My Teaching Philosophy: A Metaphorical Animation

Where Technology and Philosophy Intersect

The Virtual Stage interface integrates diverse media, interdisciplinary learning, connection-making, collaboration, generation, and openness. The interface brings technology into the classroom, allowing students to incorporate traditional art making practices with newer ones. The wide array of capabilities for the stage means that the “setting” could be of anything, incorporate any subject. It could just as easily show an art museum for art history as it could provide a rainforest backdrop for a performance piece about habitat destruction. This lends itself to collaboration and working together to create a performance or other work of art, as well as an opportunity for an audience. The possibilities for the interface are wide open, and therefore could be used to support many different teaching practices and philosophies. Another educator may choose to use this interface in a different way than me, but it would go with my own philosophy very well.

Teaching philosophy

The five things that I would hope for my students to take away from me as a teacher a include an interdisciplinary approach to learning, valuing making connections, appreciation for diverse ideas and practices, openness when teaching, learning and collaborating, and generative as well as reflective art making practices. I believe that art is not only a venue for personal expression or enjoyment (though it is certainly those things), but also a path through which one can gain other knowledge. I think that there are certain kinds of understanding that can only be acquired in certain ways, and art has its share of that kind of wisdom. This was exemplified to me during a project that I was doing for a drawing class. I did not set out to actively learn through art, but after drawing out maps of where I lived and places that were important to me, I was able to put my surroundings and places I loved in a greater perspective than ever before. It provided me context that I could not have gotten any other way. I also think that interdisciplinary learning is the most effective way to approach education. Again, without context, information and knowledge looses meaning. It is only when we put knowledge in its place among other, sometimes seemingly unrelated, kinds of knowledge that we can begin to have genuine understanding of a bigger picture. I think that this is especially important to me because I have always been interested in having a wide breadth of knowledge, wanting to know about all sorts of things, even when it came at the expense of depth. I personally am not someone who can retain information if it is not put into a larger context that allows me to see the “big picture”. Openness is something that I have had a growing appreciation for since taking art classes at Penn State. I am currently enrolled in a higher lever ceramics class, and everyone else in the class is far more knowledgeable than I am. I am extremely lucky that they’re all very open and willing to share information to help me. Most of my training in this field was not done in a top-down way, but rather through open dialogue, and it has been one of the most educational experiences I have had. Diversity is also something I have gained appreciation for since coming to college. I am from a small town without a lot of diversity, and coming to Penn Sate has exposed me to ways of thinking that I would not have encountered at home. This has been an incredible chance for personal growth. My art education classes have also helped me to see the value of art not just as a form of expression, but also something generative. My art education was lacking, and I was not exposed to a wide variety of ideas that surrounded art. Instead, we focused on practical techniques. I think that this has had a negative impact on what I was able to get out of art, and I am only just starting to realize how much more there can be to it than I thought. These things make art more meaningful.

Technology/Human Interface

There are many innovative and unique programs out there that have been developed to provide alternate ways of learning and experiencing. Many of them have the ability to be a great resource for art education.  Technology can be used to bring people together even if they are separated geographically, as was discussed in the Anderson and Balsamo article. But I think that another useful function of technology is its ability to take people far away, to places they couldn’t otherwise go. That is why I think that a virtual stage would be a useful tool in teaching art. There are already programs that can superimpose a person on a background, but these are generally static and generic scenes. There is a possibility for something even more complex than that, and more geared towards art. This would provide a venue for performance art, informal productions, exploration of new spaces, as well as a forum for putting artworks into a new setting or context How would your painting look at the Louvre among classical paintings? In the woods? In a contemporary gallery? An interface like this that was large and could be seen immediately, interacting with students as a responsive backdrop, would seem much more immediate than simply compiling such things in the post-production process. it would be about the experience of a virtual stage that could transport you anywhere, rather than a finished product.