Technology is a tool, how will you use it?

Changing how we live with technology, old school

Human beings have been making and using tools to help us survive and thrive since our earliest days.

Imagine what it must have been like for our first ancestors to have created a spark that caused a fire to glow in their midst. What a life changing moment in our human story. This new tool would allow them to warm themselves, cook food, see in the dark, protect themselves and on and on. The transitions in their lives would have been unthinkable before that moment.

Leap ahead a few hundred thousand years and new tools continue to be invented that make vast and unanticipated changes in how we live on a daily basis. In many cases, these new tools continue to help us with our most basic human needs: to keep warm, cook food and see in the dark, just like our ancient relatives. 

Do the newest technology tools actually make a change at the most basic levels of how we live our lives?

My response would be in most cases no and if used properly, yes.

FNMI Digital Platforms: A Modern Day talking stick to share our FNMI Culture

At a recent Blanket Wrapping ceremony with the Squamish Nation, Chief Ian Campbell said "I would like to hand over this modern day talking stick, the microphone, to our Elder to speak."   The cell phones and video cameras came out right away and people from all Nations and Ages recorded this ceremony.  The songs that were sung were ones that the Elders had given permission to share publicly.  If the Elders say you can do something, then protocol is to listen and do what you are being guided by them to do.  In an ever increasing modern world, where cell phones are the norm and a part of the dialogue tool used by most everyone, it seems quite clear that the best way to reach people, to impact them, to educate them and to share cultural expression is through Media literacy platforms.  As the FNMI program Lead for Learning through the Arts, and as a Mi'kmaq media artist myself, I have watched more and more of our Aboriginal communities come on board and utilize digital platforms like youtube, facebook, Skype and other social media platforms to inform and educate people about who we are and where we come from.  In the past, all of our histories and cultural practices were shared orally and passed down from generation to generation.  We are still doing that today. We are just using a more modern form of record keeping.

I remember the first time our Elder Issapaaki and I skyped into an Artist-Educator training session for the Ontario Arts Council from Fort MacMurray. It was a beautiful moment of discovery for Our Elder.  She was figuring out where to look at the camera, and then where to see all of the faces watching her as she shared her story.  She giggled, she laughed, and as she said, "She healed!"  The Elder was most impressed with the way that she could connect with people across the country to share her culture and her story.
One of the greatest resources that we have on our LTTA digital team is Our Elders in Residence program. This is just one of the ways that we will be able to access more remote communities, through Elder stories and digital platforms created by the LTTA digital team in partnership with Our Elders, FNMI Communities, Classrooms and Artist Educators.  Some valuable resources that the LTTA digital team have recently created are our Elder flip videos which feature different Elders speaking about how they got their traditional names, the impact of residential school, Idle No More and the powerful properties of our medicines.

Why Learn (Digitally) Through the Arts?

It is no secret that we’re living in an age of great complexity and uncertainty that requires current generations to have the skills, tools, and attitudes necessary to become creative life-long learners imbued with a passion to work collaboratively in solving pressing problems of 21st century society.

The Royal Conservatory (RCM) has spent the last 20 years responding to the this need through many facets of our programming, but none more so than through our game-changing, school-based, arts-infused education initiative known as Learning Through the Arts (LTTA).

Launched in 1994, LTTA seeks to expand the creative capacity of teachers to teach, students to learn, and schools to excel through a suite of proven-effective programs that make both teaching and learning engaging, meaningful, relevant, and fun. Our approach to arts-based education is known to:

• Improve student learning engagement, 21st-Century skills development, and academic achievement;
• Empower teachers with exciting new resources and instructional tools; and
• Enliven school communities by unleashing new collaborative capacity, intercultural understanding, and social vibrancy.

To date, we have achieved these objectives via a program model that bring specially-trained LTTA Artist-Educators into schools to partner with teachers in creating and delivering lesson plans that infuse the arts into learning the core curriculum (i.e. mathematics, science, language arts, and social studies.) This model involves a comprehensive service package that uses needs assessment, pre-planning sessions, in-class facilitation, program evaluation, professional training and development, and management expertise that altogether ensure ongoing effectiveness in delivering a high quality teaching and learning experiences.

Year Two Sample Project

Hands on a Camera: You’re Trapped in a Video Game.

