Category: Art

Mr. Warlick has had some wonderful commentary about the new literacy in his blog and in his podcasts. Long story short: old literacy = reading & writing, but new literacy = reading, writing, instant messaging, blogging, wikis, and any other way modern technology uses language nowadays. It’s important to stress the new literacy because it involves skills used in the “real world” but not skills that are traditionally taught in the classroom. Does this catch your interest? Great! While you let David Warlick’s pages load in other windows allow me to entertain you some more.This whole idea of new literacy is interesting to me partially because of the parallels you can and can’t draw to the world of Art. You see, there was a time when the only art that would be taught in a serious school was the kind that would show up in a museum. This was placed into three categories: sculpture (usually stone or metal), drawing (“real” drawings, not those childish cartoon doodles!), & painting. This triad of genres is often referred to as “high art.”

Naturally, everything else fits into the realm of “low art,” although it’s also referred to by that wonderful word: “Kitsch.” Crafts, cartoons, photography, printmaking, advertising, anything that reflected pop culture, etc. – any person that did these things and called themselves artists was setting themselves up for ridicule.

But time moved on, as anyone who’s taken an “Art Since 1950” course can attest to. Many photographers learned the rules of composition from established painters. Andy Warhol did things with silkscreening that made the world question the boundaries of art. Roy Lichtenstein elevated cheap cartoons to the level of high art by hand painting things to look like they were mass-produced. “High” and “Low” are terms still used today, but the two circles in that Venn diagram have been overlapping more and more every year.

Then came computers, the GIF and JPG files, scanning, digital photography, computer generated images (CGI), and much more. Most of this high-tech stuff has come late enough in the game to simply ride it’s way into the art mainstream on the coattails of the postmodern art movements.

So you see, most artists have already won their battle for the new literacy. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for those of a more verbal and less visual nature. What, I ask, is the difference between moving from a textbook to a wiki and moving from a museum to a flikr account? True, the textbook and the museum both still have elevated status in our society, but online ways of sharing information are increasing in popularity and slowly eating away at the market share of the older media.

And through all of this, I still see a comparison to high art vs. low art. Over time it became high art and low art, and today there are many (including myself) who would tell you that high art is low art.

I can’t wait for the written word to catch up to us.

As always, your comments are very much welcome.

That’s right, analog. Just because you can go digital doesn’t mean you should go digital with everything.

No, I’m not one of those people who still only listens to records because I think they sound nicer, but analog does have it’s benefits.

I decided to write about this after reading about a study where technology was found to have no positive impact on student performance. In fact, the study said they did better if they didn’t have computers. Shocking, I know. As a culture, educators often do tend to think (even if only subconsciously) that a computer is a magical device that will alter our students’ DNA to make their brainpower increase tenfold. (Edit: Although technology can and does help raise test scores in some instances.)

You see it’s not whether or not you’re using technology, it’s whether or not you’re a good teacher. A shiny new Macintosh will not magically make your student ace his or her SAT because it’s not a magic pill. However if you already are a good teacher, the increased use of technology can be a boon to the classroom as you now are better able to address the multiple intelligences found among your students – provided you do not then decide to get lazy and let the educational software do all the work for you. (I’ve seen that happen too, fortunately not at my current place of employment.)

This is even more obvious in an Art classroom. I love technology – I routinely play around with computers, digital cameras, digital video, web pages, RSS feeds, podcasts, the list goes on. I’m planning on having my 6th graders make a video for the upcoming multicultural dinner, and I’m really excited about it too.

However, I don’t do these things in every class. There’s still something to be said for the act of putting a pencil onto paper, for painting over crayons with watercolors and watching the crayon show through, and for following a series of folds to make an origami frog that can jump across your table. Sure, I could do some of this on a computer, but I could not do it as well.

A computer, like any other educational resource, is a tool – and tools are only useful if they’re used for the jobs for which they are best suited. Perhaps that aforementioned study found such low progress because too many people thought you could hammer a nail with a screwdriver. You can get it to work, but it’s a lot more effort than using the right tool for the right job.

So I’m all for computers and digital arts. Bring on the 1 to 1 computer/student ratio, I’m all for it!

… but when I show up to teach your class you shouldn’t be surprised to see my cart’s still full of markers, crayons and paint. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an art supply budget to complete.