Teaching is about...

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The Artistic Rebuttal Book Project

"Art is an instinct. We defend the arts. 
One statement, one image at a time." 

www.ArtisticRebuttal.com
http://www.artisticrebuttal.com/apps/blog

This fall, I had the opportunity to collaborate with students, faculty, and staff at Appalachian State University in an art exhibit to support and defend the Arts called "The Artistic Rebuttal Project."  Amy Scheidegger of Drexel University, Creator and Director of the Artistic Rebuttal Project, explains the project as "artists and art advocates join[ing] to illustrate the importance of facilitating and creating art and supporting those facilitators and creators."

The show featured a range of multimedia pieces that represented diverse ways of thinking about the Arts, relationships with the Arts, and reasons for creating Art, and was displayed at the University's Looking Glass Gallery from October 22nd through November 16th.

My mixed media piece (left) featured on front Book Cover (right).

Below are images from the exhibit, including my four submissions.  Selected pieces from the exhibit were later compiled into a book and one of my pieces was used in the front cover collage image, also included below.

To create my pieces, I use Adobe Photoshop to manipulate and transform scanned and digital images from my sketchbooks, paintings, multimedia collages, and family photo albums.  I refer to this process as "digital collage" and find the process of modifying the original, physical art pieces in a digital realm to grow the vitality or extend the creative potential of each piece.

Making Sense of Symbols: "When September Ends"

In the context of this lesson, media literacy provides an opportunity to connect standards-based Visual Arts curricula to popular music media from students' experience and culture through the analysis, evaluation, and creation of media.  

The media used in this lesson concept is the music video for the song "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by the rock band Green Day. 

The full lesson- including an explanation of the nature and needs of adolescent learners, selected state standards for Visual Arts and Information and Technology, a rationale for media literacy, key questions, and a student production assessment project- can be found at: http://whenseptemberends2300.blogspot.com/

The Face Off

Facebook has gone public?  But what does this mean?  What does it mean if you are a middle, high school, or college-aged student?  Heck, I'm well beyond my college years and I don't really understand it.  Thus the "face off."

My students and I began by defining technology; what is it and what is its purpose?  Conclusion:  the use of human knowledge, creativity, or innovation to revolutionize life and make it better.  Making life better was a theme in my students' comments, although they relinquished that is not always the result.

We then moved into a discussion of what it means to be an educated person.  What is learning?  What is schooling?  I mentioned my thoughts that the goal of education might be that learning actually happens in schools...but how, as we agreed, if the worlds of students and their classrooms are vastly different?

We seem to know so much in 2012.  We have access to more information and ideas than human beings at any other time in history.... but what is the result of this knowledge?  What is the purpose of education in this era?  

Our work this semester gets heavier now as we begin to consider the role of technologies on how we interact with the world and with each other.  We examined the impact of not only the total amount of time we spend in front of a screen of one shape or another, but also the influence of cumulative messages we receive and create daily when we are plugged in.  What is the effect of these messages?  Describe their impact on perceptions we hold of  ourselves, of each other, or of our world...  As one student said with discomfort and concern in her voice, "I don't like to think of myself as media." Are we media?

Then, Facebook goes public.  Douglas Rushkoff's recent "take-away interview" will be part of our face off this week.  Having just watched Digital Nation, students are poised to speak to representations of their world.  Are we so disconnected?  Where is the humanness we share in among all the ones and zeros?

An excerpt from Rushkoff's interview (paraphrased from source linked below):

Well, I'm a media theorist right?  So I look at almost anything as media.  And I look at money as a medium.  It's a medium, with its own agendas and bias.  And the more like money you take on, the more like money you become. 

As a start-up in college, what are the biases of that company?  The agendas of it as a company are the agendas and biases of the guys and girls who are making it.

The more investors you take on... you have the biases and agendas again of the investor guys and girls who are making it.

We're not the users of Facebook.  We're the products of Facebook.  

If we are not the users, but the products, then who does Rushkoff say are the users? 

The image below was taken on the university's campus.  What is its message?

 

NPR TheTakeAway Interview: Will Facebook IPO Change Soul of the Company? 

The Soul of Script

When asked about the impact of media and technology on schools and learning, my pre-service education students mentioned the lost art of cursive being a result of increased class time spent typing and computing.  At first, I thought "what's the big deal?" In a digital age, where typing is THE text, why worry about teaching cursive?  Penmanship seemed to be a vestigial element of our curricula.  However, a recent letter from a college roommate has convinced me otherwise.  Cols wrote to me about "the soul of script," referencing a recent article she had read in The Economist.  She explained that script may reveal the personality and spirit of an individual, and has benefits deeper than simply good penmanship.  While spending extensive time teaching script may not be the best use of our class time, providing opportunities for students to write by hand may help foster reflective and creative thinking, while growing students' positive relationship with their handwriting and developing their powers of self expression. 

Colleen's letter written in script.

"Like a fingerprint, our script expresses us uniquely and 

in a way that lasts.  The more metaphysically minded might say 

it transmits the soul to paper" (Intelligent Life, 2011).

"It's not really being taught in schools anymore..."

  

"Some have argued that learning cursive isn’t simply about learning how to write efficiently.  It’s about learning how to write beautifully. It’s about expression" (Watters, 2011).

 

A recipe written in script by my Grandmother

 Readings:

Celebrating a Dying Art, The Economist (2011)

Handwriting: An Elegy, Intelligent Life (2011)

Should We Still Teach Students to Write in Cursive? MindShift (Watters, 2011)

 

Popular Music in the Classroom

Why use popular music in the classroom?

"Popular music offers teachers a diverse range of ways for classroom integration, with activities and strategies that are suitable from upper levels of elementary school all the way through college" (Considine, 2003).

Read more from Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation: Popular Music and Media Literacy (Considine, 2003) for additional curriculum ideas and approaches.

For remembering...

• A Student Teacher's Poetry RAP

For building a knowledge base in the content area...

• History for Music Lovers

For exploring/Analyzing/Evaluating in the content area...

• Lit Tunes 

As historical documents to gain insight into a culture, society, or people at a particular time...

• Try this music and history lesson concept connecting popular music with the Women's Rights Movemet!

HANDOUT 1: Timeline of the Women's Rights Movement

HANDOUT 2:  Song Lyrics 1960-2011

 

Related Reading:

The Journal of Media Literacy, Media Literacy and the Arts

Media Representations of Teachers/Teaching/School

Begin with Communication Theory and Lasswell’s Model.  (Lasswell Handout).

  

View collection of media representations of teachers from YouTube Playlists below.

Analyze and evaluate how teachers, teaching/learning, and schools are represented in these film, television, and news clips. 

_____________________________________________________________________

VIEWING TASK

Describe how teachers, students, or administrators are portrayed broadly across the media; get started by generating a list of adjectives to describe the teachers.

• Are the representations realistic? Why or why not?   
• What common characteristics do you notice about teaching and learning?
• Which actors/characters seem the most accurate to your personal experience in schools over the years?  Why do you think so?
• Which characters seem least realistic?  What makes them unrealistic?

Describe a memorable scene or clip.  

• What makes it memorable?  
• Is this scene realistic in its portrayal of teaching/learning?  Explain why or why not...?

______________________________________________________________________

After Viewing, generate a definition of teaching and learning according to the media representations.

Female Teachers in Movies

Male Teachers in Movies

Teachers on Television

Teachers in the News