Dewey and Technology

3. In educational settings, discuss how technology enhances the teaching and learning environment. What do the viewpoints of Dewey, Bruner, Elliott, McLuhan, and Eisner provide for our consideration when thinking about technology, performing arts, and the process of teaching and learning. Although John Dewey wrote in the late 19th and early 20th century, not the much talked about 21st, his thoughts seem increasingly perceptive.

Many people working to construct technologies for learning now cite Dewey, primarily in terms of his advocacy of learning by doing. They propose models for learning based on immersion in practices of the larger society. This approach would certainly find some support in the progressive education movement that developed from some of Dewey's ideas.

Challenging us to reflect on what we do, Dewey would ask us to pause to think more about how learning through technology serves as a point in the development of experience. Dewey would certainly value learning about new technologies, especially if that were through participation in authentic social practices that use those technologies. Finally, Dewey would certainly value learning technology, if it means that students become more capable of participating in society and enlarges the scope of their abilities to communicate.

Technology in Arts Classroom

It may seem an irony to some, but technology is playing a significant role in ensuring that the arts are a core subject area in the K-12 curriculum. Interactive networking technologies are providing students and teachers with greater opportunities to experience firsthand the visual images, sound, and motion that embody the arts--as well as to discover the interdisciplinary and multicultural dimensions of arts education. This natural synergy between the arts and technology in education is helping artists, arts educators, and generalists to shape a new grassroots vision and knowledge base for arts education that we believe has three key components.

First, it is clear that arts education must evolve rapidly as a community of interest that nurtures itself through purposeful and dynamic interaction among its members, similar to the high level of Internet-based sharing of ideas and examples among students, teachers, and professionals that has existed in science and math education.

Second, technology-based tools will enable teachers and students to have greater access to arts-based materials and resources. Students and teachers will no longer be limited to 45-minute art and music classes and infrequent (if at all) field trips to galleries or performance halls. The Internet and new multimedia applications will provide opportunities to experience the full range of visual and performance content in real time and to access them in multimedia databases.

Third, arts education in the future will be affected by technological applications that offer new means for creating art, whether visual or performance-based. Networking technologies are providing students with tools and facilities to extend hands-on experiences beyond the traditional classroom or studio.

The good news is that there is a rapidly growing networked community of artists, arts educators, and general educators who have embraced technology as an exciting vehicle for introducing young people to the visual and performing arts.

Technology's Impact on Arts Education

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3193623

I think technology is supplying useful tools and resources to build a new knowledge base for arts education. Developed access to information and resources, plus opportunities to engage directly with educators and the creative process or otherwise experience real-time performances, are changing the way we teach and learn about the arts. As a result, the arts are better placed to take their place as a core subject area in the K-12 curriculum.
Most importantly, networking technologies are making it possible for students and teachers to draw upon performing arts-based tools, resources, and environments that were simply not available in the past. Technology enables today's students to discover, create, display, and evaluate their work in the visual and performing arts as part of an ongoing collaborative and creative process that may include their teacher and peers. It also supplies students with the opportunity to produce personal growth and achievement and to achieve a better perceptive of their own natural creativity.
These new and important technologies to arts education will have a thoughtful impact on arts education and will change the way in which some people will understand and participate in the cultural life of his or her community.
In Music Education and its relationship with technology, is an organization TIME (Technology Institute for Music Education) and how they are checking the demand for music technology training and spreading awareness to music educators. I think in order to contact the students of today, teachers must always stay up to date on discovering and creating the newest technologies in the classroom because the students today are growing up with technology as a constant factor in their lives.