My overall impression of the articles for this week is
overwhelming inadequacy on my part to be able to connect with this
iGeneration. I may have been born apart
of the Net Generation but I feel a decade behind. As a kid we never had the internet until I
moved out. I didn’t own my first
computer until I was nineteen. My first
cell phone was at the age of twenty-one, and I was reluctant even then to get
one at all. I liked being unreachable to
my job and others if need be. In the
last five years I have been playing catch-up to be on an even keel with my
classmates and peers. Even now having a
smart phone, I don’t feel at all up-to-date with the iGeneration students I
want to be teaching.
I have always viewed art making as a tactile (kinesthetic)
process. As an artist I want to be able to feel the materials as much as see or
smell or even hear them. The smell or
oil paint, the sound of a sewing machine or the creak of reeds as you weave
them together, the vibrancy of color that is revealed as you open a kiln after
hours of waiting, the dryness of pastel or charcoal as the dust filters to the
floor. There are many technologies
which can be used to create art but I will always prefer the smell of chemicals
in a dark room over the tedious hours spent in front of a Photoshop
window.
Every artist and student is different and deservedly
so. In Deresiewicy’s Solitude essay he
repeatedly states that students of now and tomorrow will be incapable of
disconnecting from media and technology.
“They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for
solitude.” Throughout art school I tried
to work on and finish pieces with friends around me. I always ended up working by myself in an
empty art building in the middle of the night.
Solitude is a necessity for the contemplation process of any and all of
my artwork. I like to work in the middle
of the night because no one is likely to be awake and need my attention. I can be alone with my thoughts. Music is likely to be my only companion I
take, if any at all. This concept seems
to be at odds with the last two generational trends however. I must always remember that the way things
work for me is not likely to work for others.
This last semester doing my student teaching I thought I
would allow students to listen to music as they worked in an effort to create
“MY” ideal working environment. What I
soon discovered was that my classical or instrumental music did nothing for the
students but make them tired. I decided
to let them pick the genre of music and was amazed at how not relaxing an
experience it was for me. I could hardly
concentrate on the lesson I was teaching but the students would be speeding
away at their projects as though it was the greatest project ever. If the current educational system is in fact
static and passé the art room needs to be as forward thinking possible. The room I had for 6th, 7th
and 8th graders had ten student computers. One of the first things the students asked of
me was to be allowed to use said computers.
They went on to inform me that the computers were never touched. As cell phone use was strictly forbidden in
the classrooms I had no problem with the students getting on the computers to
look up images for their projects, but that was about it. My lesson plans were very hands on and only
required the individual’s imagination.
Using Prezi instead of PowerPoint presentation went over well, I
thought. At least there were fewer
distraction behaviors from the students.
But after reading and viewing all the technologies students associate as
common place, my efforts seem feeble and grossly inadequate.
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