There are three main allotropes of carbon. An allotrope refers to the formation of the atoms in an element. Carbon has a crystalline allotrope which is known as diamond. Although people value the gem-like brilliance of diamond, this allotrope is more commonly used in industry for cutting and grinding then it is in jewellry.

Graphite is another allotrope of carbon. This is a cube shape where the layers can slide off; thus, making graphite useful as a lubricant and also as a material for writing (pencil ’leads’ are made of graphite). Although carbon is not classified as metal it is conductive in its graphite form. This makes graphite very useful for industry. It is used to make carbon brushes for the autmobile industry. It is also used in the process of electrical discharge machining where a high electrical voltage is sent down a graphite electrode to another electrode. The connection is made via a spark that erodes or cuts. EDM can cut the hardest metals and alloys.

The most recent form of allotrope to emerge as useful to industry is Buckminsterfullerenes. These take the shape of a hollw sphere ellipsoid or tube. They have given rise to nanotechnology as these allotropes of carbon can be used to build at an atomic level functional systems. It as the discovery of the Buckminsterfullerenes 20 years ago that put the ’nano’ in nanotechnology. This is one of the most exciting developments in design and engineering as we can start the process of manipulation at the very basis of matter.

Carbon is fundamental to our life. It is fundamental to our economy, our industries, and carbon manipulation is at the very vanguard of engineering.

The curiousity of a child forms when he or she observes an event happening and is not able to come up with a plausible explanation of why so and so happened. This is when they start asking adults a lot of questions which can really be unnerving at times.

As opposed to a traditional classroom environment, young kids learn best when they’re out and about. They learn more about science when they’re out experiencing what nature has to offer. Even a simple trip to the playground is a great stimulus to the curious mind. A child bouncing up and down a bounce house or trampoline will learn more about physics and the principles of gravity in that scenario compared to just being taught in a classroom lecture. Such things need to be considered by educators and teachers in planning their teaching sessions. It is important to not only keep these sessions engaging, but also to utilize every opportunity to learn, even on the playground during play time. This way, children will learn to love learning so it is important to incorpoarte things that interests them.

A well-rounded approach to education is a must nowadays. Gone are those day when the kids just sit with tables in front, just listening to the teacher all day long. Of course, younger kids have shorter attention spans hence the need for more frequent breaks. As kids get older, class sessions take longer as well, each one can last up to 2 to 3 hours. The actual spent is not the issue here. What’s important is that these young learners are actually engaged throughout the entire time, otherwise teaching has a been a futile attempt.

Relishing the prospect of a massive profit to be had from the misfortune of the masses, the diet industry has flourished in recent years with around 70 million people resolving to lose weight each year and spending an estimated $40 billion to attempt to realize their aims. There are huge numbers of people buying diet books and working to the recipes they provide, while millions more opt for convenience diet that are delivered to their homes and take all the work out of the process. Thanks to a massive TV commercial presence, unprecedented numbers of people are dieting with Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, Medifast and all the other similar companies, while millions more sign up with Weight Watchers every week.

Yet the alarming fact is that around 95 percent of those dieters will fail to attain lasting results. So they will spend even more money on chasing the elusive level of success that the celebrities who endorse many of the more popular diets appear to enjoy.

There is a solution to this major problem, but it means that people who need to lose weight will have to stop relying on diets to lose the weight for them and start educating themselves in making their own success. This will come hard for many people who have grown accustomed to blaming someone else for their shortcomings. It means taking their own life in their hands and taking action to bring about the success they so greatly desire. Where the mind leads, the body will follow and as long as people understand this truth, they can take control of their mental energies and channel them into adopting good eating habits and create for themselves a healthier lifestyle discipline.

When we take control and begin to take responsibility for our health, we can make the necessary changes to our lives that will insure long term success. When we fail to take control of our lives, we are at the mercy of the advertisers who can lead us to wherever they want to take us.

