Future Vision

“To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will come away with a richer entertainment experience. “  Henry Jenkins (2006, pg 21)

As I walk into my (at home) “classroom,” coffee in hand, the walls slowly begin to glow and the hum of distant chatter begins to feel the room. Eager students are already engaging in conversation about today’s topic, “Gender in Art in the 19^th Century.” This topic is part of a course entitled Rediscovering Female Artists: the oppressed, the ignored, the lost, and the forgotten. The course is designed to discuss the discrepancies in female artist representation in the arts across time, space, and culture, while exposing and addressing how gender is presented and represented within these contexts. This virtual classroom experience “provides situations, processes, and environments to conceptualize one’s self in relation to the world, and to connect artmaking to issues that matter” (Keifer-Boyd, Envisioning a Future Techno-Infused Eco-Pedagogy). In this case, the issue is gender. The subject matter supports art education’s role to “shed assumptions of normalcy by investigating beyond the surface signifiers and contextualizing the meaning of the signifiers deep within cultural narratives” (Keifer-Boyd & Smith-Shank, 2006, p 144). The narratives explored within this context wrestle with issues such as gender discrimination, gender disparity, and gender oppression. Students are encouraged to make connections between past, present and future perspectives and explore instances of and opportunities for change. As well as seek to pinpoint and dispel the paradigms in thinking that cultivate and proliferate such ideologies.

As the class “begins,” I see images by Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux, Berthe Morisot, Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau, and Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (just to name a few) begin to collage the walls. Students are displaying the results of this week’s research and discussion assignment. Throughout the week, students have been holding asynchronous and synchronous video, text, and voice chats. Each student has selected excerpts from these conversations to display along side their projected images. These prompts highlight key points from the previous discussions and serve to stimulate and further a lively interaction as the class begins. Students “warm up” with an exercise to “get their juices flowing”: a rotating discussion forum in which students have to sum up their week’s experience in one sentence and respond to one another’s statement with a simple, critical thought. The caveat: you only have 30 seconds before you move along to another student. This exercise allows for participants to engage with every member in the course at some point during the semester. Both students are challenged to develop critical and spontaneous thought about the material they encounter and share. Students may revisit these encounters throughout the course through video technology. While this course does not focus on the student’s artmaking, it does “create new insights, invite participation, and can evoke transformative learning [as] individuals discuss their perspectives with each other…” (Keifer-Boyd, Envisioning a Future….).

Our classroom is an organic, informal, and very personal space for all participating in the course. Students can join from anywhere, a museum, a coffee shop, home, or a floating classroom space. Once “in the classroom,” students utilize technology that allows them to participate via video, image, text, avatar or hologram (many choose to juggle several of these modes throughout the class). Their personal “classroom” can consist of display walls alive with activity or (depending upon their chosen space for the day) can be contained within their personal device. This week one student is “projecting” from the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. She will be guiding a discussion through several of these female artists grouped in a special exhibition. As preliminary discussions taper, this student extends the conversation into her space as she guides us through the exhibition. This “peer-to-peer information sharing” (Anderson & Balsamo, 2008, p. 248) of  her week’s experience with the collection offers insight and perspective while encouraging a “participatory culture” (248) on which the course in founded. Class ends here today.

Together we are a community of learners sharing with one another ways in which our lives intersect, support, or challenge the histories, ideals, stereotypes that we are addressing in the classroom. Students are strongly encouraged to “take the class” on field trips throughout their community to view a local mural, engage with local artisans, visit a local museum or traveling exhibition. By “decenter[ing] the authority of the instructor [myself] in favor of learning and activity that takes place along multiple axes” (Anderson & Balsamo, 2008, p 250), the classroom shifts ownership to the collective rather than the instructor. This is OUR classroom, not MY classroom. While the structure at first glance may appear a bit amorphous, the character of the class is shaped by its participants and the information that they bring to the discussions.

