In today's post I will be discussing assistive technology in the art classroom. This is something I had not thought about deeply initially, just because art is SO adaptive. One of the first teaching experiences Art Education students at CSU have is an opportunity to do Service Teaching, creating lessons for adults with developmental and physical disabilities, and teaching these art activities to said students. I strive to have all of my students try a new technique in art if that is what I am teaching, especially if they can do the skill safely- exploring new skills is way more important to me than highly technical or realistic artworks- but those are super cool too! I want to be an advocate for all of my students, so I am ecstatic to learn new skills and resources that I can offer them!
Oftentimes, Assistive Technology in education focuses on reading and writing accessibility, which is STILL an incredible tool to have in an art class- we will be using literacy skills to understand rubrics, to write artist statements , critiques, and analyses of artworks, to read text within artworks!
I am really excited by a resource I found that discusses many technologies that make actual artmaking more accessible if I am unable to find an accommodation on my own- they include "low tech" accessibility tools, like surface accommodations, or tool accommodations! The article also lists "higher tech" resources, like digital drawing apps, spin art machines, and even using art specific augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) boards!
While I love- and utilize myself- Read and Write Tools, I want to focus on VR/AR or Virtual and Augmented Realities in this blog. I never would've thought about utilizing this kind of technology in school, especially in art class but I think it is a really unique resource! Especially with Augmented Reality, students only need internet access. For art education especially, it is a great idea to use Augmented Reality experiences as research opportunities- we can "take" students on virtual fieldtrips, explore parts of the Earth they may not get to travel to (like National Parks, and cities all around the world!), or even art museums that may be far away or exhibits that are no longer being shown. Students can draw information from these experiences- and even relate them across content areas, with scientific facts learned, or geographical or cultural ideas understood and related back to social studies and/or history classes. Students can use this technology to inspire new ideas, to understand the context around an artwork, to develop a better notion of what they are communicating with their artwork when they refer to experiences, cultures, and times outside of their own.
This technology is not just for students with 504s and IEPs (especially in art class) but rather for everybody, creating a cool new learning experience and a way to connect with experiences students may have never had otherwise.
コメント