A power of attorney is created by a person designated as the principal, who appoints someone, known as the attorney-in-fact, to act on their behalf in whatever situation is outlined in the power of attorney.  The granted powers can be broad or very specific — from the sweeping ability to handle all financial transactions to the very specific ability to cast a vote on someone’s behalf at a condominium meeting.

There are five main types of power of attorney: general, limited, medical, durable, and springing.  Each type serves a specific purpose and can hold separate powers.  Anyone interested in creating a power of attorney should educate themselves on the different types available.  When used correctly, a power of attorney is a very powerful legal document and can assist in many of life’s challenging situations.

When looking at today’s high school academic environment, it is hard to comprehend what we see. Many students struggle with even basic arithmetic topics such as division or multiplication – for these youths developing skills in pre calculus without help is quite simply out of reach.

So what has happened to cause this decline?  Many people blame lax parenting.  These days many kids are given the freedom to do what they want – and to not do what they do not.  Some students will not do any maths homework over the course of an entire school year, something that would of been incomprehensible in years gone by.

Schools also have a responsibility however.  The practice of social promotion encourages pushing ill prepared students to the next grade no matter what their performance.  Without the threat of sanction, or of being ’held back’, many kids feel there is no reason for them at all to care about the subject of math – or to make a serious attempt to master it.

Until the practice of social promotion is ended, many high schools kid will continue to have the mathematical skills of 5th graders from decades past.

As well as being an academic by trade I am also an avid traveler. My schedule allows me considerable chunks of time to explore the world. My colleagues stay at home and research new papers tortured by the dictate to publish or perish. I find I get more done if I refresh my mind by immersing it in a new culture and a different type of challenge.

When I travel I take a beat up backpack and a few travellers checks. I don’t bring a guide book, only a phrase book. I never book in advance. I’m not drawn to resorts or ’luxury destinations’. I have been to Africa, South East Asia, China and South America. I travel as cheaply as possible. I hunt out where the local people eat and I try to engage them in conversation. I make a continual effort to learn the local language. I take local transport and I do my best to not get herded into situations with dozens of others of tourists with their wheelie suitcases. I’ve stayed for free with Berber hilltribes people in Morocco. I’ve spent time in a shack in the Amazon basin in Bolivia. I trekked through the interior of Koh Phangan in Thailand, and found a coconut farmer who let me stay for free in exchange for helping him harvest his coconut crops. The anecdotes go on.

Not all of the stories have been good. I’ve been mugged twice in Brazil. I’ve caught malaria in Malawi. I’ve been threatened with a gun in Cambodia. None of these experiences were pleasant. But I’ve got back on the horse.

Traveling does more than just broaden the mind. It brings home the fact that most people in the world are poor. By that I mean poorer than Americans, Europeans, Australians etc. Their life expectations and their lifestyles are radically different to those people I encounter in the USA. The simple problems of getting food, shelter and clean water are ever looming. It is impossible to talk about the poor majority in the world without patronizing them or sterotyping them. The efforts of charity often do both.

Academic learning can only take us so far. We have to experience the real world outside of our rarefied white towers to gain a better perspective of what we are trying to achieve, to realize how we speak to and for only a minority. There are no words that can describe the injustice of a global system that keeps the mass of mankind at a level of existence not much more advanced than was common hundreds of years ago.

Today the auto industry, the aersopace industry and other key industries use the principles of EDM or spark erosion to cut very hard metals to exact shapes. Such metals as titanium, hastelloy, kovar, and inconel are very hard to cut using convential cutting equipment. It is much easier to send an electrical current between two EDM electrodes and slowly remove material. Very exact shapes can be had. Without EDM cutting technology many things that we take fro granted such as jet planes would not able to be built on a commercial scale.

The only limitations to EDM or sinker EDM is that it can only be used to cut metals that are electrically conducive. The other drawback to the process is that it uses a lot of electricity.

Considering how important EDM technology and theory is. it is also a puzzle to me that I was never taught about this at school. But then again, there were many important things that my teachers obmitted to tell me, that I have since found out.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food

― Hippocrates

We only need take a look at today’s modern diet to realize that the foods we are shoveling into our bodies are nowhere near good enough if we want to be able to prevent disease, let alone treat it. Diseases including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity have all be domonstratably linked to the quality (or otherwise) of our diet.