“Art is not a distinct part of what and who we are, but rather, it is inseparable from our values, beliefs, and sensitivities of how we know the world and ourselves.” (Keifer-Boyd & Smith-Shank, 2006, p. 143)

A new day awakens. One week (or two or three) has passed. Time for “class” to reconvene.  The topic of discussion today takes us around the world to a group of predominantly female artisans in West Africa. A collaborative classroom has been established between our class and a class in West Africa. This collaborative effort allows for students on both ends to examine, address, and discuss current issues in valuation of female artists and artisans in cultures throughout the world. Today, students will witness, explore and discuss the techniques, materials, traditions and history of basket weavers. Together the classes discuss the implications and valuation of this art form in their respective cultures seeking to gain insight and understanding into how each culture views, treats, and values the female artists working within it. Additionally, students seek to find parallels within the cultures that exist to support or oppress such groups or individuals. Such explorations aid students in understanding “not only their creative potential as cultural prosumers, but also their role as cultural mediators of the futures we will inhabit” (Anderson & Balsamo, 2008, p 257).

Art is an avenue for exploration, experimentation and engaging with the world(s) in which we occupy. There is no “wrong” answer when exploring who we are through the arts, only new and different ways of viewing ourselves through the lenses of art. However, we are part of a larger community, thus a broader conversation. Students “must learn how to engage in conversations with those who do not hold the same cultural values or intellectual commitments” (Anderson & Balsamo 2008, p 245). We must see ourselves as part of this larger community.

Acting as a facilitator rather than “teacher,” my responsibility is to weave together the threads of thought posed by the students and interject critical unexamined information when needed. However, given a framework for the course that includes relevant reading, webquests and collaborative projects with classrooms across the globe, prompts and personal experience, students utilize a multitude of resources at their disposal to drive the discussion. I am not the center of the class, but rather a peer. Assessments are steered by participation. For these students, “occupying more than one physical or mental space at a time” (p. 249) has become second nature just as the devices that serve as vehicles for interaction, collaboration, information dissemination, and connectivity have become extensions of themselves. My role has become that of “educational designer, whose expertise may include deep disciplinary knowledge, but whose practice involves mobilizing the efforts of communities and individuals in relation to institutional resources” (Anderson & Balsamo, 2008, p. 248). By facilitating and nurturing the roles of hunter and gatherer within each student and the collective group, I support students in becoming producers of information as well as consumers. Interest is ignited and within the collective, no stone goes unturned in the search for knowledge.

One final thought: while my students are not necessarily “art makers,” my hope for any course I teach would be to foster creative thinking as students critically assess the information presented and unearthed throughout the class for “when creativity is absent so is hope” (Keifer-Boyd & Smith-Shank, 2006, p. 148).  And “creativity is a generative activity that results from gathering multiple perspectives, finding connections, and critically evaluating diverse information” (p. 148).  It is this process that will teach students “the power of art in their lives and the lives of others” (Keifer-Boyd, Envisioning a Future…). 

The hum of voices ceases and the lights dim....

Key components of my future vision.
In its original size, the words in this image are crystal clear. However, in that size, it is barely legible.
I have intentionally enlarged and left this image blurry (sorry, Eyes) to illustrate that as my vision for myself, my students and my classroom grows and expands it will go through moments or periods of such "blurriness." I will not always be able to see exactly how things are or how they will be. But time, persistence, openness, interaction, collaboration, and imagination will eventually bring everything into focus...for a moment... then blurriness may appear just in time for another growth spurt.

Resources: 

Anderson, S., & Balsamo, A. (2008). A pedagogy for original synners. In T. McPherson (Ed.), Digital youth, innovation, and the unexpected (pp. 241-259). The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.

Keifer-Boyd, K., & Smith-Shank, D. (2006). Speculative fiction’s contribution to contemporary understanding: The handmaid art tale.Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research in Art Education, 47(2), 139-154.

Keifer-Boyd, K. Envisioning a Future Techno-Infused eco-Pedagogy. Advocacy White Papers for Art Education.