Technology is changing; the Art room is not.

The revolution in Education is using new technologies and the web to make learning interactive. Classrooms are using computers, smart boards, Ipads, Wikis, Blogs, and much more to make 21^st century learning more interactive of teachers and students. While art instruction has always been interactive because of the demonstrations of techniques and using certain tools, art classrooms are still not receiving new technological tools to help integrate technology into the art classroom.

A few weeks ago I subbed for an art teacher who went to the National Art Education Association Conference for a week. This happens to be the same art classroom that I started attending about 15 years ago. In the mid-to late 90’s the Internet was making a big push in schools and ways of learning were changing. Since then we have gone from using encyclopedias to Wikipedia for research, chalkboards to smart boards and over-head projectors to LCD screens and cameras, for instruction, and most art rooms, like the one I attended have seen little to none of these changes. This classroom that I spent 6 years in, in elementary school and now teaching in only contains a laptop and projector. This is the only thing that had changed since I was a student at this school, with the exception of the brightly colored walls. I was in shocked to find that after all my learning and research of integrating new technologies in the classroom, that this art classroom has nothing to offer.

I ran into several instances while subbing where technologies such as an overhead camera would have made instruction easier and more capable for students to learn. In the third grade classes we were coloring with color pencils and learning to blend colors and fifth graders were learning about one-point perspective while learning how to draw 3D letters in-the-round. My instruction for these classes involved me drawing on a clipboard and holding it up for everyone to see. For third grade, I demonstrated to shade lightly with color pencils, slowly blending different colors together and for the fifth graders I was demonstrating how to find a vanishing point, holding a ruler and creating three-dimensional letters. On top of doing a class demonstration a few times, I still had a lot of students asking for help. I think the students would get a lot more out of most art demonstrations by using an overhead camera such as an Elmo. These cameras provide teachers to demonstrate techniques and show other details of work by working under the camera and projecting it on the projector for the whole class to see.

There are so many technology aids to use in the art classroom such as Smart boards or overhead cameras for instruction, projectors, and computers for creating, storing and displaying digital works on wikis and blogs, the web to search for images and take online gallery tours. We just need to make them a priority for 21^st century learning.