Remedying the Blind Spots in Education

Education is capable of having blind spots, and certainty the area of media arts is one of them. But how does education become aware of, and adapt to the areas of need of which it is unaware?

With the ever increasing influx of technology into schools and in our world, all educators should address and include some digital media in their instruction. Media Arts Education would support that institution-wide transition with standards-based cohesion and coherence towards rounded, rigorous and relevant competencies for career and college.

With this technological shift, it is especially important that Media Arts Teachers begin to be hired in schools in order to teach the aesthetic, cultural, and literacy aspects of media, that connect, inform and persuade us in the 21st Century. This is literally how we make sense of and take action in the world. Students never examine the media arts world that surrounds them, and remain unaware of its influence and power, let alone their own latent capacity for utilizing it effectively.

Surprisingly, even with the pervasiveness of media in our culture, there is no institutional recognition of the need to teach with and about these essential forms of communication in the K12 system. Schools do not have the internal means for recognizing or acting on a need that doesn't already exist as a formal category, such as English Language Arts, or Physical Education. Establishing a whole new content area is a very unusual proposition. And of course, there are not enough Media Arts Teachers or Specialists already existing to point out and push this need. So how does this start?

That is why the inclusion of Media Arts Standards at the state level across the U.S. is such an important first step, and why we then need strong and continuous public demand to bring this to full formal establishment as quickly as possible. This need for external pressure is exemplified by the decades-long battle for the separate dance and theatre credentials that were recently authorized in California. It must not take forty years to include Media Arts and media literacy in the 21st Century curriculum!

This is why we have initiated the Media Arts Education Coalition, in order to galvanize the community around this momentous opportunity to institute a transformative arts discipline for 21st Century education!

All supportive individuals and organizations are urged to sign-on at this website now!

SIGN-ON TO SUPPORT THE FORMAL ESTABLISHMENT OF MEDIA ARTS EDUCATION IN CALIFORNIA K12 SCHOOLS!

Media Arts Education - Learning Amplified

MEDIA ARTS EDUCATION: K12 Arts Education for the 21^st Century

We live in a “media arts” centered world. We know and learn about, and create our contemporary world through media arts tools, forms and processes. Our 21st C global culture has moved from text-based to multimedia-based modes of communication and interaction. Particularly in California, media arts has a long historic and cultural legacy, and accounts for a substantial and increasing portion of our  $375 billion “Creative Economy”.

It is essential that all students become versed in these new modes to become empowered citizens, effective communicators, and to develop innovative solutions to contemporary challenges.

"Media Arts Education" is a relatively new categorization of K12 arts education, alongside of the traditional disciplines of Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts. It encompasses the digital media arts of imaging, moving image, sound, interactive and virtual design.

Media Arts Students can:

• Produce and design anything they can imagine, including photos, graphics, animations, movies, special effects, motion graphics, video games, 3D designs, virtual worlds, interactive apps, etc.
• Design 3D models of sustainable communities on Mars, complete with agricultural and energy production, and designs for architecture, transportation, tools and clothing
• Investigate the local community for “hotspots” of interest, history, social engagement, or urban and environmental challenge, and then propose transformational designs, investigations and promotions of these hotspots
• Produce videos that present their vision for school change, submitted to their local school board for the (LCFF) district budget decision-making process
• Create 3D game designs addressing a social or environmental issue that exercise every level of mathematics, code, virtual physics, engineering, and game theory, as well as core content
• Design digital and physical 3D models of cities, mega spaces, and everyday objects, such as kitchen utensils and phones, while studying the omni-presence of design
• Analyze and debate presidential election advertising through media literacy methods  
• Exercise their language skills (especially English Language Learners) through producing videos such as news, cooking, travel, stories, talent, social issues, etc., by developing scripts, rehearsing segments, analyzing media, and collaborating in diverse production activities
• Exhibit their productions in “multimedia events” that integrate all arts disciplines for the school and local community, including: video yearbooks, streaming arts and news broadcasts, multimedia theatre, screen exhibitions, film festivals, video and DJ dance experiences, international cultural exchanges, etc.
• Evaluate and design multimedia tools and products for the enhancement and universal access of learning in English, Mathematics, Science, and History

