MEDIA ARTS EDU BLOG

This ultimately means that classroom instruction can move to higher orders, beyond basic skills, where students are more active in actually applying their learning in real world contexts. As per cognitive and learning science, these are enriched contexts that can deepen the learning so it is more resilient and transferrable.

Media arts provides these types of active learning situations, where students themselves produce multimedia illustrations, stories and models of the content. Essentially, media arts communications, design, interactivity and virtuality are at the center of our society because they serve this function. Schools and teachers are in the business of explaining content to students so that they understand it. In media arts, students take on this role of explaining or demonstrating the content by translating it through various media.

Media arts puts students in the position of teaching a topic to the student audience. They go through a series of multimodal processes in order to do this, which deepens their own understanding. They research the topic and begin to understand it in their own terms. They brainstorm what ways to explain and illustrate that topic. They organize it by writing scripts and developing storyboards. They act it out or represent it in their narrations, dialogues, stories, scenes and soundtracks. They produce it in their animations, 3D models or video games. They analyze their production and evaluate its effectiveness. Such project management requires a wide range of abilities and competencies, such as communication, coordination, management, logistics, negotiation, scheduling, etc.

This is an aesthetically and multimodally holistic process, which develops students' rounded skills, competencies and cognitive development. Media arts versatile and adaptable studios and laboratories can support these sorts of collaborative, active, community connected processes, where the standard classroom cannot.  AI needs media arts in order to advance education to a new, student-centered and 21st C. model. 

Unfortunately, the emphases in AI is on its narrow support for traditional approaches to instruction. Some edtech companies are even suggesting that students use AI tools to produce any multimedia. They would not have to go through the rigorous, holistic processes described above to do this. They can just state a prompt and AI produces the multimedia. Consider what students are missing when they use AI.

This is the ultimate dilemma of AI and educators. What cognitive processes should it replace in education? In this regard, Einstein said,  “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Understanding AI's Impact

AI's ‘explosive’ development is a spherical, 360-degree expansion across all domains and dimensions of society. It's not just a tool we can choose to use or put away, but a systemic, technological force with unpredictable organic qualities. Like social media, and any other technological leap, AI will likely have both positive and negative effects on society, as well as unintended consequences. Nevertheless, AI is here to stay, so we will need to learn to work with and manage it as it progresses and proliferates.

AI has shown impressive and breakthrough results in various applications across societal sectors, such as accelerating scientific discoveries, advancing industrial efficiencies, and supporting greatly increased individual productivity and capabilities. Yet, it will also eliminate major sectors of employment, can exacerbate criminal activity, and is demonstrated to be unreliable and prone to errors. Artistically, AI can support more students to produce more sophisticated products, for example in verbal prompts to create entire video games. It also can enhance creativity and invention by generating compelling variations that humans might not have considered. On the other hand, its autonomous creative expression tends to be conventional, slick and lacking in ‘soul’. 

Theoretical improvements to AI in Generalized Intelligence and Superintelligence are arguably far off or even infeasible. There is also the possibility that AI will fail to fulfill the hype that usually accompanies new technological breakthroughs.

AI in Education

In education, AI could provide personalized tutoring along with illustrative multimedia graphics, support teachers in lesson preparation and assessment, and help manage bureaucratic processes. However, the overuse of AI might also lead to decreased student motivation and a tendency to skip difficult and critical thinking. In fact, some edtech companies are suggesting that it replace arts and media arts instruction. Furthermore, it raises the question of whether we will use it in innovative new ways to truly advance education, and tend to limit it to improving traditional methods.

Major Concerns

Despite its profound benefits, AI also raises these serious reservations:

• It's an experimental technology with unpredictable consequences

• There's a risk of becoming completely dependent on AI, and even an imperative in every aspect of society, 

• AI may further amplify societal disparities and inequalities

• AI is limited by our own mindsets and habits

• It is an energy hog, which is already challenging our grids and  CO2 reduction goals

• It is unclear whether governmental regulations will be fully effective and ahead of the curve in monitoring, preventing and solving AI’s problems

A Media Arts Education (MAE) Perspective

MAE presents a primary means to improve and transform education, particularly in combination with AI, which can ultimately address these larger negatives. Essentially, MAE supports the core content and STEM concepts to become multimodally plastic, flexible, and versatile, so that they come alive with artistic and design capacities. Thus students, through engaging collaborative projects, can apply, represent and simulate the abstract content through combinations of image, sound, story, graphics, interactive and virtual forms (e.g. 3D animated, playful models of physics, mathematics, cell division, weather, etc.; science or history videos; video games, immersive XR environments, etc). Students would manipulate, adjust, and play with these multimedia models until they fully and tangibly understand those concepts, and then transfer them to varied applications and situations. This results in deeper, more resilient learning, aligned with current learning science and cognitive research.

