Week 4 Reflection

This week's class introduced the notion of IT and it's role in the visual arts and visual arts education for early learners. We explored this as a class by using photography to evoke feelings and express opinions of issues we believed were important.

Theorist, John Dewey believed that a teacher must support the student with learning that meets the social needs of a community and is relevant to current society (Garrison, 2012).

The importance of relevant and educational IT and media experiences has never been so important today, where our homes and schools are saturated with various forms of IT and media. It is essential that teachers in an early childhood setting are experimenting with technology and allow their students to do the same.

For younger learners, who are just in the manipulative stage of visual arts development, as according to Piaget, allowing them to use a simple IT program such as paint and play around with the different textures and different colours and shapes they can create can be a valuable experience (Wright, 2012). Furthermore, when children move into the symbolic stage computer programs can be used to manipulate at first, basic symbols such as circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, on programs such as Word, Paint or Photoshop, with guided assistance with early learning educators. Through such programs, educators can show students how IT can be a way or tool used for people to express themselves and express artwork, emotions, feelings and opinions.

Arts Experience:
Ages 4-5

Responding:

-          Have students view pictures of Steve McCurry’s portrait photographs.

       -          Ask students how Steve McCurry might of taken these photographs
       -          Ask children how close the photographer would have been to the people in the photographs.
       -          Ask the children how the people in the photographs feel and where they might be in the world.
- Ask the children about the types of colours used and what the focal point of the photograph is.

Making:

- Phone with a camera (and a filter program)
- Printer

In small groups of 3 ask students to use a phone camera to take a portrait photograph of a person in their group or one of the educators. The children are then helped to choose filters and edit their photograph on the phones and then these images are printed for the children to look at.