Teaching visual culture at the elementary level requires a deeper knowledge of the elements that go beyond the traditional ones of line, value, color, shape form and texture. As educators, we must be aware of the ideational content as well. “Ideational content refers to the ideas people express through art and about art (Freedman & Boughton, nd).” This can include the subject, story or symbols used to express meaning in an art work “through the use of technical skills and the visual tools used to create form (Freedman & Boughton, nd).” Four tools that are used are objects, space, light and time that are combined to create new forms of visual culture that must be critically examined in an artistic way. Ideational information, along with formal qualities and technical skills, “must be infused into a visual culture curriculum so that their relationship is understood by students as they learn (Freedman & Boughton, nd).” This provides a dynamic experience for students to learn about art, their culture, their histories and apply their knowledge inside and outside of the school environment.
Lessons that combine all of these elements are important to implement, especially as technology and the access to it advances. A “1 to 1” classroom environment - where students and mobile learning devices such as iPads are in equal numbers and used throughout the day to teach, learn and create - is becoming more and more commonplace, even at the elementary level. In order to combine this part of our culture - which could be described as “digital visual culture,” teachers must be prepared to have a knowledge of how to use the technology and how to effectively apply it to art. For a previous curriculum class, I combined a lesson I had found from Tracy Fugelstad’s blog, http://drydenart.weebly.com/fugleblog, and combined it with an art lesson about one point perspective and character creation. The lesson included working with a student to teach him about one point perspective, had him create his own character, the environment his character would be in, then draw the environment using his perspective knowledge. Then, instead of keeping the lesson as a drawing, using green screen technology and his iPad, I had him insert himself into the scene as his superhero character. He performed as his character, and was able to see how the use of one point perspective made the environment look more 3 dimensional. This combination of traditional and digital techniques provided him a more dynamic lesson that kept his interest and taught him a multi faceted lesson, rather than just a single technical skill.
This lesson used the tools of space and time, as well as visual culture to teach my “student” (my son) about more formal artistic qualities. It was a learning experience for both of us, and was fun at the same time.
References
Freedman K., and Boughton D. (e-version) Elementary Art Education: A Practical Approach to Teaching Visual Culture.