Week 5

For this week, we completed readings about Paulo Freire’s philosophy of teaching. When he was young, he found a need for literacy in the lower class, which inspired him to dedicate his life to finding a solution. Freire ended up teaching adults how to read in 45 days. He believed that education was a way to rise above poverty. His method of teaching people how to read was personalized to the group of people that he was working with. He identified the needs of the group in terms of what they wanted to learn and what they needed to learn to be successful in their field. With this information, he was able to tailor the lessons to the group and knew that they would care about what they were learning. Overall, Freire’s philosophy is that education belongs to everyone, no matter what their background is. The goal of education is to raise the consciousness of the human being through the problematization of their existence, reducing naiveté, and becoming more critical about their reality. A contemporary example of this are the programs that teach CS for all. Their goal is for people to understand the devices and internet services they use daily; which highlights the right for people to learn about the things they use everyday, and to become critical thinkers about their realities.

As the discussion progressed, we were asked to think about the connection between politics and education. Besides the overall issue of accessibility to education based on politics, there are connections closer to the classroom. I immediately thought of a passage that I was assigned in another class about how to promote democracy in the art classroom. It highlighted how the way people are taught can contribute to their understanding of what democracy is. By giving students the freedom to express themselves and make choices, a teacher is demonstrating a democracy. While reading about Paulo Freire, there was a concept that came up called banking. The banking concept says that teachers teach as if they know everything and the students know nothing, as if they are making some sort of transaction where knowledge is a privilege that teachers hold over students. This kind of pedagogy does not promote a democratic society. It is usually the teacher’s individual pedagogy and the school culture that determines the kind of political society that is demonstrated.

We then discussed ways that technology can lend itself in promoting a democratic society. While it was generally agreed that technology could offer students choices and freedom, it was also noted that the technology had to be used with intention. I mean, that technology could not be used for technology’s sake, it has to be used mindfully. Just because a school has access to iPads doesn’t make the students use it to deepen their learning. I believe that it is the teacher’s job to find a way to use the technology that benefits learning. Because, regardless of what the technology was designed to do, students usually find another way to use its functions. With that in mind, it becomes the teachers job to regulate and guide their learning using the technology, while hopefully inspiring them to find other ways to use the technology to their advantage. (Which reminds me of my experience in my elementary technology class that gave me the freedom to explore and use a computer program differently than what was intended.)

One way of doing this is by making the learning relevant to what kinds of technology students use and their interests. In another class, I co-wrote a lesson sequence about students using iPhones to make their own creative content like they see on social media. In this way, students are learning formal filmmaking skills, but also feeling like they can be included in the technological world around them, which is important for adolescents to feel noticed. I believe that with the power of engagement in materials, a teacher can create a successful lesson like that one. I also know how difficult it could be for some to think about technology in another way than its intended function. While it is not easy in certain subjects, I fully believe that it is the teachers job to do so in order to keep up with society.

Week 4

In class, we focused on the readings from last week and this week that brought the theories of how children learn from Piaget, Papert, and Vygotsky.

Papert discussed the importance of tools, media, and context in human development. He found that these tools were in conversation with the people who made them. By humans engaging in material to make and use these technologies, they learn more. In maker education, a student should be guided by the teacher to learn by exploring with trial and error. Then, taking time to step back and reflect about the processes that they discovered so that they understand what they accomplished. Reflection is what makes the learning deeper and meaningful. Unlike Piaget, Papert did not believe that cognitive development is a linear process. Papert believed that constantly engaging in the world around you makes you a constant learner. This makes cognition into a cycle from concrete to abstract in every learning situation.