During the past 20 years, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States and rates remain high. In 2010, no state had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. Thirty-six states had a prevalence of 25% or more; 12 of these states (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia) had a prevalence of 30% or more.

– Center for Disease Control

Is it any wonder that as the amounts of animal products and processed foods that we consume have increased, so to has the rate of obesity across the entire country?

It has to be said that there are many doctors and researchers who are trying to spread the message that whole foods save lives. These include renowned names such as T. Colin Campbell, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Dr. John McDougall and Dr. Neal Barnard amongst many others.

Since their message is widely available, we have to ask ourselves why so few of us are taking it seriously? The answer perhaps has something to do with the might of the meat, dairy and processed foods manufacturers’ lobbies. We are being bombarded with information that seems to be conflicting which helps to keep us in a state of confusion. Therefore unless we take an active interest in finding out how to enjoy optimum health, it is very easy to live in a state of ignorance. This unfortunately may well be a recipe for disaster.

Simple things that we can do to look after ourselves are to always try to find the whole food option. This includes whole wheat pasta over regular pasta, brown rice instead of white rice, and so on. Consuming more foods in as close to their natural state as possible will also benefit our health. The best juicer for the task is one that will juice the produce that you like the best. The tastier good health becomes, the more enjoyable it will become.

The Need for Interdependence

Increases in the use of Information Technology in the Liberal Arts College calls for a greater interdependence of the divisions of the college, specifically a further integration of the modes of inquiry taught in the Visual Arts. Training in studio art includes practice in visual perception and research, creative problem solving, personal expressions and physical manipulations of design elements and tools, all done in a community of learning. These are all methods that are increasingly useful for other disciplines because they enhance student ability to use electronic media which in turn is a perfect enhancement for an interdisciplinary model for teaching. The interdisciplinary approaches that are increasing on the college level would occur with or without information technology, but the capabilities of the information age allow a greater flowering of the product of these alliances.

Historically the visual arts were one of the last areas to be accepted as a course of study at Kenyon. They were deemed too practical, too vocational. Apparently the thinking was that painting and drawing were an interesting aside to a life of rigorous intellectual development, but the methods of inquiry in the visual arts were not essential to a liberal education. The reason for inclusion in the curriculum rests on the profound difference in the nature of visual inquiry. The visually educated individual is able to perceive more clearly their surroundings, develop creative approaches to problem solving, and express themselves visually. These are tools all students should have the opportunity to develop.

This argument is strengthened by research since that time in different modes of learning (kinesthetic/tactile, visual and auditory) and multiple intelligences (linguistic, logical/mathematical, spacial, musical, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intra personal) (Gardner). The variety in human aptitude is also part of the argument for including technologies in our curriculum. (Twigg) It is also part of the educational philosophies advanced by Dewey and others that bring student centered learning into focus. (Brint) In the era of the information superhighway, multimedia processing and video production, the need for visual/kinesthetic modes of learning is clear. The practice of studio art addresses the needs of students previously unreached. Visual arts training makes minds more flexible and capable for other disciplines, and the skills to manipulate imagery are necessary for the full realization of the technological product.

Conversely, the visual arts need the interpretive discourse and research skills used in other disciplines to complete projects which are increasingly social and political in nature. In the field of Video Art, for example, many works approach social and political subjects through personal experience. Although the purpose and goals of this inquiry are different from sociology, some research skills remain the same. Artists choose whether or not to apply an interpretive -artistic filter, and may color the meanings of the research to serve their own goals. Ideas about objectivity, subjectivity, authorship and appropriation are all essential elements of the artists palette and are informed by the critical discourse of other disciplines.