Thus, students gain flexible, diverse inquiry pathways for actively applying, demonstrating, and sharing their academic proficiency, beyond standardized tests. Also, students are in the position of directing their own learning, based on their own interests and needs. No other subject area has the capacity to form such holistic, culturally meaningful and community connected forms of creative inquiry and productive interaction. This is the perfect embodied complement to AI’s relatively narrow, intellectual capacities for instructional support.

Consider one example of this MAE-based approach: Students produce a transmedia mental health campaign,  which supports all students to produce, share and interact in socially beneficial and empowering ways. Students produce diverse events, broadcasts, and interactions for varied outputs and audiences. They apply statistical analysis to measure algorithmic processes and their impacts on the school and community. All students gain critical media literacies for verifying, analyzing and evaluating multimedia information and processes, and collaboratively nurturing a civil digital society. 

Media Arts + AI = Holistic Educational Transformation

We need to prepare youth for a rapidly changing world, supporting them to ensure that AI is designed and utilized effectively and strategically to address a convergence of global challenges, including AI itself. AI’s support for individualized skills mastery and teacher efficiency means that schools can begin to shift to higher-orders of instructional implementation, such as MAE can offer, which foster student-centered initiative, ownership and motivation. It is important to appreciate that the human, embodied mind, and our collective minds, are tremendously more powerful and potentiated than AI is, and perhaps ever will be. An advanced educational system can begin to fulfill that potential, benefiting society in extraordinary ways.

Factory Model: regimented, assembly-line, one-size-fits-all, top-down, cognitively narrow, no-context

MAE Model: flexible, adaptive, inclusive, student-centered, cognitively expansive, enriched contexts 

This ultimately results in a flexible and interconnective educational system which actuates students’ personal inquiry process into boundless possibilities, and infuses the system as a whole with a collective drive towards continual adaptive improvement and learning about learning.  It allows students to actually practice management of their digital society, including AI and other literacies (e.g. media, digital) towards ethical, equitable and holistically grounded objectives. This transformed model provides the means by which our society learns to manage AI and address our converging global challenges. 

Olsen, D. (2024). Media Arts Education: Transforming Education Through Multimodal Cognition, Holistic Learning, and Techno-Embodiment. Taylor & Francis.

CONVERSATIONS WITH AI, continued

Dain Olsen: Should media arts education, be excluded from the investigation into and deployment of artificial intelligence within education?

AI:

Absolutely not. Media arts education should be a key component of any investigation into and deployment of artificial intelligence within education. Here's why:

1. Human-centered perspective: Media arts education fosters a deep understanding of human creativity, expression, and learning. This perspective is crucial for developing AI tools that are not only technically sound but also align with human needs and values.

2. Ethical considerations: Media arts educators are often trained to consider the ethical implications of technology. This expertise can help to ensure that AI is used responsibly and equitably in education.

3. Innovative applications: Media arts educators are skilled at exploring new and creative ways to use technology. Their insights can lead to innovative applications of AI in education that can enhance learning and engagement.

4. Critical thinking: Media arts education encourages critical thinking and problem-solving. These skills are essential for evaluating the effectiveness and potential biases of AI tools in education.

By including media arts education in the investigation and deployment of AI in education, we can ensure that AI is developed and used in a way that benefits students, teachers, and society as a whole.

TRANSFORMING LEARNING AND EDUCATION THROUGH MEDIA ARTS

• Media arts education forms the ultimate, futuristic interdisciplinary makerspace, empowering all students’ voices and visions, and infusing the educational system with multimodal creativity.

AI GENERATED MEDIA ARTS INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECTS - TRY THIS YOURSELF! 

1. Data Visualization and Historical Narratives:

• Combine historical research, data analysis, and graphic design to create interactive and engaging visualizations.

• Example: Visualizing the spread of the Black Death using maps, charts, and animations.

2. Interactive Fiction and Scientific Concepts:

• Use game design principles to create engaging narratives that teach complex scientific concepts.

• Example: An interactive fiction game about climate change that allows players to make decisions and see the consequences.

3. Sound Art and Mathematical Patterns:

• Explore the relationship between sound, numbers, and geometry.

• Example: Generating music using Fibonacci sequences or fractal patterns.

4. Virtual Reality and Engineering Design:

• Use VR to visualize and interact with complex engineering concepts.

• Example: A VR environment for designing and testing bridges.

5. Augmented Reality and Cultural Heritage:

• Combine historical research, 3D modeling, and augmented reality technology.

• Example: An AR app that overlays information about historical buildings on a smartphone camera.