Today’s class discussion reminded me of lectures by Judy Burton in the art education program. She speaks about how children need time to reflect on the processes that they used while making in order to dedicate it to their knowledge/repertoire of artistic skills. Without the reflection component of the lesson, they will not be able to commit it to their memories as a technique learned that they could apply in other situations. This prompted me to wonder how a teacher could influence students in art education to realize their processes while making. I was taught that students should be engaged in discussion and open-ended questions to inspire their imaginations for what they could do with material. I thought that getting students to realize this cognitive process is a different arena entirely. One solution that I have seen in schools before, is to keep a journal or blog during the making process. Another solution was to hold meaningful critiques. Critiques are sessions of discussion in a class that is lead/monitored by the teacher. They traditionally have students put their work in the spotlight one by one, while the artist and the rest of the class make comments, ask questions, and make suggestions. But, I find that a lot of students find them boring. Some students sit quietly and listen, while other are engaged and responding to each prompt. I find that most students are bored and not actively listening. One way that this could be combated is by having students take reflective notes on each project during the conversation to be handed in later. Or to have them choose one piece that resonated with them and write a response to it later. These critiques could also be done multiple times over the course of making, to take the pressure off of the final/only discussion at the end. In that way, maybe students would be more invested in their own and their peers artwork.

What I really love about auditing this class, are all of the connections I make to what I know about art education thus far. It is making me realize that there is a lot of shared knowledge between theory in technology and art. I hope that continuing in this class will inspire my future teaching practice in ways that will make me stand out from other art teachers.

The activity for class was to make a visual representation of a theory listed in the presentation. Our group was inspired by Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, which focused on assimilation and accommodation. Through interactions with a person’s environment, the person constructs knowledge by using adaption, which is the interplay of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is applying knowledge to a “new situation” by simplifying the “new situation” to fit within the understandings in your mind. Accommodation is altering your existing knowledge to develop more complex categories in your mind, which changes your cognitive structures in order to learn something new. This prompted us to draw a duck to show how a child would understand what a duck is. First, the duck they could be introduced to is one in the tub. Next, the child would be read a book about a duck, which allows the child to assimilate the drawing of the duck into their own understanding of what a duck is. Then, a child could go to a pack and see a duck fly. In this case, the child would have to change their thinking/categorization of what a duck is to understand there are different kinds of ducks.

Physics Simulation Particle Edits

Since I started playing around with the simulation, I discovered interesting things about the images. While I do not understand the python code that created the physics simulation, I do somewhat understand what it is doing. First, I discovered that the images are a lot bigger than they seem on my screen. When I opened the image up in Adobe Illustrator, I found that the vector points stretch well beyond the artboard. (Depending on the design the simulation created, it went even further than my screen could handle.) The artboard is only 11.11in x 11.11in, which definitely made the full particle design bigger and more complex than what I was originally seeing.

This is a screen shot of what Adobe Illustrator looked like. The small white box is the artboard, what was seen on the screen when I first saw the simulation running.

As I started to edit the images, I took out the excess vector points that went off of the artboard. Partly because they were not as visually interesting as the rest of the piece, but also because I wanted to keep it authentic to my first experience seeing the simulation. With the first piece that I edited, I found that it was similar to a project I did in my undergrad career where we changed an imaged into polygonal geometric designs.

This is the polygonal design I created based off of a doodle I made in high school. I always like going back to my old artworks when doing something different, or just in general for inspiration. The original was done in pencil and ball point pen on a lined piece of notebook paper. Then I recreated it on water color paper with water color paints, pen/ink, and salt. The salt was put strategically onto the surface before and after I was painting to get cool effects of color and texture. I find that reinterpreting an image different ways was an open way of exploring new techniques and skills that I would not have been able to gain in teacher-centered lessons or “transmittable” experiences, the experience I had with materials would not have been as rich. But, what should be noted is that I did this on my own. I was not prompted/inspired by a teacher to make an image like this or recreate it in watercolor. The only result of teacher influence was to make it into a polygonal design, which was originally assigned to us as a polygonal portrait of a person. I have always been a student to take creative assignments into my own hands to make it more fun and more me, so that’s what I did. I hope that I could empower my students to do the same in open exploration so they could find their own techniques like I did.

Instead of creating the shapes myself, I was selecting the shapes made from the program and coloring them how I saw fit. As I was doing this, I found that some of the shapes were hidden behind the others. In other words, the simulation was showing me a two-dimensional image, when it was really a three-dimensional “thing.” (Or was this dependent on the order that I turned on the visual filters on the simulation? Or was it the way that the file was being interpreted?) I am hoping that as I continue my side project, I understand how these results should be understood as objects rather than a flat digital thing. Maybe, I could interpret it to the point where I could create a 3D printed model of one of them.

