Homework 10.4. Takeaways on the Readings: Making Matters (Duh.)
In Peppler's Chapter Four, titled "New Media Arts, The Do-It-Yourself Movement, and the Importance of Making," she has a subheading that reads "Does Making, Creating, and Performing Matter?" I read these words, and was almost tempted to simply skip ahead to the next section. Of course it does, I almost yelled in my mind. What kind of world would we be living in in which making, creating, and performing did not matter, especially for our students, our children?
Perhaps Peppler is preaching to the choir here. Perhaps she expected a resounding "Yes!" in response to this cheekily posed rhetorical question. She follows the subheading with several paragraphs of text that illustrate, quite clearly, that yes, making, creating, and performing do indeed matter for our children. It encourages them to be more successful in college and later in life, it inspires more interaction with others, it engages more children with community service-based projects. It encourages children to be constructive, to be critical, to be social. From my own mind, not cited directly in Peppler's text, I can also conjure examples of the positive effects of making for young students. Making, after all, can be seen as the physical manifestation of creativity. As later mentioned in Martinez and Stager's chapter of Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, the conceptual act of composing music is not itself a satisfying experience for a student, if they are never able to hear the music that they have composed.
So yes. Making is important. Who would say otherwise? What is this, 1984?
But then I thought of the testing culture that is pervasive in schools today, the far too familiar model of knowledge being funneled into our children, even in the arts. It concerned me; maybe not everyone would be as steadfast in their answer to this question. Maybe some would argue that "making, creating, and performing" might matter a little, but might fall behind "deducing, memorizing, and knowing." Maybe this is a necessary subheading within this chapter after all, and I am far too optimistic about the state of affairs within our education system.
Regardless, my answer remains, unflinchingly, yes. These things do matter, as they are imagination and creativity put into practice. These are the ways in which our students become free-thinking and independent and problem-solving and bold. It is through the process of making, creating, and performing that our students will grow to also answer, yes! Of course these things matter!
My final takeaway from these texts was how remarkably accessible new media and creative technologies have made it for children to engage with this creating, making, and performing in ways that go beyond, or at least in conjunction with traditional materials. Through the integration of "friendly interfaces," Squishy Circuits, and other kid- and user-friendly advancement in emerging digital technologies, it is clear that there is such a high consideration of making these digital materials accessible to all types of people, of all abilities. It makes me happy to see these considerations being brought to new medias, arguably more quickly and effectively than in traditional art forms! Again, it is clear that the digital arts have and can become exactly what we want them to be, which, I must state again, does matter.
Perhaps Peppler is preaching to the choir here. Perhaps she expected a resounding "Yes!" in response to this cheekily posed rhetorical question. She follows the subheading with several paragraphs of text that illustrate, quite clearly, that yes, making, creating, and performing do indeed matter for our children. It encourages them to be more successful in college and later in life, it inspires more interaction with others, it engages more children with community service-based projects. It encourages children to be constructive, to be critical, to be social. From my own mind, not cited directly in Peppler's text, I can also conjure examples of the positive effects of making for young students. Making, after all, can be seen as the physical manifestation of creativity. As later mentioned in Martinez and Stager's chapter of Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, the conceptual act of composing music is not itself a satisfying experience for a student, if they are never able to hear the music that they have composed.
So yes. Making is important. Who would say otherwise? What is this, 1984?
But then I thought of the testing culture that is pervasive in schools today, the far too familiar model of knowledge being funneled into our children, even in the arts. It concerned me; maybe not everyone would be as steadfast in their answer to this question. Maybe some would argue that "making, creating, and performing" might matter a little, but might fall behind "deducing, memorizing, and knowing." Maybe this is a necessary subheading within this chapter after all, and I am far too optimistic about the state of affairs within our education system.
Regardless, my answer remains, unflinchingly, yes. These things do matter, as they are imagination and creativity put into practice. These are the ways in which our students become free-thinking and independent and problem-solving and bold. It is through the process of making, creating, and performing that our students will grow to also answer, yes! Of course these things matter!
My final takeaway from these texts was how remarkably accessible new media and creative technologies have made it for children to engage with this creating, making, and performing in ways that go beyond, or at least in conjunction with traditional materials. Through the integration of "friendly interfaces," Squishy Circuits, and other kid- and user-friendly advancement in emerging digital technologies, it is clear that there is such a high consideration of making these digital materials accessible to all types of people, of all abilities. It makes me happy to see these considerations being brought to new medias, arguably more quickly and effectively than in traditional art forms! Again, it is clear that the digital arts have and can become exactly what we want them to be, which, I must state again, does matter.
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| Image of Circuit Stickers. From http://chibitronics.com/diy-switch-tutorial/ |
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