The work of Media Arts in the age of digital production

This chapter uses as a beginning point Walter Benjamin’s famous essay ‘The work of art in the age of technological reproducibility’(1935/2008) to discuss Media Arts education. It locates ‘Media Arts’ at the intersection of three key ideas: 1) media arts products as objects for popular and everyday consumption and intervention by individuals and broader audiences; 2) materiality and how individuals use their bodies and technologies to produce, combine and share digital materials and; 3) the construction of aesthetic knowledge and how this relates to critical and conceptual thinking. These ideas are discussed in the context of the development of curriculum for students at all ages of schooling, with specific attention given to the knowledge and skills students might develop within Media Arts education in primary schools. Examples from a Media Arts project in a primary school in Australia – where a new Media Arts national curriculum has been developed –are provided to illustrate the key ideas discussed in the chapter.

Time, space, and text in the elementary school digital writing classroom

Theorists of multiliteracies, social semiotics, and the New Literacy Studies have drawn attention to the potential changing nature of writing and literacy in the context of networked communications. This article reports findings from a design-based research project in Year 4 classrooms (students aged 8.5-10 years) in a low socioeconomic status school. A new writing program taught students how to design multimodal and digital texts across a range of genres and text types, such as web pages, online comics, video documentaries, and blogs. The authors use Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device to theorize the pedagogic struggles and resolutions in remaking English through the specialization of time, space, and text. The changes created an ideological struggle as new writing practices were adapted from broader societal fields to meet the instructional and regulative discourses of a conventional writing curriculum.

An analysis of digital storytelling as a documentation tool for research in the creative and performing arts

This paper examines the capacity of digital storytelling to document research activity in the creative and performing arts. In particular, it seeks to identify the thought processes and methods that underpin this research and to capture them using the digital storytelling medium. Interest in this issue was prompted by the author’s work with the creative and performing artists from the Queensland Conservatorium and the Queensland College of Art as part of the Federal government’s Research Quality Framework (RQF) in 2007. The RQF compelled artists to address what it means to undertake research in their disciplines, to describe this, measure it and quantify it; for many practitioners this represents a significant challenge. These issues continue to be pertinent in the context of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. This research is significant because it seeks to identify, in layman’s terms, the research methods and thought processes used by artists in their research practice. It seeks to do so free of the encumbrances of the professional doctorate policies, the higher education research quality frameworks, and the dense philosophical debates that have to-date dominated discussions of this issue. The research involves qualitative data collection methods including a detailed literature review, interviews with key practitioners and academics involved in the creative and performing arts, and three case studies. The literature review focuses on publications that explore issues of research practice and method in the creative and performing arts. The case studies involve three Queensland-based artists. Digital stories will be developed (and presented) with Marcus and Mafe using their visual materials and drawing on the issues identified in the literature review and interviews. Emmerson’s DVD provided a point of comparison with the digital stories. (Brief bios are attached)

Teachers’ beliefs about the possibilities and limitations of digital games in classrooms

Teachers’ beliefs about what it is (or is not) possible to achieve with digital games in educational contexts will inevitably influence the decisions that they make about how, when, and for what specific purposes they will bring these games into their classrooms. They play a crucial role in both shaping and responding to the complex contextual factors which influence how games are understood and experienced in educational settings. Throughout this article the authors draw upon data collected for a large-scale, mixed-methods research project focusing on literacy, learning and teaching with digital games in Australian classrooms, to focus explicitly on the attitudes,understandings and expectations held about digital games by diverse teachers at the beginning of the project. They seek to identify the beliefs about games that motivated teachers’ participation in a digital games research project while focusing, as well, on concerns that teachers express about risks or limitations of such a project. The authors’ aim is to develop a detailed picture of the mindsets that teachers bring to games-based learning environments, and the relevance of these mindsets to broader debates about the relationship between games, learning and school.

The building blocks of digital media literacy: Socio-material participation and the production of media knowledge

This article outlines the knowledge and skills students develop when they engage in digital media production and analysis in school settings. The metaphor of ‘digital building blocks’ is used to describe the material practices, conceptual understandings and production of knowledge that lead to the development of digital media literacy. The article argues that the two established approaches to media literacy education, critical reading and media production, do not adequately explain how students develop media knowledge. It suggests there has been too little focus on material practices and how these relate to the development of conceptual understanding in media learning. The article explores empirical evidence from a four-year investigation in a primary school in Queensland, Australia using actor–network theory to explore ‘moments of translation’ as students deploy technologies and concepts to materially participate in digital culture. A generative model of media learning is presented with four categories of building blocks that isolate the specific skills and knowledge that can be taught and learnt to promote participation in digital media contexts: digital materials, conceptual understandings, media production and media analysis. The final section of the article makes initial comments on how the model might become the basis for curriculum development in schools and argues that further empirical research needs to occur to confirm the model’s utility.

Fostering digital participation in regional and rural Australia

The deployment of high speed broadband around Australia offers opportunities to extend digital participation among and between regional and rural communities. Full realisation of these opportunities requires a greater understanding about community members’ current digital participation and development needs, to underpin innovative community-driven initiatives. This paper outlines the Fostering Digital Participation Project’s initial undertakings to determine current digital participation and the future digital aspirations of a number of regional and rural communities.

Children participating in science through digital-media literacies

This article outlines the findings of a research project in which primary school students in Queensland, Australia undertook science learning through media arts pedagogy. The project was a component of the URLearning Project. We found that students' development of digital media literacies allowed participation and communication in science in ways that were otherwise unavailable to them.

