Texas Trends in Art Education, 2010 Page: 30

                                
[Conclusion             Engaging with culture requires liter-
acy that is multimodal, involving a
wide array of representational devices. The purpose of this
pedagogical interface with technology was and is to illustrate
how texts are not just passively consumed but are productive to
people's lives. Art educators and educators in general should be
engaging students in these types of cultural interactions as a
way to produce meaning from texts, building connections be-
tween history, current events, and popular culture. An under-
standing of the layers of meaning behind any text allows for
multiple associations and interpretations to take place. Our in-
tention then is to facilitate a critical form of literacy or under-
standing of the world that displays the visual and verbal through
hypermedia investigations. It becomes a form of cultural remix-
ing, a sifting through the fragments to find cultural patterns,
with teacher and student reassembling those patterns. The po-
tential for new understandings derived from student/teacher
interactivity is exponentially increased by the creative integra-
tion of technology into classroom instruction. VUE, and similar
software programs, further this active form of knowledge con-
struction through the ability to quickly shift between texts, im-
ages, words, videos, audio, and any other sensory experiences,
making it easier for teacher and student to find interdisciplinary
connections amongst art, literature, science, math, and history.
When using hypertext, a seemingly small idea can become a
complex network of systems that are inter-connected with each
other. It is not necessary that the teacher or the student know
every detail of the destination, because there is no "end" to the
formation of a hypertext. Students and teachers work collabora-
tively and share their knowledge and experiences that then be-
come documented. Classroom conversations become visually
represented and acted out. Student and teacher are able to re-
trace the process of learning, further reinforcing the concepts
discussed in class. Begin with a work of art, a sentence, a poem,
an advertisement, a shape, or any other POET and see where it
takes you. What connections can be made to culture and what
new understandings can students create in relation to a given
text?
References
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Footnotes
'According to Texas Education Agency (Texas Education Agency, 2009), economi-
cally disadvantaged students are categorized as those who are eligible for free or
reduced lunch.
"Referring to the classroom situation and how teacher and student interact with
information and one another. The classroom serves as a smaller reflection of
society.
"' Referring to both dominant and subcultures and the forms of representation
that exist within them. Knowledge is always situated within culture, never sepa-
rated from it.
'Hypertext is a dynamic text that allows for multiple methods of readership and
construction through a series of links.
VJohnny Chung Lee developed the WiiSmoothboard which is a low-cost interac-
tive whiteboard using the Wiimote. More information can be found at http://
johnnylee.net/projects/wii

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