Now, to most people, you'd look at this and just say "yeah, so what?" To me, seeing a room full of these was amazing. This is an ordinary Darth Vader helmet. About 20 artists were given a helmet and asked to create something else out of it. Each of them created something completely different. They used their imagination and their talents to transform ordinary Vader helmets into works of art.
I believe that is what we need to do with students and projects they create. Sitting in my brother's multimedia class last year, I was kind of dismayed at the fact that they were doing the same projects I had done 3 years earlier . . . nothing had changed. They hadn't even updated the software. The computers were changed out, but everything else looked the same as it have before. They students were all doing "cookie-cutter" projects . . . each had to look exactly the same. Where is the creativity? Where is the expression of oneself? It had gone out the window when the students had signed up for a class they thought was going to let them express themselves in a different way.
Multimedia and film should be about expression. Just as each of the artists were given the exact same object to play with, each of those objects looked different. We can give our students the baseline, the guides, to start with, but we need to let them expand and create as they see fit. Of course, being in a public setting, they have to follow certain rules and regulations, but other than that, let them explore. The students are probably over-ruled and over-stifled in their everyday lives when it comes to their education: "please copy down the sentences on the board and find the noun and adverb in each" . . . "your essay must be 200 words and between 3-5 pages and must include the following . . ." .
Creativity is my main goal when it comes to teaching. What better way to get to know your students than to let them be creative and express themselves in a safe environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment