First of all, let me make a call out
to anyone with an invested interest and/or expertise to participate in the
review of first ever draft National Media Arts Standards PK-8 until July 15!
Your input is crucial to the quality and relevancy of these standards.
To participate, go to http://nccas.wikispaces.com/NCCAS+June+30th+Public+Review
For the past 18 months, I've had the privilege of leading a smart, experienced and dedicated team of 14 writers from across the country in developing these standards to represent media arts as a trans-disciplinary and integrative form spanning: cinema, animation, imaging, sound, virtual and interactive design.
This newly distinguished discipline
provides engaging opportunities for students to produce their own media and:
· integrates all core
academic content and arts disciplines (e.g. STEM=STEAM);
· incorpoarates multiple
modalities and 21st Century skills in project and design-based learning;
· empowers student voice
and creative expression;
· promotes emerging
multi-literacies - media, tech, culture, systems
We are at an exciting moment here with
this new development and this open review. This post will provide some basic
points of emphasis in addition to NCCAS’s Media Arts
Position Paper and the NCCAS
orientation.
First of all, these standards are
voluntary. They are not imposed from top down. States, districts and teachers
can choose to access and tailor them for their particular needs. The intention
here is to provide a service and support for any and all teachers who might
include media arts in their instruction, specialist to novice generalist.
Hopefully, all teachers will find them accessible, useful and practical. The
online design should support a more interactive use of these standards.
The standards are not
“the curriculum”. They should not prescribe specific lesson plans, or “performance tasks” -
the teacher-designed student activities that fulfill the standard. The
standards are at a high level of generalization. Media Arts Standards need to
span the very broad range of disciplines listed above, as well as a broad range
of factors - expertise, resources, approach, etc. Model Cornerstone Assessments
(in development) are where you will find the detailing of specific example
lessons with student activities for enacting the standard.
These standards aspire to Enduring
Understandings, the “Big Ideas” that should drive instruction as the learning
that is most valuable and lasting. This form of “backwards planning” is based
on Wiggins and McTighe’s “Understanding by Design” that stresses actual
performance, or “playing the game”, as opposed to its passive reception by
students in a lecture-based classroom.
Media arts standards represent a
complex discipline that is often project-based, design-based, technical and
systems oriented. This is not only a singular art form. It is often an
intermediary discipline that combines forms and contents for their mutual
complement. Therefore it is difficult to restrain the wording and concept. The
formal wording of the standard may sometime seem overly complex and
unapproachable. The actual wording of the teacher’s direction and the activity
of the student will be much simpler and direct. For example:
Responding - Evaluating 8.2: Evaluate a work of media arts through analysis of key elements, components, and complex interrelationships within the work.
Teacher:
What stood out about the editing in this music video?
Student:
The beat and image were totally matched up. They made it stronger.
Hopefully, this provides some helpful background to understanding and evaluating these standards. We are very excited to hear input from everyone on the coherence and practicality of these standards. Please participate and let us know what is working and what needs work!