“Particle 8”

Below are pictures of some of the edits I made. The first four are of the same particle design. Each image shows the different layers of the image so you can fully see what they look like. With this edit, “particle 8,” I tried to make it a slight variation from the original image. Each layer/section of shapes were colored in various shades of their original color. I also arranged the colors so that it would give the images look more three-dimensional.

In this version, I made the yellow vector drawing into black holes.

In this version, I made the yellow vector drawing into black holes while showing another layer with the yellow vector lines to define the shapes.

Week 3

During class, we discussed the way that students think and how they might be taught. We began by covering what behaviorism is, which is detailed in Catherine Twomey Fosnot and Randall Stewart Perry’s Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning (2005). Behaviorism is the theory that learning is based in peoples’ behavioral responses to physical stimuli (p. 1). The learner is assumed to be a passive, and will not learn unless they have incentive to. These incentives lead to learners being shaped by their environment since they need external motivation to learn. The catalyst for learning creates specific behaviors that the environment encourages. When behaviorist learners are assessed, and respond correctly, it is assumed that they know the content. The content that they regurgitate is evidence of the mastery of behavior that they were positively enforced to follow. It would be a leap to assume that a learner truly knows something if they only respond with the right answer. The conversation continued to examples of how this theory was viewed by others over time. BF Skinner, the “father of behaviorism.” He did a study that involved training pigeons to play ping pong. He did this with positive reinforcement, which awarded the pigeon who knocked the ball off of the table with food. This study proved to others that complex behaviors could be taught through rewards. In short, knowledge is learned through behavioral reinforcements. While it is a valid theory in some circumstances, it is not the key to keep learning and creating a life long learner. This is particularly important today because of the need for students to develop 21st Century Skills. These are the more complex skills that are needed to succeed in today’s world, which are not achieved unless deeper learning takes place. This kind of learning is needed to apply knowledge in various situations.

After discussing the readings and what is required for deeper learning, we did an activity where we organized statements into categories that describes the learner, describes the learning process, and describes the nature of knowledge. Then, we analyzed the big ideas, tensions of ideas, and questions from the statements. From this activity, I was able to better understand the differences between the behaviorist and constructivist theories. Since it was a group activity, it was also helpful to talk to others about what they thought about the statements and the theories overall. After organizing, we engaged in a discussion that reinforced the idea that knowledge cannot be told to someone, and be expected to have deeply understood what they were told. True understanding of a subject would allow students to transfer their knowledge of one subject to another in order to enrich both experiences. It also suggested that learning takes place indirectly, and the counter argument that if two children are demonstrating the same knowledge if taught the behaviorist method, then what validity does the constructivist method have?

While the discussion went on, I was constantly reminded of the lessons I learned in my own program. As John Dewey, educator and philosopher, said “learning by doing” is essential for students, my program advocates for children learning through experiences made for them by teachers. I was also reminded of a class I was in last semester called, Technology and School Change. Specifically, while discussing school change, it was concluded that school culture has a huge influence on overall change. If a single teacher wants to encourage learning for learning’s sake in a school that is run by behaviorist theory, then their efforts will surely fail. This reminds me that regardless of constructivist theory having “no structure,” there needs to be a structure/system that values that kind of learning. Without it, students would not be deep learners. On the other hand, one could say that that is just a form of behaviorism where students are rewarded by their desire for learning.

Personally, this debate inspires me to find a balance between both theories. I find myself back at the same dilemma with my own artistic development. During my grade school years, I was motivated by the praise of others and grades. I was taught all of the technical skills of art, which gave me the gift to represent the relationship I have with the world around me. While this kind of learning gave me the tools to do this, they did not teach me how. Which is a skill I am still working on today. For the longest time, I thought that the only kind of art was “art for arts sake.” It confused me when I was in my undergraduate program and professors were criticizing my work for not having a “point” to it. (Their criticism did not give me the help I needed for expressing myself deeper, but they criticized my work anyways.) It was not until I came to Teachers College where I began to create more works that were more personal to me and my experiences. I felt safer to do so, and am thankful for the skills I have learned over the years to accomplish exactly what I wanted. I also feel confident to explore different techniques in various materials as well. Point being, my artistic development has been shaped by both behaviorist and constructivist methods. I know that deeper learning took place in a constructivist environment, where that kind of learning was appropriate/accepted. But, I am not sure it would have worked fully in my high school environment. It also troubles me that I would not be as successful as I am (artistically) if not for my grade school education, and the many out of school classes I attended. Again, where is the balance? My art education program teaches us that students will learn the technical skills if they are able to openly explore materials and ideas with the guidance of teachers, and I agree. I am still learning about how to insert technique and skill into open-ended lessons.

