Blog/Book

THE BOOK: LEARNING AMPLIFIED

Learning Amplified: Media Arts, Holistic Learning, and The Transformation of Education presents the ultimate, paradigm-shifting solution to the many problems and limitations of contemporary K-12 education. Our current school system, which originated in the early industrial era, is commonly acknowledged to be too regimented, top-down, assembly-line, one-size-fits-all and test driven, with disappointing results in learning for the majority of students, and particularly for the underprivileged. Learning Amplified persuasively argues that through the full integration of digital media arts, schools can become more student-centered, interdisciplinary, effective and engaging, with greatly improved learning results for all students.

Currently seeking a publisher, or may be self-published. Stay tuned for updates!

December 6, 2022


THE ARGUMENT FOR MEDIA ARTS AT THE CENTER OF 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION


In my forthcoming book, Learning Amplified, this is my fundamental argument for Media Arts as the the center of contemporary education:


Media arts has these three properties:

  • Its forms and processes are aesthetically, cognitively and vocationally comprehensive, or holistic as a novel definition

  • It is the basis for our society’s communications, design and interactivity

  • It can form a physical-virtual networked laboratory that is a creatively unlimited, interactive, interconnective, and interdimensional textbook/makerspace


Media Arts can therefore function as a transdisciplinary hub discipline within schools and educational systems that supports all students in learning and creating anything imaginable through projects, productions and experiences that are engaging, enriched, real world and student-driven (e.g. all digital media, including science videos, math-based 3D designs, engineered video games, virtual simulations, informative augmented reality), with these results:

  • Empowering student voice, production, creativity and cultural agency

  • Increased relevance, application, resilience, mastery, and transfer for core content learning and metalearning

  • Improved alternative access to and assessment of core content for all learners (e.g. socio-economically, cognitively challenged)

  • Multiliteracies across media, technology, and digital culture

  • Comprehensive 21st century skill sets - multimedia production & design, project management, collaboration, computational thinking, problem-solving

  • Flexible learning pathways to accommodate students’ interests, needs and self-direction

  • More adaptive, inclusive, effective and efficient educational system

September 10, 2022

MY RESPONSE TO THE LA TIMES ON PANDEMIC LEARNING LOSS

The LA Times reported today that “L.A. student scores show deep pandemic setbacks, with 72% failing to meet math standards”.

This was my Letter to the Editor (unpublished):


Dear Editor,

Sadly, low test scores, particularly for the socio-economically disadvantaged, is not news. And it isn’t surprising that this was exacerbated by the pandemic and conditions of remote learning. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has maintained a consistent standard for testing the breadth of academic proficiency for over 50 years, only about 37% of students are regularly proficient in literacy and numeracy, with significantly lower performance among the same students. The headline should actually be that this educational system is detrimentally flawed and intrinsically biased, apparently with little intent or understanding of how to fundamentally reform itself.


The fundamental problem is that this system is based in narrow, culturally biased assessment, which begets narrow forms of instruction, which are ineffective, passive, non-engaging, decontextualized and irrelevant, particularly for the socio-economically disadvantaged. A more advanced educational system, such as one centered around media arts education (https://www.mediaartsedu.org/), would measure individual student progress in rounded cognitive development, which would not be narrow or culturally biased. This would engender more effective and equitable forms of instruction, which are engaging, active, contextually rich, and relevant to all students and our current 21st century society.


Dain Olsen

Co-Chair, Media Arts Committee, National Coalition for Core Arts Standards

Media Arts Teacher and Administrator, LAUSD (Retired)

Parent of LAUSD Students

July 25, 2022


WHY IS US STUDENT ENROLLMENT DECLINING?


Why are we seeing dramatic declines in student enrollment across the US? 1.3 million less students nationwide. New York and CA are both down 9%. You would think, as the pandemic wanes, we would be seeing the opposite, families clamoring to return to in-person learning.


Where are all the students going? Apparently, one major reason is that many of these students have come to prefer online learning and homeschooling. This doesn’t seem to make sense, because the general sentiment was that remote learning was a disaster, both in its low appeal, and for student learning, which has set students back nearly a year in their proficiency.


But from my perspective, and the perspective of Media Arts Education, it does make sense. During the pandemic, I believe that students and parents realized something important through remote learning. Remote learning wasn’t as far removed from the live classroom experience as we previously thought. For most core subject areas, the method is essentially the same - the teacher presents the lesson, models the learning activity, and then the student carries it out, with a bit of teacher monitoring. Thus, not a whole lot different, except that remote is through a video camera. The student doesn't have to be in the room in order to have this kind of lesson, as we see from online educational platforms, such as Kahn Academy and even Youtube.


In addition to its similarity to in person learning, online learning is safer, more convenient, flexible in scheduling, and seemingly just as effective, at least for parents who can support it, and students who are somewhat self-directed and motivated.


Remote learning exposed the essence of our standard teaching practice, which is passive, not very interactive, engaging or even personalized. Students don’t need to go to school in order to experience that. Then, students may be asking, why go to school exactly?


Schools should glean this lesson from the remote learning disaster by asking, "What are we doing in classrooms that is greatly different from online learning, and achieves more meaningful and deeper learning objectives?" That is what we need to start offering in order to compete with online education and advancing education as a whole. If going to school was tremendously engaging, socially vibrant, meaningful and purposeful, then students would probably be much more enthusiastic to return to in person instruction.


MAE can offer and support that kind of enriched learning experience and more robust learning outcomes.