6. Generative Art and Biological Systems:

• Use algorithms to create art inspired by biological systems.

• Example: Generating visual art based on the structure of DNA.

7. Interactive Installations and Social Science:

• Create interactive installations that explore social issues or human behavior.

• Example: An installation that explores the impact of social media on mental health.

8. Digital Storytelling and Environmental Science:

• Combine storytelling, video production, and environmental science research.

• Example: A documentary-style video about the effects of climate change on a specific community.

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!

Media Arts promotes multimodal interaction with the core curriculum, supporting all students’ academic success. 

Through media arts' diverse productions and products, the core curriculum comes alive and interactive for students, who can begin to have a leading, active role in the creative inquiry process.  These adaptable projects can be scaled and tailored to students’ personal interests, learning levels and pathways. As a result, assessment becomes more diversified, flexible, and authentic, where more students can demonstrate and achieve academic success in many more ways. This advances equity and inclusion for all students, including those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, English Learners, and those with special education challenges. 

NAMAE’s Charge

Mission: Support and advance media arts education for all learners.

Vision: A world where all learners have access to media arts education.

The National Association for Media Arts Education (NAMAE) is on a bold mission to bring this transformative educational approach to all K-12 districts and classrooms. We believe that media arts education is crucial for preparing all students for a rapidly changing future, and for supporting education’s 21st century transitions. 39 states have adopted or adapted National Media Arts Standards (2016, National Coalition for Arts Standards) and are beginning to develop media arts licensures, programs, and networks. Prior initiatives include LAUSD development of model regional programs, research, and industry involvement - $2 million.

We intend to support all states to continue moving forward in this progress, support thousands of existing and new media arts educators with vital training, curricula and professional networks, and positively impact the lives of millions of US K-12 students.

Core Initiatives

• Consolidate and expand the media arts educator network, form state and regional affiliates, form associated organizational partnerships

• Develop high quality national standards revisions, curricular frameworks, models and assessments; develop professional development services and initiatives

• Support states and districts in implementing, supporting, scaling up and advancing media arts education

• Spearhead media arts research and development to direct the field towards educationally aligned tools and platforms

We invite you to partner with NAMAE in this exciting and groundbreaking effort!

June 2, 2024

Media Arts Education in South Korea

The South Korean Ministry for Arts and Culture (KACES) recently supported my presentation at their annual international arts education conference. I'm not used to being treated so well and with such great attention!  Along with the other speakers, I was escorted everywhere by cheerful and inquisitive escorts. We were shown a tour of the local Palace. We gathered at fine restaurants with amazing menus, where we all discussed an array of educational issues. I even received an interview from their major news outlet. 

The Ministry's leaders and educators showed great interest in media arts education, and they are seriously considering how they can integrate it into their school system. They 'get it'! It made me realize that I've never actually presented on media arts education to such an audience in the US! I've certainly presented, dozens of times, at various conventions, but its never been to truly explain the essence of media arts education and its great potential for education as a whole. What follows here is the article I wrote for their zine site, Arte 365 

Media Arts Education: 

An Aesthetic Synthesizer With Transformative Educational Potential

By Dain Olsen

Media arts is an amazing emerging arts subject area, which has tremendous potential to advance student learning and creating, and even to transform 21st century education. This article will provide an introduction to the discipline while it presents its impressive capacities for multimedia production, transdisciplinary projects, student directed creative inquiry, and vital multiliteracies.

Media arts is defined as technology-based creativity, which is machine-based, multimodal, and “inter-arts”. With its diverse and powerful tools, students can produce photos, graphic designs, videos, animations, interactive applications and games, web sites, broadcasts, immersive environments, 3D models, and virtual worlds. In short, media arts productions are creatively unlimited for students, meaning that they can produce and simulate anything imaginable. 

Not only can students produce any artistic media, they can use media arts to demonstrate their learning of any core content. In language class, they can write an essay about any topic, record their narration, and then illustrate it with images as a documentary. They can use it in math class to exhibit their understanding of algebra, perhaps as a dramatized word problem, or in the construction of 3D architecture. They can use it in history to animate the dramatic story of their nation, and in science to demonstrate the concept of gravity through interactive virtual simulations.  

Media arts is so open and capable because it is essentially an aesthetic synthesizer. One can think of it as a transparent portal, which is sensory based, or mutimodal. It can perceive anything and aesthetically process it in an infinite number of ways. In other words, media arts can be described as a multimedia textbook, interactive workbook and super makerspace. It transforms the educational institution into a student-centered environment for active creative inquiry. Students can decide what they are going to investigate and how they are going to represent what they discover. They can imagine or invent anything, and turn it into reality. 