Towards the end of class, we watched videos that demonstrated Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. In one of them, a 3yr old girl was asked to draw a picture of a triangle after looking at another drawing of a triangle. There was no other instruction but to draw it. The child drew an amorphic shape that had some semblance of three corners. It made me think about the ways that I could have helped that child’s development, cognitively and artistically. I would have had the child describe to me what she saw, then trace it with her fingers, and maybe hold a triangular object. I am not sure what would happen, but based on what I know about children and their capacity for learning through touch and the environment around them, I hope that it would improve her drawing. In that way, she would have had a better understanding of what a triangle is through the open exploration and guidance by a teacher. This reminds me of the experience I had in my technology class during elementary school. While I was able to find a new technique on the program we were exploring, I do not remember much else. It probably means that the teach did not foster this kind of learning further than the lesson that day. With these two ideas in mind, it is important for me to remember that in a sequence of lessons, a teacher should be recalling skills students learned in other lessons and encouraging reflection from students to get them to understand what they learned.

Week 2

As stated in the previous post, I expected to question many more aspects within the realm of technology and art education. This is exactly what happened this week.

At the end of the last week, we were left thinking about objects or events in our life that drove our passions and informed our thinking process. During class, we discussed a few passages that other students wrote. From this, I found that a lot of people were inspired by their interests and focused on the exploration aspect of learning. Most people were excited about the feeling of playing with an idea or tool, and finding out something extraordinary that they could do with it. As the discussion went on, a student brought up an interesting point about the best way to inspire that intuitive/exploratory thinking in students when they approach projects. At first, it was definitely a head stumper. But then I thought back to my time in the art education department.

In my program, we often talk about how to engage students in art making. When students begin projects, teachers should engage them in a dialogue. These dialogues should entice the students into find their interests within the prompt. (The project should call upon the students interests, regardless of the dialogue.) During the dialogues, they would ask students open ended questions. For example, if they were working with clay, a teacher might ask them, “How many ways can you change the shape of the clay? What about the texture?” From there, students would explore the material on their own terms and interact with it freely with the direction in mind: how can I change this piece of clay? After exploration, students would be asked to share what they found and teach each other their techniques. This way, students show their understanding of the material with each other and prove to teachers that they are using it effectively. If there is a direct learning goal in mind for a technique, the time to do it would be after they explore/play. This way, a teacher is not negating the personal experience they had with the clay, they would just add to their repertoire of skills. Following material exploration, students would be starting to think in terms of the project. Depending on the subject, the teacher would continue to ask them open-ended questions that make them think about their own lives/experiences that could relate to the prompt. From there, students would be aided by the teacher to make their artworks.

Based on what I know about dialogues in lessons, I was able to deduct a theory about how to keep students engaged in the same way with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) classes. Conducting an effective dialogue that engages the students interests with the problem in front of them should help inspire them to work on it, and enable their problem solving skills.

During class, we also touched on cognitive development and its influence in how people learn. This reminded me of my time in the developmental psychology of adolescents class that I took last semester. The connection between how people think and how people learn seems obvious, but why don’t all teachers do this then? (But, that’s a point to be explored another day.) What I found interesting was how the role of technology could be looked at, in terms of a students cognitive development. While reading Mindstorms (1980), by Seymour Papert, it is detailed about his outlook on Piaget’s theories about concrete and formal operational thinking. Concrete operational thinking is a developmental step that Piaget theorized children go through. This means that they are not able to think deeper and in terms of future possibilities, in other words, they only see what is in front of them. Formal operational thinking happens later in development, where an individual is able to consider notions that have not happened yet. They are able to think more abstractly and make connections that they would not have been able to make before. Understanding how people develop their cognitive abilities is important when creating lessons for students, after all, you would not want to try to teach something that is too easy or too over their heads to comprehend. Papert believes that abstract concepts, that are only understood by formal operational thinkers, can be understood concretely with the help of technology (p. 21).

