Ever since I have started this class it seems that technology is integrated into so many things in my day to day life. Of course technology is a huge part of my curriculum and the class that I teach but it seems that these "extra" activities that keep coming across my plate are technology integrated. My district has just "recruited" myself and three other teachers to demonstrate innovative technology to another district. It seems that my art education degree is getting pushed to the side and technology is taking over...
I try to keep my class as much of an art class as I can, but there is constant pressure of focusing on the software, and how technology is helping the students, that the art is getting lost. I had an advisory committee meeting last week and the industry could not stress to us enough the importance of drawing and that they are looking for students with fine art skills. I would love to teach drawing but unfortunately that is not a part of the standards that align with the curriculum that I must teach. The funding is better in the Technology strand and so my class is coded under "Information Technology". So something that the students need to know is something that I can not "technically" teach them. It feels like such a double standard that I have to carry an art education degree and yet art is not a part of my curriculum.
This is a back and forth internal struggle that I go through very often... that's my rant for the evening!
Does the art and the creativity have to become lost? An art class can be taught using digital tools and still be an art class, instead of a semester-long tutorial on Adobe Photoshop. I used to struggle in a similar way in a Computer Science course I used to teach: we were supposed to teach fundamentals of word processing, spreadsheets, and databases, but the way the course was being taught, it was really only teaching students how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and Access. I had to adjust the way the class was taught in order to teach *about* the topics *using* those resources and not just teaching those software applications.
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