Modes of Inquiry in the Visual Arts and Their Relationship to Interdisciplinary Information Technologies

One of the first attributes developed in studio classes is that of learning to see. Visual Perception involves seeing in a way that takes in details that are often overlooked; looking for similarities or differences in visual forms, looking for shapes between forms, seeing the whole image as interrelated. It allows one to be both specific and abstract, to fragment or synthesize or transform. It works in conjunction with the unconscious to encourage the imagination and awaken deep concentration. Drawing is a fundamental way to increase visual perceptiveness. “Drawing turns the creative mind to expose its workings. Drawing discloses the heart of visual thought, coalesces spirit and perception, conjures imagination; drawing is an act of meditation.” (Hill)

Perception skills increase ones ability to gather the most from research and access which visual information might be compelling for presentation. They help break down stereotypes and interpret unspoken information. People who are visually perceptive often have an ability to remember unusual details which might be pertinent to a subject. A visual style of research is similar to keeping a sketchbook, though it can be done with a video camera or even descriptive words. The compilation of images on tape or film can later be sorted and edited. It is a loose gathering of fragments in a style like weaving or quilting in that it is non-linear and web-like. It will be even more so as students use digital cameras.

The history of technology indicates causative changes in our collective perceptions. The creation of the linear perspective system in the Renaissance placed the viewer at the center of every painting’s universe. The invention of photography flattened space, presented us with visuals hailed as truth. Film gave us multiple viewpoints and fragmented time. Printing technology brought us reproductions of beautiful landscapes available as postcards, offering idyllic points of view and skewed, dotted colors. Television technology broke color into luminous lines. The image was flattened, idealized and somewhat fuzzy. Computers offer us the opportunity to interact and choose (within available choices) our next visual image. As these technologies have changed, the nature of our perceptions have changed with them. It is hard to really see that Caribbean beach scene in real life without conjuring the postcard image and conflating the two. Thus we must be trained to see. Learning first hand visual acuity from drawing will give us a standard by which to critique the media.

Hands on learning is the way in which artists process visual information. The kinesthetic/tactile approach is combined with visual perceptiveness to develop personal expressions. This involves the use of a variety of tools as intermediaries while manipulating the visual elements. Therefore the use of tools is common for the visual artist and in that way, using new technologies is just a variation on a theme. Often a new tool will influence the content of the work because of the new capabilities and problems it presents. Artists are used to trying new tools, gaining some mastery, but allowing the tool to have a voice in the process. They are used to allowing the integrity of the process to influence the content. The tools we are most familiar with, those we no longer need to think about how to use such as the pencil and paintbrush, the word processor and copier, are tools we would consider direct in their interpretation of what we intended of them. Tools that have more variables, partly because of complexity and partly because of our lack of familiarity become indirect in that we most often act upon the tool in one way and have it come out a different way in the product. I am comfortable with that process as a printmaker/ videographer. There are so many variables and steps in each of these processes that I count on the things that occur in the in-between land of intention and result. I can always make a choice to edit it out later, but often the voice of the machine in dialog with my own is more magical than my presuppositions.

A danger in this dialog may lurk in the programming options for some CAD systems. The similarity in options can lead to work that is visually redundant. Thus the visual art training which encourages one to take risks and push the limits of the process are even more important to extend to all of the liberal arts.

A problem for artists specifically related to use of computers is the nature of computer programs. Originated by linear, logical and sequential thinkers, the environment and methods can be alien to many users, including artists who need to see in order to manipulate rather than remember linguistic/numerical commands. Kinesthetic/ tactile learning styles should be taken into account in computer design in order to increase user friendliness. Ergonomics for people who learn with their bodily movement should be employed. Touch pads and screens, a variety of mouse styles, virtual gloves and sketchbook style pads that read handwriting are steps toward fulfilling this need.

Technological innovations have brought unimagined options to all disciplines. The electronic tools of today simulate brain functions in much the same way as the tools of the industrial revolution simulated muscle functions. There were worries then about the machine eclipsing our humanity, parallel to current concerns. The constant in all of this change is the need for us to be able to use the new tool and still maintain our humanity. The probability is that we will make a fair amount of art work about precisely the interaction of the two. Historically this happens while machines are not yet matured in society.

