In the article
Lines of Sight in the "Network Society," by Robert Sweeny, the idea of interconnection is mentioned quite often when it comes to the internet. A vast majority of the world's population is in someway connected to each other by the internet. With this idea, it allows the world the potential of creating new relationships and communities all around the world. To us, potential art teachers of America, this big idea is something that should not taken lightly and seriously looked at as we ourselves are greatly apart of these new potential "communities."
When I searched the overall idea of "Art education online communities," I found a great deal of websites that connect art teachers all around the world.
Art Education 2.0 is just one of the many that I looked at. This website allows future teachers/current teachers to create accounts and get their ideas/lessons out for other teachers to see. Having this opportunity can greatly help when it comes to finalizing lesson plans. Perhaps there is something that you're not 100% sure about in your lesson and you want to get feedback from fellow teachers. Simply post it and allow for others to put their "2 cents" in on it. Teaching can be an intimidating experience, but having resources like this allow for a much calmer teaching/learning experience which will both benefit the teacher and his/her students.
Another example of how this interconnection can be beneficial to an art room is by having the access to websites and applications such as
Skype. For those who aren't completely familiar with Skype, it is a free website (which can be downloaded to any computer) that allows people to have video conversations with people across the globe. Having a resource like Skype in a classroom setting can be quite eye-opening and beneficial to the children's learning experiences. Say for an example, you are teaching the students about a local artist who is pushing the societal boundaries with their artwork. The students want to know more about what sparked these interests in the artist and why they do what they do. With Skype, you can email this artist and see if he/she could possibly video chat and have discussions with the classroom. Now, not only are the children learning about/seeing the artwork but they are also getting a 1st hand opinion on it by the artist themselves.
The possibilities can really be said to be endless when it comes to having the internet as a resource. The teacher just needs to know where to look and where to find websites/applications that will be both beneficial and reliable to the students and their learning. Having access to this great interconnection and tool can also open the door to a lot of scams and unreliable sources.
Jordan, I think your interpretation of Sweeny's article is quite interesting. Skype had also come to my mind after reading it, but i chose to focus more-so on the typical social networks. I think being able to connect with other art rooms is something we, as a collective Art Education students should take an interest in. Since we are all looking to go into the same field, having friendly connections to one another could be useful in our future classrooms.
ReplyDeleteaka.. Let's be friends. :)