These actual classroom projects demonstrate Media Arts Education’s capacity to:

• Cultivate 21^st Century Skills in Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking
• Promote student-centered, inquiry-driven learning that is relevant and self-directed
• Engage students in real world activities and problem solving with purposeful results
• Advance core academic and arts achievement through their effective integration in cultural and community projects
• Empower student voice and civic engagement, and foster essential literacies in arts, media and technology
• Support all students towards academic success, including those with special needs, limited language proficiency, and at risk of academic failure

Media Arts Education in these various forms provides rich and rigorous arts content in the instruction of media production and design, and forms a unique space of innovation and invention for 21st C education. A “Media Arts Lab”, incorporating a variety of digital media and design tools and forms, can serve as a virtual “makerspace” within the school, where students can create any expression, production or design they can imagine.  

This virtual laboratory supports integrated and holistic forms of learning that can "dissolve the walls" of classrooms, supporting students to become the researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs, designers and artists of their own futures. By engaging in a broad range of processes and activities in sequenced study, students can master 21st Century and Media Arts Standards-based competencies that prepare them for both college and career:

Multimedia Communication                                Technical Production

Design Thinking                                                      Innovation and Adaptation

Inquiry/Research                                                    Organization/Development

Media, Tech, Arts Literacies                                  Critical Analysis/Evaluation

Self-agency/Community-Interaction                   Contextual Awareness

Synthesis/Metacognition                                      Learning about Learning

Currently, in California, media arts educators do not have specific standards for their instruction, so they have to turn to other sets of standards in order to meet district and school requirements for “standards-based instruction”. Nor do media arts educators have specific pre-service training, program support, or ongoing professional development. Also, media arts courses and teachers may fall under other categories in their districts and programs, such as computer, technical, visual arts, theatre, etc.

In order to move Media Arts Education towards educational establishment, the adoption of standards by the state allows any interested educators to form commonality in practice and outcome. Then, as the discipline gains recognition and support, districts and the state may begin forming specific courses and a credential for authorized instruction. Only with its complete institutional implementation can the promise of Media Arts Education be fulfilled.

Media Arts Education is endorsed by all national arts organizations and their affiliated partners in the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards, and is endorsed by: the National Association of Media Arts and Culture, the National Association of Media Literacy Education, the National Endowment for the Arts, the College Board, and is included as a core content in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). National Core Media Arts Standards are currently being adopted or adapted across the U.S. Media Arts is a key recommendation in the CREATE CA “Blueprint for Creative Schools”.

Media Arts Education is now forming a broad-based community of support of educators, parents, industry and community organizations, etc., seeking to formally establish the discipline in U.S. K12 schools. 
See the Media Arts Education Coalition website for more information.
SIGN-ON HERE TO SUPPORT THE FORMAL ESTABLISHMENT OF MEDIA ARTS EDUCATION IN CALIFORNIA K12 SCHOOLS

California Superintendent Torlakson Declares Support for Media Arts Standards

On August 26, 2016, I received a public communication from California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, that he is committed to "working with the legislature next year to ensure the explicit inclusion of Media Arts in California’s visual and performing arts content standards.” And just now, August 27, this was updated to state that that message “has been conveyed to the Governor (Jerry Brown).”

This is a momentous and historic occasion in the development of Media Arts Education, and will be celebrated by the many people that have long been working for and cheering on this movement, both in California and nationally. This will lead to the galvanizing of our diverse community of practice and support, the development of state standards, and the eventual implementation of the discipline. We are grateful to the Superintendent for his forward-looking vision and dependable character for this assurance. We have much work to do as this is actually a new beginning, but at least now we have moved into a phase where that work will have lasting results. And this work will have national, and even international significance, given California’s leading 21st C media centered culture, and our massive $300 billion Creative Economy, as a significant part of the 6th largest economy on the planet.

