Trading Places/CR.E.A.T.E. Programme

New Media Learning : New Media in Education

To Artists in Education, Why try new media?

by Orla Kenny, Kids' Own Publishing Partnership
Notes from the Artists in Contexts series presented at the Sligo Education Centre, May 2003

Kids' Own raises the status of young people's work by publishing or exhibiting their work in a highly professional manner. Working with professional artists is an integral part of this process. Good practice in this field also shows that professional artists can grow within the creative process of collaboration with young people.

We encourage artists to act as collaborators and partners in the process, and to leave their expertise behind. Artists, teachers and students can become equal partners.

"Artists must move away from 'delivery mode' in which they provide programs for schools or do things to kids, to a partnership mode where they create programs with schools for kids.The focus moves away from a service delivery to kids to an ongoing professional development of teachers and artists"
Arnold Aprill from CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education) "Finding the Thread of an Interrupted Conversation: the Arts, Education, and Community" Published on the Community Arts Network
Also see his book: Renaissance in the Classroom

After relationships based on trust are established, artists can begin the serious work of play. Improvisation is an important part of collaboration. Using unfamiliar tools can help create situations where the artist must leave that expertise behind and become a partner in learning. New media, because software and hardware is constantly changing, offers even more opportunities for improvisation.

"In almost anything you might do today, you have got to improvise. There is simply too much change for tradition to handle: there are too many possibilities for any methodology to anticipate in advance... In all kinds of work people take pride in thinking on their feet, inventing solutions when under pressure, and practising originality in the face of risk. They just don't call it play."
Malcolm McCullough
Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand, MIT Press, 1996

Feel confident to seize the moment to develop a new idea.

New media can be Video, Digital stills, Audio, Computer Programming, Animation, etc. Often people think you need to be an expert to use new media.

'Creative Misuse' (you don't have to be an expert)

"What sets art apart from other technological endeavors is not the innovative use of technology, but a creative misuse of it... for to use a tool as it was intended, whether a screwdriver or spreadsheet, is simply to fulfill its potential. By misusing that tool-that is, by peeling off its ideological wrapper and applying it to a purpose or effect that was not its maker's intention-artists can exploit a technology's hidden potential in an intelligent and revelatory way."
"Ten Myths of Internet Art", Jon Ippolito, Guggenheim, NY, USA (my emphasis)

New Media provides new ways of working

• Planning for new media technology requires an openness and freedom to explore in a new way.
• Working with new media gives artists the ability to make artwork never conceived before. They enable us to make work which could not exist in any other format.
• To use new technologies to slavishly mimic art which could exist in other media can be interesting but in the end is pointless.
• New media is an extremely inappropriate medium if you know what the outcome is going to look like.

Things to keep in mind when working in Education with New Media

• Build relationships and trust as a basis for collaborative work
• Include time for group planning at the start of the project
• Build in time for group reflection upon completion of the project
• Start small, less is more.
• Allow time when children can just play on a piece of software
• Allow time for yourself to play
• Allow for processing time equal to creating time
• Be realistic about the possibilities

Are you using technology in creative, exploratory ways? Please contact us, we'd love to share your examples here.