Volume 27, Number 3
May/June 2011

Bringing Art into School, Byte by Byte

Innovative programs use technology to expand access to the arts

by Patti Hartigan

 

Seventh-graders at the Pistor Middle School in Tucson used computers to research and choreograph a dance called “Who Stole the Tutu,” based on Arizona’s language arts standards.

Monika Aldarondo is sitting in an office at the Boston Arts Academy (BAA) untangling scraps of brilliantly colored fabric that her students dyed to make banners for the school’s annual Africa Lives! exhibition. “I love old media,’’ the visual arts teacher says, snipping stray threads as she unravels the cloth.

But even as she revels in age-old techniques like fabric dying, Aldarondo and her colleagues at Boston’s only public high school for the visual and performing arts are contemplating how new media is changing the field as well as their profession. What does it mean to be an arts specialist in the digital age? How and when should new media be used? Are the old disciplines blurring?