The Department of Art Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, runs a special art school on Saturday for children in the community. The real purpose of the program is to provide undergraduate students of art education, a laboratory to learn about children's artistic development and practice their teaching skills before they go out to teach in real schools. The program also serves as the place where they develop skills such as designing age-appropriate curricula, dealing with children with special needs, learning to use appropriate tools and materials for art projects and several other skills that contribute to their professional development as art teachers.
At present, several schools in the community are using computers and several children are computer literate as well. Computers are also fast emerging as a medium for artistic expression and there are classes taught in the Painting department that help students learn to paint using a computer. Having supervised classes in Saturday school and having worked closely with student teachers, I am aware of the fact that they are not prepared to face the onslaught of new-age technology or even exploit computers as a tool for artistic expression. Much of the work they do with children in Saturday school is without computer technology - and that makes them ill-equipped to teach a class full of kids who are already doing projects in other subjects on computers.
The goals for this project, therefore, have evolved from the need for preparing student teachers for the world outside and also giving them an opportunity to use computer technology as a tool for doing art projects- something they have not had a chance to do until now in Saturday school but will increasingly need to, once having left the university.
A To find out answers to questions such as:
B To look at results of findings and
design a set of lesson plans in art that would be
supported by the web or/and will expect
children to use technology in some way
(photoshop, pagemaker, corel draw etc.)
to do art projects.
The project itself is divided into two parts, namely:
Under the research part, I am trying to find out how many students attending middle school level art classes in Saturday school have computer skills and interests and how much student teachers have those skills as well. In the second part, I will develop a set of art projects that will involve the use of computers- some might need to be done entirely on the computer while some may require to use them only partially.
I have surveyed students who are primarily from fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades, and also student teachers. I have also analysed the data which has assisted me in building a base for developing an appropriate curriculum for both - the teachers who will teach it and students who will do the actual art work. The reason for developing a set of lessons in art, is that Saturday school art program does not have any curriculum available at present that can be used by student teachers to do computer technology based art projects with children.
Questionnaires were given to children and student teachers. After they filled them out, I went through them and analysed them. The setting for the research was the Saturday school art program run by the Department of Art Education at U of I. Children of all grade levels attend the classes taught under this program and I focused on children from fifth to eighth grade.To conduct this study I went to the art classrooms and distributed the questionnaire. It took children very little time to fill them out since most questions required circling the answer that suited them best and there were only ten questions.
After collecting the questionnaires
and going through them, I found some interesting results. First of all,
I must emphasise that the number of students who answered the questionnaire
was twenty nine and they were all Saturday school students- which is a
special situation. Thus, I wouldnÕt want to generalise the results
for the population at large. However, the results do give us some idea
of how students interact with computers in this community (since Saturday
school students come from all over the community in Champaign- Urbana and
at times also from neighbouring towns), and what the student teachers should
be prepared for in terms of computer literacy when they leave the university
for a real work environment. I presented the same questionnaire to student
teachers to answer in order to figure out their level of computer literacy
and interest in working with computers.
To be able to see if children would be interested in doing art projects on computers, I needed to find, first of all, if they had the skills to begin with, that is if they knew how to use graphics and design programs, second, if they were willing to do art projects using a computer, third, if the department has the resources available to teach those projects and fourth, if the student teachers themselves were computer literate.
I found that all students who attended the middle school art program have used computers. A majority uses them every other day (31.03%) or at least once or twice a week (31.03%). And although a majority uses them to play games (82.8%), most students (69%) are willing to do art projects using computers. What should be of significance to us is that a majority of students (62.07%) have already done some kind of art project using a computer.
From the above data, one can see that
all the student teachers have used computers and that 10 out of 11 would
be eager to do art projects using computers and 8 out of 11 said that they
have already done art projects using computers. The average age of student
teachers when they first used computers is approximately 11 years and the
average age of middle school children when they first used computers varies
from 5.4 to 7.143 years which shows that probably children are using computers
at earlier ages now. Also, we learned earlier that most children would
like to do art projects using computers. This, in my opinion, is a definite
case for inclusion of computer technology in the making of art in Saturday
school classes.
What we need to consider now is the availability of resources. There is only one computer available for undergraduates and graduates in the department to work on and that too is not connected with any laser or inkjet printer. However, there is Centre of Graphic Technologies on the third floor which is a computer lab with the latest equipment in computer technology and there is the Education lab across the road which too is well-equipped. Besides, student teachers do not have to do all projects using computers, they can include a few each semester.
The other problem that I feel we should also take into account, is the fact that some class time will have to be kept aside to help students develop skills such as scanning or using the different graphics and design programs. Also, we should have a method to check out whether student teachers themselves are competent in using those programs. For the former, one can devote two or three classes doing projects that will help students develop the needed skills and for the latter, the supervisory teacher can interview student teachers, find out their level of computer literacy, and set aside time to train them or get them trained.
Once the student teachers are ready to teach lessons using computers, they will need ideas for projects and lesson plans. I have worked on a set of project ideas that they could use. These will be made available for them on the Saturday School web page also. As more ideas are generated, they will be added to this set of plans.
With this research, this is what I can say with certainty:
We should definitely include computer technology in different ways to do art projects because most children attending the program have used computers and are willing to see how art can be done with computers. I would suggest however that computers be employed only as a tool or as a medium for artistic expression and that work done through other media be interspersed with computer related projects. This is because each artistic medium has its own place in the world of art- holding a brush or a pencil can never be the same as holding a mouse which imitates a brush. However, there are things that are possible to do only on a computer and with a computer- those are the things that we should look for instead of trying to replace one medium with another. Computers are here to stay and its time that we accept their place in the worl of art than ignore the opportunities that they have to offer to us.
The Saturday School Art program is a microcosm of the Art programs practised in schools all over the country. Whatever experience we offer to our students here, it is with the hope that it will prove to be useful to them. I do not know how many schools in the country are using computers and how many children in the country are computer literate too, but it is my guess that the schools that are not using computers yet, will catch up soon.
So what are the implications of this on Art Education? I believe that there are great many. We art teachers can no longer afford to stay away from computers: because school authorities may want us to be able to use them, parents may want their children to be able to use them and children themselves may want to use them as is depicted from the case of Saturday School children. As Art teachers we also need to be constantly aware of new media of artistic expression and computers fall in that category. By teaching our students how to produce art using computers, we will introduce them to another exciting medium of expression and enhance their art experiences. Thus if we look at computers as a tool through which we can achieve new and exciting results in successful teaching of Art, then it is time that the we Art Educators gave them the place they deserve.