July 16, 2022


MEDIA ARTS EDUCATION AND MEDIA LITERACY


I recently attended and presented at the annual conference for the National Association for Media Literacy Education. I got a lot out of the experience. It was enjoyable just to spend time with a lot of intelligent and passionate people with a great cause - making sure our society has healthy habits for consuming and critically analyzing media. They pulled off a great online forum, where many presenters shared compelling research, curricula and methods for approaching and expanding media literacy.


My talk was centered around the conference theme of “scaling up”. NAMLE, like Media Arts Education (MAE), is at a pivotal moment, where they feel they need to and can significantly expand their presence and impact within schools and society. In their case, in order to deal with the potency and prevalence of bias and misinformation proliferating globally. No small task. I shared where MAE was in a similar process of scaling up, 8 years out from publication of national media arts standards. I hope what I shared was helpful for them. I also appealed to them that NAMLE and MAE are natural partners and should be rather indivisible in their mutual endeavors. Media literacy is a core aspect of MAE, as exhibited in our standards, and needs to be emphasized more and in more vigorous and consistent classroom practices. We can learn from and support one another in this joint venture.


I’m posting this excerpt from the CA Media Arts Framework for the NAMLE and MAE communities to let everyone know what MAE’s standards-based approach means within MAE. In this case, we are stressing "creative empowerment" and “critical autonomy”, or the ability to think for one’s self within a media-saturated environment. To that end, we are emphasizing the ability to analyze the media’s “management of the viewer’s experience” that exhibits one’s mindful awareness of how and why we are affected by media environments and technologies, no matter the platform or application we are experiencing.


NAMLE is in the process of revising their core principles, so that they more accurately reflect the contemporary experience of media - as an immersive, distributive environment that is no longer monolithic and one-way, from corporation to consumer. I feel that MAE’s approach is relevant and effective to this new, evolving environment, including the rise of VR, AR, MR and the “metaverse”. I believe that all learners need to increase their self-awareness and capacity for self-reflection in their relationship with their digitally enhanced lives.


Please let me know, through the Contact portal, if you think this works, or how it does not!

HOW MEDIA ARTS EDUCATION ADDRESSES MEDIA LITERACY

FROM THE CA MEDIA ARTS FRAMEWORK

Digital Literacy and Citizenship for Creatives

“Students should gain fluencies in the evolving languages of interfaces, mediation, codes, and conventions, as well as contingent issues of power, persuasion, and cross-cultural collaboration, thus empowering them to critically investigate and use the effects and possibilities of various media.”

—National Coalition for Core Arts Standards, in The Inclusion of Media Arts in Next Generation Arts Standards (2012)

“Digital Literacy” is a critical aspect of media arts literacy as framed through media arts standards. California’s digital literacy legislation, SB 830, states: “‘Digital citizenship’ means a diverse set of skills related to current technology and social media, including the norms of appropriate, responsible, and healthy behavior.” In a media arts-centered culture, we are dependent on multimedia texts and experiences for our understanding of and ability to participate in and contribute to our culture and society. The importance of educating all students in forming, navigating, and negotiating digital environments is crucial to their well-being, as well as for our culture and democratic society.

Media arts standards-based education serves a proactive, leading role in developing all students’ capacities for critical autonomy. Critical autonomy is defined here as the independent ability to discern the value, veracity, and intentions of multimedia experiences. A significant aspect of this quality is conveyed through media arts production processes and the student’s resulting cultural agency. A selection of Responding and Connecting standards that address digital and media literacy include:

● Adv.MA:Re8: Analyze the intent, meanings and impacts of diverse media artworks, considering complex factors of context and bias.

● Acc.MA:Cn11a: Examine in depth and demonstrate the relationships of media arts ideas and works to various contexts, purposes, and values, such as markets, systems, propaganda, and truth.

● Acc.MA:Cn11b: Critically investigate and proactively interact with legal, technological, systemic, and vocational contexts of media arts, considering civic values, media literacy, digital identity, and artist/audience interactivity.

The creatively empowered media arts student knows their way around the digital environment, is grounded in their culture, and is confident in being able to assert their own perspectives. The creative empowerment of students can mitigate many of the negative aspects of digitally immersive environments that younger generations will increasingly encounter, including media misinformation, propaganda, and influence, as well as digital abuse, addiction, and social misconduct. This is another beneficial outcome of a distinct and fully established media arts education program. When combined with the mutually strengthening interrelationships among all arts and other subject areas, the entire system can unify and positively support students’ creative empowerment, critical autonomy, and cultural agency. Students of media arts can attain these specific standards-based outcomes toward digital literacy:

· creative capacity to produce impactful, multimodal works for specific audiences and contexts;

· ability to analyze diverse media artworks for bias and intention, manage multimodal experience, and form influence and persuasion through systemic communications;

· experiential understanding of the dynamic interrelationship of media arts and culture within virtual environments, global networks, and legal and market systems;

· capacity for appropriate, solutions-based, and ethical construction and use of multimedia; and

· capacity for critical investigation into and strategic interaction with legal, technological, systemic, and cultural contexts of media arts, considering digital identity, civic values, and community impacts.

Students of media arts are given unique opportunities to produce and create artistic work, just as artists and creatives in professional contexts. Media arts teachers must authentically and rigorously convey the benefits, rules, responsibilities, and safety issues to enable students to fully participate and create in ethical and meaningful ways in the context of our larger civil society.

June 20, 2022

MEDIA ARTS CAN TRANSFORM LEARNING AND EDUCATION

My first blog post is this video explaining how media arts education (MAE) can transform learning and education. It is the distillation into the simplest terms of over 30 years of experience in teaching and developing media arts instruction, programs, curriculum and pedagogical theory. This video was commissioned by the state of Virginia and will be hosted on their professional development website for this next academic year.