Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Second Life
- Creators: Young, Bernard
Description
We live in a world of rapidly changing technologies that bathe us in visual images and information, not only challenging us to find connections and make sense of what we are learning, but also allowing us to learn and to collaborate in new ways. Art educators are using one of these new technologies, virtual worlds, to create educational environments and curricula. This study looks at how post-secondary art educators are using Second Life in their undergraduate and graduate level curricula and what perceived benefits, challenges, and unique learning experiences they feel this new educational venue offers. This study uses qualitative and participant observation methodologies, including qualitative interviews, observations, and collection of generated works, to look at the practices of six art educators teaching university level undergraduate and graduate courses. Data are compared internally between the participants and externally by correlating to current research. Art education in Second Life includes many curricula activities and strategies often seen in face-to-face classes, including writing reflections, essays, and papers, creating presentations and Power Points, conducting research, and creating art. Challenges include expense, student frustration and anxiety issues, and the transience of Second Life sites. Among the unique learning experiences are increased opportunities for field trips, student collaboration, access to guest speakers, and the ability to set up experiences not practical or possible in the real world. The experiences of these six art educators can be used as a guide for art educators just beginning exploration of virtual world education and encouragement when looking for new ways to teach that may increase our students' understanding and knowledge and their access and connections to others.
ContributorsSchlegel, Deborah (Author) / Stokrocki, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Erickson, Mary (Committee member) / Young, Bernard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
ABSTRACT This qualitative study examines how high school art teachers conceive of being a good art teacher. Motivated by my own experiences as an art teacher, I designed this study to add teachers' voices to the conversation surrounding quality in education. My research design included a narrative strand and an arts-based strand. In the narrative strand, I interviewed and observed 12 high school art educators from a major city in the southwest. I conducted an autoethnographic reflection exploring my connection to the research topic and research process. In the arts-based strand I used fiber-arts to further understand my topic. I wrote this dissertation using a narrative approach, blending the traditional research format, voices of participants, and my autoethnographic reflection. I included the results of my arts-based approach in the final chapter. Findings suggest that the teachers in this study conceptualize being a good art teacher as a process of identity construction. Each of the teachers understood what it meant to be a good art teacher in unique ways, connected to their personal experiences and backgrounds. As the teachers engaged in identity work to become the kind of art teacher they wanted to be, they engaged in a process of identity construction that consisted of four steps. I propose a model of identity construction in which the teachers chose teaching practices, evaluated those practices, identified challenges to their identities, and selected strategies to confirm, assert, or defend their desired identities. The findings have implications for teachers to become reflective practitioners; for teacher educators to prepare teachers to engage in reflective practices; and for administrators and policy makers to take into account the cyclical and personal nature of identity construction. This study also has implications for further research including the need to examine the dispositions of art teachers, teachers' evolving conceptions of what it means to be a good art teacher, and the effect labeling teachers' quality has on their identity construction.
ContributorsAndrelchik, Hillary (Author) / Erickson, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Young, Bernard (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Black Rock City is a temporary city existing for one week in the harsh desert of northern Nevada. It plays host to the Burning Man festival with over 300 large-scale art installations and is considered to be the largest interactive art festival in the world. Besides the main burn, smaller local regional events have developed. These regional events encompass many of the same tenets as Burning Man including the presentation of large-scale art. Burn2 is the regional event held on the virtual world, Second Life. In 2013, both events used the theme of Cargo Cult as a stepping off point for the artists. Through the lens of spectacle, I used art criticism as a way to gain understanding of the artworks.
Art criticism is a means of interpreting and appreciating artwork and is often used in the art classroom. Edmund Feldman's method promotes a deeper understanding of art and consists of four steps: description, formal analysis, interpretation and judgment. Using Feldman's method, I analyzed three artworks from the 2013 Burning Man festival and three works from Burn2. From interviews, photographs, and personal observations I analyzed the artworks. I used external analysis to compare the literature on similar festivals and the artworks with other events held in the real life and virtual world.
I found in both events very similar concepts and themes. Artists had specific subject matter in mind when designing their installations. Artists used the theme as a stepping off point for rationalizing their content. Art made to be displayed at Burning Man was expensive; funding was a concern for all the artists. Burn2 artists were free from funding concerns even though there were expenses to making art in Second Life. Emerging themes were use of building materials and color, use of electronics and computer technology, art installations in festivals, spectacle, collaboration, and interactivity. Further implications included teaching about the engineering of structures, critical thinking about festival themes and the individual art installations, visual culture, and art making with these emerging art forms.
Art criticism is a means of interpreting and appreciating artwork and is often used in the art classroom. Edmund Feldman's method promotes a deeper understanding of art and consists of four steps: description, formal analysis, interpretation and judgment. Using Feldman's method, I analyzed three artworks from the 2013 Burning Man festival and three works from Burn2. From interviews, photographs, and personal observations I analyzed the artworks. I used external analysis to compare the literature on similar festivals and the artworks with other events held in the real life and virtual world.
I found in both events very similar concepts and themes. Artists had specific subject matter in mind when designing their installations. Artists used the theme as a stepping off point for rationalizing their content. Art made to be displayed at Burning Man was expensive; funding was a concern for all the artists. Burn2 artists were free from funding concerns even though there were expenses to making art in Second Life. Emerging themes were use of building materials and color, use of electronics and computer technology, art installations in festivals, spectacle, collaboration, and interactivity. Further implications included teaching about the engineering of structures, critical thinking about festival themes and the individual art installations, visual culture, and art making with these emerging art forms.
ContributorsKrecker, Linda Susan (Author) / Stokrocki, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Young, Bernard (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014