What Does Technology Integration Mean to You?

When asked a question about our contemporary society and the changes that happen within it I have to answer twice.  I identify myself as an art educator and an artist.  At times these personalities work incredibly well together, but there are those moments when it’s not the best to cross these paths.  When asked about our society and the current move toward technology integration, when asked what it means to me, I have to answer twice.  Luckily, this is one of those times in which my answers benefit from each other.  As an artist technology integration means a drastic shift in creative medium, and as an art educator technology integration means a more accessible curriculum.

Traditional art has always been held in highest regard by the social consciousness of humanity.  Oil paints gently brushed on to stretched canvas, marble finely chiseled into the likeness of another, and inks of various colors pulled across paper to form a composition that speaks to the very soul.  These are the things we think about when we discuss art, at least, they were.  Now the digital age has brought about tools that can near perfectly mimic traditional mediums, and with those tools the clever of us have created new types of art.  The greatest moments in art history, the times in which the world was changed by art, were all caused by boredom with the known.  It is when someone does something new, makes something unexpected and unseen, that the world notices and remembers.  With technological integration the world of the past has become available in the palm of your hand.  Any artist can use new devices to replace entire tool kits of artistic materials.  Any artist can find that new way to create something, that unexpected and unseen thing anywhere they are by merely having the right type of tool.  And so many tools have become available as we understand our technology more and further its reach back.  Many of these tools make art creation an available pursuit for anyone.  Of course the truly great will take their time to experience their craft, hone their ability, and learn all there is to make something great, but it won’t cost them a life savings and a lifetime anymore.  As an artist, technology integration means that art is becoming something beautifully new, something that has more mastery over a universal language than it has ever before.  Technology integration means art can be for everyone.

The art classroom is a place that teaches to tradition.  We teach the famous artists of old, discuss why they are so famous, and wish to understand how our own work can speak to as many people as their art did.  However, classes find themselves limited.  The arts are never placed in high importance when it comes to funding, and art educators know this all too well.  With the push in schools to have a 1:1 ratio of available technology to students it means that technology integration allows for greater access.   The art classroom can now be created through the use of devices that mimic the expensive tools and materials used in art creation.  Students won’t have to study just the artists that are in their textbook.  They can explore the world of art through their digital device and discover what type of art truly speaks to them.  I have been wishing to move the art classroom to a more contemporary mindset, helping students understand that traditional visuals and the importance placed on traditionally “good” art is not what matters.  What matters is making something that speaks for you, about you, something that you feel good making.  Through technology integration students have the entire history of art in the palm of their hand.  They have access to every artist new and old.  They have access to every work that has ever been made.  They are no longer limited to what is held in a school-mandated textbook when they have the ability to read any book.  Now I am not speaking against traditional art in any way.  The fine forms and figures devised by artists of old still allow us to create amazing work.  We still need to understand these principles and elements of art to speak properly with it, but we do not need to use the tools of artists before us.  We have access to new tools, to entirely new mediums.  Technology integration brings us the entire world of old art and all that is new art.

As an artist technology integration means a drastic shift in creative medium, and as an art educator technology integration means a more accessible curriculum.  Young artists are mastery the old world with new tools and students are discovery so much more with what they can access.  Technology integration brings an end to many things as traditional artists and traditional teachers, and many of us fear the loss of those aspects.  We fear the change that is coming.  But, those of us that can grasp this change and focus it within our classrooms can help our students understand so much more than we ever could.