Dynamic digital posters : making the most of collaborative learning spaces

Academic and professional staff at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have been faced with the challenge of how to create engaging student experiences in collaborative learning spaces. In 2013 a new Bachelor of Science course was implemented focusing on inquiry-based, collaborative and active learning. Student groups in two of the first year units carried out a poster assessment task. This paper provides a preliminary evaluation of the assessment approach used, whereby students created dynamic digital posters to capitalise on the affordances of the learning space.

CoWs, Google and online possibilities : creating digital posters to enhance student engagement

A new Bachelor of Science (BSc) course was introduced at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2013 and focused on inquiry-based, collaborative and active learning. Two of the first year units required that students carry out a group poster assessment task. This poster provides a preliminary evaluation from an academic staff perspective of the assessment approach used, whereby students created digital posters to utilise the affordances of new learning spaces. The digital posters approach was first introduced to a group of academic staff from the Science and Engineering Faculty (SEF) in 2012 during a professional development program to explicitly develop skills and shared understandings of teaching in collaborative learning spaces (Steel & Andrews, 2012). Considerations were given to the pedagogical requirements of a poster assessment task, the affordances of the learning space and an identification of possible benefits of using Google Sites to create digital posters. Positive feedback from this group (as highlighted in the quotes shown) and subsequent approval from unit coordinators for two of the new first year BSc units meant that the approach was adopted for Semester 1, 2013 with approximately 360 students in each unit.

Enabling a positive first year experience in higher education through social media and mobile technologies

The first year experience for students within Higher Education institutions has become increasingly important as these institutions strive to improve student retention rates. With many universities also focusing on transforming teaching and learning in an effort to attract and retain students, there is a growing demand to understand and respond to individual student requirements, such as the need to feel a sense of belonging. The literature identifies a sense of belonging as being paramount to a students satisfaction with the institution and it is within this context that this paper reports on a three year study of how first year pre-service education students use social media and mobile technologies in their personal lives and their formal education. More specifically, the study identifies trends in the use of these technologies and the growing need for students to use digital media sharing tools to connect and engage with their peers. The paper contrasts the differences in use between these groups as it seeks to identify the role these technologies can play in their teaching and learning, as well as in promoting an overall positive first year experience.

Digital Spring? New media and new politics on the campus

Whilst the dynamics informing processes have taken time to become clear, civic resistance initiated by young people using new media began in Egypt in 2010 against the Mubarak regime, soon widened to Tunisia, Yemen and Libya. Known as the 'Arab Spring', this phenomenon re-ignited discussion about the political role of digital space and its democratic potential. While parallels between authoritarian regimes and universities and educational institutions might seem overdrawn to some readers, I suggest there is value in considering the 'Digital Spring' (apropos the 'Arab Spring') as a metaphor to suggest the possibility that similar processes are taking place in schools and universities. This invites discussion about the political significance of digital space and its democratic potential in those institutions. To assess how some young people engage in digitally mediated politics within schools and universities, I identify five propositions which amalgamate descriptive and normative elements derived from Habermas and Dahlgren. These propositions offer an ideal taxonomy of normative and descriptive elements to establish whether digital technology promotes participation and debate in ways that sustain democratic practice.

Children's Literature Digital Resources Project

Children's Literature Digital Resources is a full text digital repository of Australian children’s literature from 1830 to 1945. Users can read online the complete texts of a selection of early Australian children’s literature, both popular and rare. Digitised items include children’s and young adult fiction, poetry, short stories, and picture books. Users can also read related full text critical articles that were digitised as part of the project.

Digital literacies: Understanding the literate practices of refugee kids in an Afterschool Media Club

Since the 2000s, teachers in an increasing number of Australian schools have been learning how to support students with refugee backgrounds. For some of these students, entry into the Australian school system is not easy. English literacy is integral to some of the challenges confronting the students. In response, educators have been developing and researching ways of engaging with the students’ language and literacy learning. Much of the focus has been on traditional print-based school literacies. In contrast, I look here at student engagement in digital literacies in an after-school media club. Several concepts from the theory of French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu are useful for understanding the position of students of refugee background in the Australian school system. Like other conflict theories, Bourdieusian theory has sometimes been criticised as ‘pessimistic’, that is, for suggesting that schools necessarily reproduce social disadvantage. However, others have used Bourdieusian theory to analyse and critique the reproductive work of schooling for groups of students who experience educational disadvantage. I align myself with this latter tradition. Specifically, I use Bourdieu’s triad of concepts to explain aspects of the literacy education experiences of some young people of refugee background: field, capital and habitus. In particular, I look at questions of the legitimation of students’ competences as capital in literate fields within and beyond the school context. Data are drawn from an Australian Research Council-funded project, Digital Learning and Print Literacy: A design experiment for the reform of low socio-economic, culturally diverse schools (2009-14). The data analysed in this chapter include interviews and observations relating to the participation of two Congolese girls in an after school media club. Implications are drawn for teachers of literacy in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts. Consideration is made of early childhood, primary and secondary settings.

Arts education and iPads in the early years

This chapter takes as a working premise that digital culture is embedded in the every-day life experiences of most children living in post-industrial societies, both in home and, increasingly, in educational contexts. We outline how our research project investigated strategies for developing learning in the arts for young children by using the iPad as a creative device, rather than one on which they consume content in the form of games, on demand television and streaming video. We ask critical questions around creative ecologies and creative production; these grow from our observations on how young children and their families engaged with iPads through activities such as combining painting with digital photography. Analysis of work samples produced by children during the project enables interrogation of the ways in which young children can participate in arts practices and learning when digital media production is available. The chapter is structured around three themes of practice for iPad-based arts and creative education in preschool settings.