Reflection on Emerging Technologies

                The prospect of integrating the technologies discussed in the New Media Consortium's Horizon report into a classroom environment is both exciting and intimidating.  It is an interesting time to be a teacher (or a prospective teacher, as it were) as we are on the cusp of an entirely new generation of learning.  Technology has effected most of our lives in some capacity, and it is vital that we integrate these new methods of learning into the classroom to  relate to our students and capture their attention.  Conversely, it is natural to be intimidated by the future as it could very well become a struggle to maintain relevancy in a landscape that is always changing.  Nonetheless, I consider new technology  a useful, powerful tool in educating students.  Specifically, the wearable technology described in the NMC report would be a huge asset to art students and any individual studying the visual arts.

                What struck me as most fascinating from the report was the likelihood of incorporating Google Glass and similar devices into the curriculum.  When Google Glass first came on the scene, the function that I heard most about was facial recognition technology.  It would not be a stretch to carry this technology over to the visual arts, so that students can identify the date, style, and creator of a particular piece of work.  If my students and I are taking a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Google Glass could inform the students of specific information and details about a piece that might not be obvious at first sight.  This could rejuvenate anyone's interest and appreciation in a particular painting at a museum such as the Met where a viewer can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of artwork before them.

Learning With Technology

            As far back as I can recall, technology has been a vital component to my education.  I distinctly remember being in computer class during elementary school.  We would play Oregon Trail on the computers.  Presumably, our instructor felt it would help develop our critical thinking skills and provide us with a subliminal history lesson in the guise of being the fun game.  In reality, my classmates and I would have a ball subjecting our Oregon Trail family to starvation and scurvy. While this might not have proven as educationally beneficial as was hoped, it did solidify in me a love of gaming that would continue on throughout my life and culminate in my pursuit of a degree in animation.

            During my pursuit of a BFA in Animation/illustration from MSU, a significant amount of time was spent in front of a computer learning the ins and outs of some very complex animation and 3D sculpture programs.  The most significant of these was Autodesk Maya.  Autodesk Maya is software that allows the user to create models, skeletons, apply physics systems and create animations.  It is also a useful tool for rendering static three dimensional images.

The Autodesk Maya 2011 interface.

            A typical 3D animation class would have our professor projecting a feed of his monitor onto a projector screen.  Typically, he would play a brief PowerPoint presentation related to the day's lesson.  Our lessons ranged from the basics like frame-by-frame animation and poly-by-poly modeling to more advanced techniques like creating particle collision events.  After debriefing our lesson, the professor would have the class open Autodesk Maya.  He would do the same, and instruct the class step-by-step on how to solve whatever the problem in question was.  The class would follow along with his actions as they were being projected.  Once we finished our lesson, he would give us a similar but more rudimentary problem to solve by ourselves.  My peers and I were encouraged to help each other and troubleshoot before requesting assistance from the professor.  This fostered a sense of community within the classroom that enhanced our quality of education and reinforced whatever information was being posed to us in the lesson.

            It is difficult to overstate the importance of technology in a class where the main goal was to become familiar with industry-current software like Autodesk Maya.  A peripheral objective of my animation classes was to instill the fundamentals of animation and particular functions that are consistent with any animation or 3d rendering program into our minds.  This way, no matter what program was put before us, we would be capable of executing at least the most basic tasks.

            Autodesk Maya is the industry standard when it comes to 3d animation.  It is highly innovative and features cutting edge rendering technologies.  The only limitations were the computers themselves.  For the bulk of my education at MSU, the computers were relatively outdated and not nearly as powerful as needed to utilize all of Autodesk Maya's features in a timely manner.  For instance, to render a scene with certain light schemes or textures, it could take upwards of an entire day.  A scene is one frame, a single image, not a movie or animated short.  One can imagine how frustrating this limitation was.  Thankfully, towards the tail end of my pursuit of a BFA, MSU upgraded the machines.  Maya ran like butter, and we were free to create as complex a scene as we desired. 

            Our professor, Wobbe Koning, shared a few lessons from class on his youtube page.  These videos are essentially what we would follow in class, except that, naturally, he was teaching us live and not from a youtube video.  Below you will find a short video on creating a path animation.

Sources:

http://area.autodesk.com/img/products/maya/nondestructive_live_retargeting.png
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxMmSF29VzY

Flipped Classroom

In keeping with my pursuit of a degree in art education, I selected the lesson "A brief history of religion in art."  The video very briefly summarized the utilitarian use of visual art for religious purposes.  Many centuries ago, art was used to communicate the ideals and stories of various religions to individuals who were illiterate.  This is in stark contrast to the relatively new practice of putting art into museums for viewing pleasure.

The questions attached to the video were very rudimentary fill-in-the-blank questions with the exception of the last prompt which was an open-ended question.

This lesson was a fantastic use of the TED Ed technology.  There had to be almost a hundred different pieces of art work in the video to support the ideas of the narrator.  You simply can't achieve that using a slide projector or teaching from an art history text.

The "flipped classroom" idea is a brilliant way to educate students on visual art.  The dynamic animations coupled with the ability to showcase images of many different artistic works with ease is highly appealing to me.  I always felt that an art classroom should never delve into text based lessons - save that for English and Science!  In my opinion, the flipped classroom seems like a fun, stimulating way to teach children while embracing the convenience and functionality of technology.

A major limitation would be that the student might have questions during the video that an educator would not be able to address directly.  A student could, of course, write the question down to ask in class but it would take a certain level of motivation to do such a thing.  Another limitation would be purely technological - less tech savvy students or those without stable access to the internet might find it difficult to fulfill the requirements of a flipped classroom.  That being said, these issues are likely rare nowadays.

Personally, I relish the idea of using a flipped classroom.  As an art teacher, a lot of my assignments would be tactile.  However, for those times in which I want to give an overview on a specific method of art making or perhaps the history of a style or artist, I would be very comfortable using a video-based lesson.