This provides substantially greater endorsement and momentum for Media Arts Education than it has experienced since it was initiated in Minnesota in the early 90s. For over 10 years, California has been slowly and haltingly making progress towards this point. In LAUSD, we had been able to achieve multiple concrete milestones of its officiation, including a specific Media Arts Adviser position, the implementation of multiple Demonstration Media Arts Classrooms for regional support and teacher-led development, and an illustrious Advisory Committee under former Director, Richard Burrows. And then the adoption of K12 Media Arts Standards within the Instructional Division, a Board resolution, numerous higher-ed and industry partnerships, its personnel categorization in HR, and the de facto declaration of its establishment of our other former Director, Robin Lithgow.

Yet those points of progress were met with severe setbacks. Primarily due to the economic devastation of the Great Recession of the late 2000s, which caused the division to be completely cut and all of its programs decimated, media arts lost its momentum as a consolidated and focused project. Current LAUSD Arts Ed Director Rory Pullens has been making great efforts to support media arts schools with industry partners and specific professional development for film teachers. But its designation and representation has been split between Theatre (film) and Visual Arts (media), which diffuses its development.

With the National Core Arts Standards finally published in 2014, and since then in the process of adoption by many states across the U.S., there is breathtaking progress for media arts at a much larger scale. In California, there have now been two bills that passed through Congress in order to revise our old VAPA standards. The first bill, SB 975, which occurred in 2015, had stated that California’s VAPA standards revision would refer to the entire National Core Arts Standards document, implicitly including “Media Arts”. Near final passage, it was suddenly gutted to be used as an emergency vehicle for changes to the High School Exit Exam.

I had glanced at the second bill, AB 2862, early in the process when I first heard about it this past July.  I assumed then that it was the same text and watched over time as it progressed through both houses, unopposed. Just two weeks ago though, I was alerted to the fact that “Media Arts” was actually missing from the wording, just before the bill began to pass both houses. When I read it more carefully, I realized that the NCAS arts disciplines were discretely listed as Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, all except for “Media Arts” . It appeared that someone had gone to the trouble to list these disciplines with the deliberate intent to void one entire discipline.

It is currently unclear how this came to be as no reasoning was in the bill, nor in the analysis. And I am not now interested in investigating it. There were weak reasons shared by the writers, that “there was no credential” and that “media arts wasn’t in the original framework”. Seriously? But the responsible parties had violated the intent of the bill itself in its description of a validating, public, inclusive and transparent process in using the NCAS as the reference in developing state standards. These few people, with no stated expertise, had essentially pre-determined the future of arts education in California prior to opening it up for public discussion.

With that flaw, I could question the bill’s validity, and rally the media arts education community in California that we have been building for this decade. But the bill had already rapidly and unanimously passed through both houses. Once again, it seemed media arts would not happen in California. Apparently, the community's voice was effective. I was just beginning to stage a next, desperate phase of advocacy, when I received Torlakson’s communication. Suddenly, what had been another detrimental hit, became an opportunity to forge a community and ascertain the discipline. Torlakson’s bold endorsement not only corrected the bill's error in allowing media arts to be considered, it placed media arts securely in equal status with the other arts in the standards development process.

With this declaration, media arts is primed for full establishment in California. And this newly initiated and invigorated media arts community is forming in order to serve the next generation of students in the development of this innovative and promising discipline! Many, many thanks to all who raised their voices and made this historic event happen! We’re now supporting the passage of AB 2862, and looking forward to much substantial progress in the months and years ahead!

Please join us as we use this galvanizing moment to form a "Coalition for Media Arts Education" in order to promote and establish this promising and beneficial discipline in California, and across the United States! Stay tuned for an announcement to that effect!