iPhoneography in the Secondary Classroom

In this chapter the author describes a qualitative study aimed to explore how secondary students used smartphone technology to capture and share images via social media. The findings of the study include: digital identity construction, image sharing and social media, the perception of public vs. private, image sharing as critique, and iPhoneography as visual communication. Pedagogical implications of incorporating iPhoneography into existing visual art curricula are explored, and include suggestions for utlilzing iPhoneography to enhance skills in thematic development, as well as an effective tool for formative assessment. Finally, ways to challenge students creatively by using prompts inspired by contemporary photographers are proposed.

K-12 Arts Pedagogies and Technology Use Transitioning into Higher Education

Art and design students' transitions in the university studio and their careers are now a significant issue in higher education. There is a more explicit articulation of the graduate capabilities that students now need to cultivate to become artist and designers. The author focuses on the transition into the university setting and the pedagogic relationship with the graduate capabilities of artists and designers and their portfolio careers as a way to contextualize art pedagogies and technology use in K-12 education. The author argues that supporting students' expectations and aspirations in their desires to become artists and designers is relational to graduate capabilities and the notion of a portfolio career. The author concludes by suggesting that the use of arts education and technology have a pivotal role in helping students develop transitioning skills, graduate capabilities and portfolio careers.

Through the Lens of the Museum Curator

Traditional Portfolios have a long history in the art world. The iconic and romantic image of an artist with their portfolio tucked under their arm is an image ever present in our minds when we see the term portfolio. Each portfolio that an artist presents to an audience has a different story to tell in their selection, collection and curation of artifacts and the narrative that they explore. Developing the necessary folio thinking (Chen & Black, 2010) skills as art students is an important learning outcome. Many students do not see the relevance of documenting their practice, experimentation or process as combined experiences. Changing and adapting to teach contemporary folio thinking skills, The author proposes that looking and learning from the artworld and role of museum curator to scaffold approaches to learning curation in a digital portfolio rather than asking students to reflect on their own can support identity formation and develop self efficacy skills.

Everybody Can Do It – The Arts and Technology in Your Classroom

This chapter presents a “tool for practice” with the purpose of stimulating pedagogical decision-making in the design, delivery, and evaluation of primary school learning experiences that integrate technology with arts education. The tool highlights the unique and innovative practices of arts and technology education currently occurring in primary schools and classrooms in Australia. This identification provides a foundation from which teachers can begin their journey and conversations around the planned, meaningful integration of technologies into and throughout their arts teaching. The tool has the additional potential to support on-going professional development through the application of the tool to act as an evidence-based scaffold for reflexive practice. It encourages users to work collaboratively and collectively to look at their practice from multiple points of view, with careful and calculated consideration of the nine domains of Bamford and Glinkowski's (2010) Effect and Impact Tracking Matrix (EITM) – catalytic, negative loss, social, ethical, cultural, economic, educational, innovation, and personal.

Art Galleries Connecting with the Curriculum through Digital Technologies and Resources

Innovations in teaching and learning using technology are progressively changing the way in which teachers and students access art galleries and their collections. Art galleries have the authority and power to direct content, processes and the form of exhibition interpretation. In attempt to embrace innovative practices, they are using more approaches with technology to engage their audience to enter into a dialogue with their chosen narrative. For schools, this narrative often incorporates key concepts of the curriculum and delivers outcomes for learning in an informal manner. In an attempt to deliver content and learning outcomes through these resources, additional beliefs, values and learning evolve that contribute to further development of curriculum concepts and pedagogy. This chapter will review the strategies art galleries are using with digital technologies that deliver content and pedagogy addressed to the curriculum. The way in which these resources and strategies link directly to curriculum outcomes and the values and pedagogies that they cover, will be discussed.

