyDeleteWhen I came to UNT all of the computers on campus are Macs. I have not transferred to mac yet so I have a hard time operating when I use the computer labs at school. The computers on campus, however do have a PC setting but it does not communicate very well. When I save documents on my PC at home and try to print them at school on the PC setting, the printers never cooperate. When I have tried to print them on the MAC setting, the document's format gets reconfigured. I guess I just need to buy a MAC. :-/
I didn't really have that much exposure to technology growing up, unfortunately. When I got to high school, my world completely changed. I fell behind at first because I couldn't type. I would get so frustrated because my teachers would demand that I type up a paper and it would take me a couple hours to finish a page. Then I took keyboarding and it was a huge breakthrough for me. I also took a computers class in high school, where I was taught to use programs such as photoshop and excel. I was really engaged by these classes. They taught me how to approach problems in new and different ways. Im still trying to catch up, honestly. This is my first time using a mac. I just got an iphone a month ago. It's changed my world. I'm constantly googleing stuff. I think its important to embrace technology, especially when it comes to teaching. We are obviously headed in that direction. Some children are extremely advanced when it comes to computers. So, we as teachers should take advantage of this fact and use technology to relate to them and engage them in lessons.
ReplyDeleteIn high school there weren't any computers that students had access to on a regular bases. The only time that computers were used was when teachers wanted students to complete mandatory online assessments. There was one computer room for the entire high school to use for such events. We were not encouraged to use computers except for in one class and that was my psychology class. My psychology teacher, Mr. Player, was a huge apple fan and incorporated his laptop into discussions as often as possible as well as promoting the fact that we should all get some type of computer for ourselves. However I didn't really find myself becoming increasingly interested in technology because it was still such a foreign thing to me.
ReplyDeleteI've actually had technology barriers in some of my college courses. Mostly I had problems in photography, because my teacher said that we could edit on PCs, but everything we did in that class involved Photoshop specifically, which I didn't own and didn't have the money to buy. Also we had to make contact sheets of our pictures using only a program on macs. There was a barrier, because I didn't own any of the programs that we had to use. Of course, there is the art computer lab, but the week that we had to do this was "art finals" week so everytime I went it would be full of students trying to use the macs and then they had a three hour time limit. It took hours for me to edit photos. It was just hard with the PC/mac division created in the course.
ReplyDeleteSo I have a couple of experiences I want to share about technological barriers.
ReplyDeleteFirst is my experience in high school when I was trying to get out of taking PE, I took a class called Ad Design at DHS and because I was attending Ryan High School, for some reason there was some loop hole where I could fill that in instead of PE. This class was the thing that changed my life. I kind of always knew I wanted to be a teacher but I never realized how interested I was in art until I took this class, actually I still seem to find new aspects of this interest as years go by. Anyways, my teacher Ms. Moss, who is still teaching in the DISD program but has since gotten married, was a graphic designer going to night school for certification who just got hired to teach the class. Now we didn't have great computers, I think my XP Dell at home was 2 years ahead of the crappy black box computers we had, but we had updated programs like Photoshop, Flash, and Illustrator. Within the two years I was in the class, Ms. Moss had taken the program to a dying computer class to an award winning class. The last time I talked to Ms. Moss she had moved to the new building out on Loop 288 that houses all the extra curricular, non-sport programs and her set up is NICE; nicer than the graphic design labs I frequented in my undergrad degree. It was her class that got me into graphic design at UTA, which lead me to glassblowing, and well, now I am here in art education.
My other experience happened today when I went to the DMA with my mother for her birthday. We finished viewing the main exhibit and decided to look around some more and we passed by this room that had an exhibition called something like exploring space. My dad and I are fascinated with science and its incorporation with art, however my mother loathes it. She refuses to go to any natural history or science museum. She looked at the sign and said, "No, I don't like the sound of space and art. It sounds too much like science to me. Lets go look at the European Art." I thought this was perplexing and tried to explain how this is the direction that art is going, but she didn't want to have anything to do with it. I find this to be a response to most innovative or scary new ideas with older generations or generations brainwashed by older or non-cooperative individual.
I wasn't really pushed to use a lot of technology in high school. We had computer labs for printing out papers for english class or a research project, but it wasn't until my senior year that my school added a computer class that was required for graduation. That class was an awful experience for me because of the how the class was structured/taught and that it was mostly "business" technology- LOTS excel and writing formal business letters.
ReplyDeleteEvery day consisted of a short "lecture" by the teacher, in which she went through the programs on her own computer as it was projected onto the wall for the entire room to see (like in this class, except faster). So if you got behind, you were on your own because she wasn't exactly the most patient person and would get easily agitated if we interrupted her presentation because we didn't understand. I don't think she even came over to anyone's computer to help a student. And then after the demo, we would have the rest of class to do the assignment/ ask other students for help/ do typing exercises.
I found out through other students that there was a graphic design class, but I was never personally encouraged to sign up for it. I think it was for advanced art students.
I really wish that technology was offered in my beginning art classes because it wasn't until I was already in college for a couple years that I learned about all the different jobs out there that incorporate an education of art and computers. I think that by showing high school students those kinds of opportunities - like a career day - will make them more excited to engage in using the computer for art class.
In my private school, there was little funding given to technololgy. We had a computer class with five computers in it. We had no computers for teacher use or student use. My art teacher tried to help by inviting us out to her house for "workshop" weekends. I remember wondering why we had to go to the art teachers house to do anything on the computer. She wanted to use photoshop. She was in her late fifties and early sixties, but she still wanted us to digitally alter our work. I think that the biggest barrier for technology in my life was financing.
ReplyDeleteIn elementary we had a few computers in the art room. We were allowed to use them occasionally for art research about projects we were doing in class. So although availability was limited, we got to have self-directed learning through research. The barrier faced was that in elementary was that the art teacher changed almost every year or so. I am unsure as to why but this had a very paralyzing effect on our art education. Some would be amazing art educators who gave a a sort of structured freedom to explore and learn while others would rather turn on the tv and pop in a movie.
ReplyDelete(I know this is probably too late, but I really wanted to post it anyways.)
ReplyDeleteIn my high school we had a decent inflow of money so there was both a Digital Graphics, and an Advanced Animation class, I ended up taking both. In Digital Graphics the teacher had to spend all summer learning the processes we learned, however she taught it well, and we learned a lot. The next semester in Advanced Animation the teacher knew a lot less, and asked me several times to help her with the subject matter, on top of that, most of the students would not take her seriously. Her barrier was that the students knew more about what she was trying to teach than she knew herself, and therefore caused unnecessary classroom drama.