This sample LTTA digital learning project would be implemented in year two, with teachers that have already explored the aesthetic awareness skills development in year one.

MEDIA ARTS project. 

First step: Setting Audience and Purpose

Developing a successful creative arts education learning experience begins with a deep motivation to engage in the artistic process. This will be accomplished in hands-on learning through a combination of digital tools (video editing, special effects work, and music/sound apps) and real world interactions (screenplay writing, camera work, acting.) The concept of this year two proposal is to engage students in a creative arts entrepreneurial experience. This experience could be adapted to many different themes/curriculum. In our example, we’ve attached it to social media, media literacy and social justice issues. A Science theme might connect to climate change. Social studies/FNMI themes may be understanding the meaning and depth of the treaties.

Our example provides a window into our process. We envision big projects/experiences surrounding music creation/music videos or radio dramas/radio stations in schools.

Curation Experiment

Curation. 

Consider, please:

“Curation” is of course a buzzword, but its history is a great case study for where we’re at: an abundance of stuff, with a scarcity of context. - Alexandra Molotkow, Globe and Mail, 11/7/14 

What does it mean in the LTTA mentorship model for teachers? Year One. 

I believe it means the sharing of a piece of art within an arts disposition/discipline to 

• develop a greater understanding of the art form (context), 
• build a shared vocabulary, 
• move from what is known to what is not known. 

And...readers of this blogpost...I'm going to share an example with you. Isabelle P. is a grade 7 language arts and social studies teacher. She'd like to develop a deeper understanding of story and then relate that to media work. 

THEME: Transformation. 

Leaping off point: I asked Grade 7 teacher Isabella P. began her curation journey with me by sharing three favourite novels and movies of her that tell a coming-of-age story. 

• Divergent, by Veronica Roth
• Harry Potter, series by JK Rowling
• A Child Called It, by David Pelzer

“It is important for people to know that no matter what lies in their past, they can overcome the dark side and press on the a brighter world.” - David Pelzer

• The Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes
• "Andrew: We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all."
• Freedom Writers, directed by Richard LaGravenese
• Mean Girls, by Mark Waters
• “That’s why her hair is so big. It’s full of secrets.”- Mark Waters

I also asked her, "What do you like about these novels and movies?"

"I like," she said, "how these ordinary people, kids really, do extraordinary things."

Isabella,

I'm going to take two of your choices and compare them through a lens of narrative structure (at least how I dissect narrative structure)...

My choices: 

• Breakfast Club
• Harry Potter 

Beginning: What three elements form the basis for our narrative?

Characters: 

Breakfast Club: The Nerd, the pretty girl, the jock, the freak and the rebel. The Rebel is the main character because he's the catalyst for change in all the other characters. Evidence: 

No Dad, What About You?

Harry Potter: Hermoine (the jock of the wizard world), Luna Lovegod (the freak), Ginny (the pretty girl), Neville (the nerd), Harry (rebel).
Harry is the main character because he's the catalyst for change in all the other characters. Evidence: Marauder's Map Scene 

Problem/Conflict or What the main character wants but he/she cannot buy:

John Bender (Judd Nelson's character): John wants love. (emotional closeness). Evidence: "No Dad, What about You?"

Harry Potter: Harry wants love. (in the form of parental guidance)

Evidence: Harry's Birthday. 

Setting: 

The Breakfast Club takes place strictly within the school grounds, narrowing the viewer's perspective of the characters. We only see the characters at the school and our view of them are limited to their interactions with each other. 

Evidence: Bender walks away.

Harry Potter's primary setting is the school grounds of Hogwarts. While the grounds are vast, again, our view of the characters is mostly limited to how we see them interact with each other. 
Evidence: Sorting Hat Scene. 

Middle. How does the character work to gain what he/she wants?

John is angry and demands love. A significant turning point is when he sacrifices himself for the rest of the group, getting himself into trouble with the principal, while they escape. The final turning point is when John pierces his ear with Molly Ringwald's diamond earring- showing his acceptance of her lifestyle. 
Evidence: Hall Chase Scene.

Harry tries to earn love. A significant turning point is when he sacrifices his own needs (in every movie at some point!) for the others. In the Deathly Hallows movie, he tries to stop them all from drinking poly juice to turn themselves into likenesses of him. He knows that this is dangerous for them. 
Deathly Hallows Scene.