Hands on development of design skills taught in the visual arts are needed for the quality of product expected in multimedia productions, visually compelling Web pages, and unified video presentations. This includes a knowledge of the elements of visual language (line, shape, color, texture, value) and the principles used to organize them (unity, focal points, balance, scale, rhythm, illusion of space and motion, etc.) The visual and manual skills developed in learning these principles will enhance a student’s understanding of how to manipulate them on the computer. This is perhaps the most obvious need from the point of view of the other disciplines, but is modified and accomplished partly through the development of perception, problem solving and personal expression. Artists learn to break the rules as soon as they learn what they are.

Problem Solving in the visual arts is often non-linear and intuitive. Rather than reading the manual and following steps A-Z , the visual thinker often brainstorms many options, thinking simultaneously of possible solutions, and willingly tries them out even if they are not logical. They may rely on the leaps of insight that occur during the physical manipulation of the tool rather than the pre-thinking of a course of action. They may visualize a result and the way to get there without being able to verbalize it. To a visual thinker it is clear that “… you cannot replace intuition, judgement, imagination and creativity with logic, equations, formats and rules” (Munoz, p.48)

Taking risks in an attitude of playfulness is an overarching attitude in problem solving and in the development of the imagination that is too often overlooked in our drive to create a product. Playfulness is the core attitude that allows problem solving to occur, imagination to flourish and intuitive insights to succeed. It allows the association of two or three radically different elements to feed each other creating vibrant new implications. Playfulness is the mode of inquiry that keeps us in the studio late at night, or at least keeps us able to enjoy it. It is the part of visual inquiry that is easiest to lose, given the pressures we face, yet it is the element that we most need to keep our work fresh and exciting. Once basic technologies are conquered, playfulness is easier than ever as we are able to try out several design elements with the click of the mouse. We can change this color, or that texture, we have so much choice, at such speed that it increases our tendencies to try them all.

Personal expression is the process and product of the methods used in visual inquiry. Though artists may strive for a degree of objectivity and universality in some work to suit a purpose, there is no question about the fact that nothing can be objective, and the work must have personal resonance to have integrity. Though the romantic notions of artist as genius are no longer supportable, the honesty of choosing a subject one is personally familiar with allows for a passion to pursue the project to its end. Personal experience also affords insights and a “litmus test” for the arguments advanced by others. It allows dreams to influence the work and sees a full exploration of metaphors as equal in value to the original subject. This aspect is true of other arts including creative writing, music composition, improvisations, etc. Trusting this approach could be a gift of the arts to academia. Questioning it could be the gift of academia to the arts.

The influence of technological innovations on personal expression can be both liberating and constrictive. The liberation comes from the possibilities opened which were unapproachable before. An example of this is the increasing use of enveloping installations with moving images and sound. This provides the appropriate artist with a more saturated way to express their personal vision. This could become more intense with increasing use of virtual reality, holographic, and laser technologies that approximate the artist’s own experience/vision in a more complete way than ever before. The constriction comes from the learning curve needed to utilize these tools, the lack of training immediately accessible, and the cost of that training both in financial and personal terms. The profound dedication it takes to come in on the cutting edge of new technologies can blur an artist’s concept. Often the work must be at least in part about the technology used to create it. Sometimes the early work in a medium is dry or thin, though technically virtuous. One has to ask the question about how this work will fare in the long run. Will it be merely an example of “Early Laser Art”, or will it be significant on conceptual and aesthetic levels as well? Despite all of these detractions, it is the involvement of artists early in technology development that is crucial overcoming them.