I feel on the fence about his statement about the benefit of technology. In one lens, it is important to challenge students to stretch their cognitive development, but not until the point where information goes into one ear and out the other. I see how technology can take abstract notions and simplify it, but I do not see the benefit of that in the long run. Deep learning happens when a student is learning on their own terms so that it resonates with them. But, I worry about how a piece of technology giving them the “answer” in simpler terms could help them apply that knowledge to other aspects of a larger concept. In this way, students would be relying on the technology to complete the section of information they do not fully understand. How could that be beneficial for their learning if the abstract concept is not presented in its intended manner? Why push a concept onto them that they would not understand if not for a piece of technology? I would need another perspective to convince me otherwise. Although, I do believe that technology could be used as a tool to accomplish learning objectives, it should not be used to give students answers they are not cognitively developed to understand.

Towards the end of class, we had the opportunity to work with a physics simulation that used code, Python. This was my first time working with a program like this. There was basic instruction about how to use the main features of the program, along with a basic demo. Based on my lack of knowledge about code and physics, I interpreted the demo as, “Click in or around the grid and it will move. If you look at the code, you can toggle with features and the grid will change.” With this premise, I moved forward fearlessly. I eventually understood what each toggle feature was, but not necessarily how the code worked to change the image or why it moved the way it did. But, I was still proud that I figured out how to change it at all. I began thinking about ways that I could take the moving image in another direction. If I knew how to code at all, I would have tried changing it to do something else. Since I don’t, I found a button that could be pressed to take a still photo of the moving grid. With this, I couldn’t help but wonder how I could apply it to an art project. I thought about how I could combine, replicate, and edit the images aside from the code. What if I translated the digital image into a printed photo? What if I painted it? What if I tried to replicate the functions of code in another medium? So many ideas began flowing about how students could learn about composition and design by using that program, then understanding what the design means in terms of physics.

As a challenge for myself, I decided to edit some photos myself. When the images are saved from the program, they are .svg files. When I tried to open the files, it automatically opened in Adobe Illustrator. Discovering this propelled me into another brain storm of ideas of what I could do with these images. I began to explore how the image was being read in Illustrator, and saw that it was made up of pen points. Using the pen tool in Illustrator is something I am well versed in, and began to edit it. I kept thinking, “How could I change it completely? How could I change it slightly to be more visually pleasing? To what end could I change the image to still be within the constraints of the code? What would it look like if I completely ignored the code and worked with the fundamental principles of design?” The list goes on and on about what I could do with these few photos. The grid below shows pictures of the original screen grabs. The following photos are edits that I have made.

Week 1

I first found out about “Beyond Bits and Atoms” (BBA) from friends I made last semester in the course “Technology and School Change.” The course was only advertised to students that are in the MSTU major at Teachers College, which is why I did not plan on taking it before. The course was brought to Teachers College from Stanford after nine years of success. Many of the students that have went through the course went on to creating their own companies based on the final projects they developed in class. The course is about using creative technologies effectively in education, which I should note, is the most simplified description of the class I could come up with.

I was hoping that by taking this course, I would better understand how to use creative technologies so that I could relevantly use them in an art classroom. I find that the “new thing” for art education is to survive in education by using technology in the curriculum. By “survive” I mean that they are saved from being cut from schools. Whether it be because a school does not see the value of art, or because of budget evaluations. Many believe that revamping art education to include “21st century learning” (technology) will save them. But, there is also the issue of getting a budget to fund those new technologies. So, there are two aspects to consider. One, make sure that the technology being introduced is relevant to students’ learning, and not just for technologies sake. Second, to make sure that it is cost effective. With these considerations in mind, I hope that I find answers in this course and inquire more about technology in art education as I am exposed to more information.

Because of scheduling conflicts, I was not able to enroll officially, but I was given the opportunity to audit the course. The following posts will detail my journey and reflections in the class.