End: Does the character gain what he/she wants? Or does he/she accept that he cannot have what he/she wants, but learns more about himself or the world? 

John walks away from the school and he's free- he has a more understanding view of the parts of society that he's always felt outcast from and...he finds love. Bender walks away. 

Harry and Ginny meet Ron and Hermoine at platform 9 3/4 as each of them drop off their children for Hogwarts. We see that the wizarding world is safe and Harry has now married and become a parent, therefore creating the happy family life he didn't have as a child. 
19 years later.

Your Homework: Take my favourite novel of all time, Charlotte's Web by EB White, and analyze the narrative structure. You can provide quotes or video clips as evidence of each of the pieces of your analysis. Questions for you to consider:

• Can you find similarities/differences within Charlotte's Web's characters and structure to the ones outlined?
• Are Fern's wants/needs similar to John Bender and Harry Potter? 
• Do the barnyard characters parallel the misfit structure?

Beginning: What three elements form the basis for our narrative?
Character. Who's story is this? Who changes the most through the story? 
Problem/Conflict or What the main character wants. 
Setting.

Middle. How does the character work to gain what he/she wants?

End: Does the character gain what he/she wants? Or does he/she accept that he cannot have what he/she wants, but learns more about himself or the world? 

Why Choose Media Arts for your Classroom?

While media arts present a clear means of engagement for students, the exploration and creation of media arts is integral to developing the skills for the 21st Century Learner. Media Arts study and art-making provides us with a stellar opportunity to notice together a student’s perspective on the influence, the power, the importance of discernment within their day to day engagement of media arts. In that process of noticing and excavating our understanding, we begin to question and consider other opinions and perspectives of media arts.

Media Arts is the toolkit that we use to interface with the world. Technology sits in every student’s pocket. When we embrace that phone or iPad as a connection tool/medium to enhance their learning we help them to develop their comprehension of how the medium is used. This will be invaluable preparation for 21st century communication skills and the creative entrepreneurial endeavours they’ll be meeting in their work world. While the medium/tool may change, the foundation knowledge of the medium’s purpose and how to adapt it to an audience will not.

Media Literacy is integral for the development of engaged thinkers and citizens. As young people move from passive observers and absorbers of other people’s ideas/media to the practice of becoming active creators, they gain critical thinking skills through deconstructing and constructing media themselves. As more informed consumers in our media saturated world, they’ll demonstrate discernment about the media they consume about the way in which they’re targeted by the media. Through the creation of media texts, they’ll experience and share their own voices, becoming equal partners in the media creation industry.

Media Literacy: Make Art. Make Change. 
 

Why Video Games?

“To put it simply: we all like to tell stories. We’ve been crafting tales for a very long time, and the mediums for telling our stories have evolved, becoming more complex, with richer details, with more and more fantastic backgrounds and appealing plots. Whole new worlds have been born and shaped in human brains.

And as the stories grew in complexity, so did the tools used in their making. Art diverged into several different categories, music became more elaborated and movies found their way into the world. Technological enhancements allowed sharing of information, spreading art all around the globe. New fantasy worlds were created each day. Worlds so rich made people began to desire becoming a part of them. A new concept was being brought to life.
Although video games were first just about getting the highest score possible when faced with a determined task, developers soon realized the endless possibilities laying ahead of them. Playing a video game is more than simply sitting through another story. For the first time one could have a say in how the tale told itself. Players could take hold of characters and live the hardships of the journey themselves, diving into that particular world and mastering it, making theirs the protagonist's conquests and failures.
A game has the potential to bond player and story in a way never seen before. This connection can be established in a variety of ways. Be it the fantastic landscapes in which the story unravels, the soundtracks or the well- constructed personality of a particular character. It forces the player to thrive in order to see more of what he wants."
Gamux. 11 November 2011
http://code.tutsplus.com/articles/effectively-organize-your-games-development-with-a-game-design-document--active-10140  

Videogames are the world students live in and we need to meet them in that world. Interactive stories are the video games of the future. If you haven’t seen a video game lately, you’ll be surprised at the narratives you’ll find. 
http://freebirdgames.com/to_the_moon/ To the Moon is an Indie Adventure RPG about two doctors traversingthrough the memories of a dying man to fulfill his last wish.