Expanding Opportunities in Teacher Education

Initial teacher education has a critical role in preparing future teachers. In an era of increasing distance education, an additional challenge is to effectively prepare pre-service teachers who connect with higher education in an online environment. The diversity of the higher education student cohort studying by distance is significant and can easily be rendered invisible through the ‘facelessness' of digital technology. In addressing this challenge, this chapter outlines an innovative program undertaken in two secondary visual arts curriculum subjects delivered in distance mode in a graduate-entry teaching course. The innovation models a practice-based partnership involving higher education and community and culminates in a professional student exhibition. Outcomes include: positive student experience; high levels of achievement; increased civic consciousness and involvement; meaningful integration of cross-curriculum perspectives; and sustained focus on teaching practice. The program provides an example of an integrated use of technology to enhance university teaching and learning with the aim of informing future K-12 educational possibilities.

Young People, Digital Cameras, and Art Gallery Spaces

Young people can take meaningful photographs and are thus capable users of handheld digital technology such as digital cameras. When their digital photographs are paired with their narratives (creating visual narratives) an intertexuality becomes evident whereby the child's voice is honored. By positioning children as capable photographers who generate images to share their lived experiences, this chapter describes a project (called Ways of Seeing) that was interested in how visual narratives could support participatory learning in an art gallery setting. Johnson, Adams & Witchey (2011) trends for 2011 – 2016 identify six emerging technology topics that resonate well with the projects aims and offer several concrete examples of how technology is used in museums and galleries. They believe that digital technology embedded with a contemporary context reflects the reality of education needs, learning and teaching. It is from this perspective that this chapter shares a project that builds on these notions and shares how a digital camera can be used in the gallery space with young people. A visual narrative of the method and a content analysis of the digital images generated by the young people is presented. This chapter demonstrates how it is possible to take digital technology such as digital cameras and embed them into gallery education programs with young people.

A Museum Educator's Guide to Implementing a Digital Pedagogy Using Connectivism

Using international case studies from art museums, this chapter examines how museum educators are integrating iPads in their programming to offer interactive learning opportunities for K-12 audiences. It argues for the importance of a digital pedagogy in museum education as well as the adoption of a new learning theory for the digital age, within a museum educator's pedagogy. The chapter demonstrates how Siemens' and Downes' theory of connectivism can be applied to analyse and develop strategies that enable museum educators to embed the iPad in museum learning and support the development of General Capability and Visual Art specific skills. The strategies and challenges associated with implementing iPad technology in museum education are discussed within the context of the motivations and trends for digital education pedagogy, the shifting role of art museum education, and the role of the museum educator in the digital age. Findings demonstrate the applicability of connectivism in museum education and recommendations for museum educators to integrate iPads in their pedagogy.

Young Children and Narrative Meaning-Making to Promote Arts and Technology

Around the world, many young children under five years of age engage with arts and technology in their home environments. Engagement with arts and technology becomes a form of sense making and communication for the young child. When children enter early childhood educational settings, the same access to digital technology may not be visible. A divide between home environments and school environments may exist, with different cultural norms. Leven and Arafeh (2002) describe this as digital-disconnect between home-school contexts. This chapter will explore the importance of narrative meaning-making to promote arts and technology communication by young children. Narrative interactions allow children's voices to be at the centre of decisions by the educator regarding arts and technology engagement. By allowing children's voices to be heard around their engagement of arts and technology, we can reflect on reducing the gap between home environments and school environments for learning.

Public Art, Digital Technology, and Building Teacher Capacity

Visual Art teachers of K-6 students are required to look at innovative ways to deliver and explore the elements of arts through creating and responding learning activities. They are also required to consider how digital technology can support these areas. This chapter presents an Australian project that invited 10 primary school visual art teachers to consider how they could integrate digital technology such as an interactive whiteboard and mobile devices while exploring an inquiry topic of public art. Narrative case studies are presented that highlight the teacher voice. Each narrative focuses on the building of capacity to meaningfully engage with digital technology while exploring visual art. The narratives provide insight into gaps in how some primary teachers engage with digital technology in the classroom, that is focusing more on the tuning in and evaluation stages of an inquiry unit.