This presents a new paradigm for education because students can begin to take on a central role in the educational process. Learning doesn’t always have to be a one-way communication from teacher and textbook to the student for learning to occur. A student doesn’t need to permanently retain all the information in their brain, when they have an infinite library at their fingertips. Artificial intelligence is already functioning as a tutor that is fairly reliable for basic information and technical corrections of student work. This technological revolution presents the necessity for teachers and schools to change their role in the learning process. Primarily, they can begin to incorporate more active projects in the classroom, where students collaboratively interact with and apply the content, rather than just read about it. 

This presents a new model of arts-based learning that is more constructivist, experiential, and student-centered.  Ample research has shown that these approaches are more effective for deeper forms of learning. Transdisciplinary media arts projects can combine arts and core subject areas, which involve higher forms of cognition and skill sets, such as analogizing, synthesizing, project management, problem-solving, computational thinking, and multimodal orchestration. Students find these processes much more engaging, purposeful, and rewarding. As a result, school can become more interesting and exciting, which makes students more motivated and self-directed. 

Thus, students can begin to direct their own learning process and pathways through the educational institution. Media arts is so flexible and adaptable that even students with physical, cognitive and socioeconomic challenges can have alternative ways of interacting with, applying, and demonstrating their mastery of content. This makes education more equitable and accessible for diverse populations, which means that all students will have many more ways of achieving academic success. 

Finally, media arts reflects our current digital society, and prepares students with the multiliteracies necessary to function and succeed in this rapidly changing world. Students need to be able to ‘read’, analyze, interpret and evaluate a deluge of multimedia information in their everyday lives. They need to be able to construct their own messages, products and experiences, so that they become responsible contributors to and empowered participants in this society. Students need to be able to determine fact from fiction, and verify information vs. misinformation. They need to be able to address the potentially harmful impacts of new forms of artificial intelligence, technology, and media. Media arts provides the safe and balanced environments that systemically prepare students for these evolving societal conditions. 

In conclusion, media arts can function as the intermediating, multimodal center of 21st century education for all students’ artistic, academic and vocational success.

January 30, 2024

MEDIA ARTS CAN MAKE EDUCATION MULTIMODAL!

Dain Olsen

President & CEO, NAMAE

Author: Media Arts Education, Routledge (forthcoming)

Human cognition Is Multimodal

Not ‘text-based’!

Sound familiar?

That’s because AI is now ‘multimodal’, and moving beyond text-based!

AI is now trained on multimedia: images, text, video, speech, graphics, etc.

'Multimodality' has caused a quantum leap in AI’s ability to mimic human thinking,

Resulting in greater capacities for empathy, generative multimedia, and generalizing intelligence.

Similar to the 'old' AI, our educational system is text and language-based, not multimodal.

Students learn indirectly, through the code of academic language, and book study,

Which makes the learning less interesting and engaging, and more abstract and hard to understand.

Because our cognition is multimodal, all students learn better through multimodality.

Media Arts Education (MAE)

Is highly multimodal, multisensory,  direct, interactive, and embodied

Across all of these forms: photo, video, sound, animation, graphics, web design, social media, 3D design,

AI supported, game design, e-journalism, interactive and virtual design

Which makes MAE creatively unlimited!

Students can produce, construct, and design anything imaginable!

Furthermore, MAE is 'transparent' to all contents, across both arts and academics.

Which means, MAE can use these forms to translate, represent, and simulate text-based content in multimodal projects

Therefore, MAE can make all learning more multimodal, engaging, interactive, and understandable!

APPLIED TO MATHEMATICS, STUDENTS OF MAE CAN PRODUCE:

photos of math in the world: clock, sign, schedule, geometric shapes, money, etc.

Graphic designs for sales showing discounts

Cooking shows, measuring ingredients

Short dramatic videos enacting word problems

Digital game designs that exercise mathematics skills

Stock market analysis webcasts with percentages, graphs and analysis using algebra

3D physics animations using algebra to explain and predict angles of a thrown ball

3D bridge designs and engineering using geometry and calculus

3D animations showing space travel simulations of trajectories using calculus and trigonometry

Algebra and calculus in programming algorithms and UI design for app design

TRANSDISCIPLINARY EXAMPLES:

Video game designs that exercise programming, mathematics, design thinking, engineering, marketing, etc.

Interactive 3D animated models that exhibit understanding of scientific or historical concepts

Interdisciplinary projects that combine all arts and academic disciplines in live and multimedia presentations

This leads to a new MAE-centered model of education, 

which is more student-centered, engaging, flexible, inclusive and effective.

NAMAE is seeking to create a network of associated members and organizations who support the inclusion of media arts as a core component of 21st century education for the benefit of all students. 

Please join us! Please support us!