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[new] new media ed (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#3)
by ryangriffis on Wed Oct 15th, 2003 at 06:25:53 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info) http://www.yougenics.net/griffis

as a person recently trained to be a "fancy pants" painter and now teaching a new media program (strategically named after the electronic arts game company) at a small state university, i can relate to many of the issues raised here and on nettime. i, myself, am barely qualified to teach the software required and struggle to keep up (no i'm not old). and i do find students that are after a job with pixar and want to make the next Lord of the Shrek movie (the program is dominated by computer animation). but i also find many students get really engaged with the cultural questions that can come up and relate quite easily to the idea that a game is in fact political (even if they don't want me to preach at them). i think we (as teachers and students) too easily accept the progress of software tools, and think that it's somehow pragmatic to say "well, that's the world. we better learn the new version."
my students seem to recognize that they're caught in a moving escalator, but only see the outcome through the newest animated feature and it seems worth it.
One thing that i've noticed is that students who are going to excel in the "industry" would do so without any university instruction. the most they get out of school, vocation wise, is access to equipment and the time to learn (which most of them could afford if they had to anyway). of course, there are exceptions, but it seems more needs to be done to change the make up of those succeeding, and also eventually teaching others. i would like to say i'm trying, but i'm in a highly un-diverse school, and could obviously be doing more. but it also seems that the factory that is university is not about to change that.
One last thing, the equation of economic and educational success seems problematic (except for social darwinists i guess). i know we live in a world (at least i do) where a fast food server cannot live adequately, and that that is a problem. so it seems that we cannot really address the problems of education without addressing the inequities of economics, as they are the related, no? if both students and institutions are in education for a profit, someone's bound to lose... since the equation has invisible variables.

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