“Teaching Digital Media to Digital Natives” presented by Stevens
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Digital Pedagogies
Presentation Title:
- Teaching Digital Media to Digital Natives
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Keywords: static, sonic, outside, electronic art, trope, David Hall, metaphysical.
Today, the majority of undergraduate students are ‘digital natives’; a generation born into a world shaped by digital technologies. Growing up with digital technologies has significant implications not only for how these students learn, but also for how they engage with the visual environment. These shifts are particularly pertinent when considering how to teach ‘digital media’ to Visual Arts students who are seemingly already highly literate in digital and visual technologies. Like other ‘digital natives’, for many of these students, consuming, creating and participating in popular visual culture is almost ‘second nature’. Yet, these students often struggle to reflect on and articulate their creative and critical relationships to their increasingly pervasive visual context. Furthermore, by undertaking higher education in the field, these students seemingly intend to become creative professionals; more sophisticated than their fellow digital natives to whom ‘prosuming’ also comes easily. This paper examines the concept of visual literacy in the context of teaching digital media to digital natives. By drawing on a range of literature from visual studies, art theory and pedagogical theory, it suggests that a key challenge in developing visually literate creative professions is to engage students ‘knowingly’ in their existing literacies. Rather than look solely to what students say about their learning, this paper also looks to what students create for traces of how visual literacies can be shaped by such pedagogical strategies.
Full text (PDF) p. 174-177