Proximity learning is the only way to approach the teaching of visual art making. We may be technically able to present examples of previous work, exhibit technical skills, and present assignments to a group in remote ways, but the learning comes from doing and assessing and doing again in concert with these presentations. In addition, the nature of the presentation changes with the nature of the group, their questions and size, etc. The more complex the tools, the more one-on-one teaching needs to take place. The more abstract or difficult the concept, the more personal discussions need to take place. In fact working with students in the expressive arts can create an unusual intimacy between teacher and student and the class as a whole. Working in a group aids the education and development of the students, as they are willing to share information and ideas. The critical forum for the visual arts class is open “critique”. This is a place where students put their personal investment on the line in a very public way. The nature of the student/ teacher and inter-student relationship is important for the success of this style of learning. They must learn how to analyze and communicate verbally in a helpful way what they perceive from the visual product.

The speed of burgeoning new technologies and the fact that students have grown up with and are more familiar with some technologies than we are makes this clear: teachers are forever students and together we are partners in inquiry. This attitude toward learning helps students to be more willing to solve problems on their own, develop their confidence and be able to function without the structure of a class.

Some Specific Uses of Information Technology in Studio Art

The opportunities offered by information technology that the Kenyon Art Department has explored to varying degrees include: video processing, photographic manipulation, simple negative manipulations for photo-mechanical processes in printmaking, research on the WWW, E-mail, and early computer imaging techniques (1980s). The bulk of my time with technology has been spent investigating the options of video for the visual artist. I have used it in simple form with a beginning level class called “Thematic Studio” and in depth with an intermediate level class entitled “Video Art”.

Video Art on the Beginning and Intermediate Level

The projects we have explored help the students develop some of the abilities especially important in the visual arts, as mentioned in the first part of this paper: visual perception and research, creative problem solving, personal expressions, and physical manipulation of design elements and tools through proximity learning. In addition, there are special problems we address in these assignments that are relevant to other disciplines. These include in part elements of time progression, and the integration of audio, narrative sequencing and text. They also include critical analysis of our purpose with television and film and a comfort with themselves as performers. All of these are new elements for visual artists. The type of tools change, but the comfort of using the body in kinesthetic/ tactile learning remains familiar.

In the intermediate level class which focuses on video, students get to explore essentials of video more deeply and in some ways are even more interdisciplinary . All of the above issues are dealt with more throughly and more refinement is expected. More emphasis is placed on context, of understanding the concepts behind television, film and video art. Awareness and criticism of popular culture is addressed throughout the course as the students become informed producers, rather than consumers. They also have more sophisticated processing options on this level available through a computer controlled editing center. Here they can create special visual and aural effects that can layer art projects with more meaning. (Negatives, polarizations, color shifts, distortions, more text options, etc.)

One element of the video revolution is its affordability which places it in the hands of those who are normally voiceless. Students are encouraged to realize this power. Groups that have made use of this opportunity in the context of video art and cable TV options include gay and lesbian groups, those in a variety of racial groups, feminists, etc. In addition the proliferation of consumer grade camcorders has changed forever the nature of courtroom evidence and television entertainment.

Is there something inherently valuable about this mode of visual inquiry that we have been missing without it? First of all, the basic processes are quick, allowing instant image feedback. In addition students have appreciated the direct connections this creates between their visual work and the rest of their lives, both personal and academic. There is palpable excitement in this class partly because of these connections, partly due to the nature of a new technology, and probably initially due to the hype of Hollywood, which students soon realize is very far from what we are after.

One danger in using television technology is that an over use of special effects is tempting and can look shallow. This is due to familiarity by the student with popular culture use of these technologies such as MTV as well as the wealth of options available. Their intuition can be so saturated with the knowledge of these cultural icons that it takes a while to crawl into fresh territory.

There is also the issue of the learning curve, as with all new technologies. How much do you have to learn before you can produce something? How long does it take to work intuitively? How solid is the software? If it is unproven, students and faculty may spend an inordinate amount of time on something that may not work well in the end. A good deal of technical support from training and maintenance of equipment is essential for class and professional research use of these tools. This is difficult in any situation, but in a small liberal arts college, decisions must be made about what to support, how quickly to bring in new technology, and how broadly to disseminate it. Both faculty and administration must be part of this discussion.

Computer Imaging and Printmaking

Another area of information technology we are exploring is that of computer manipulation of still images for the purpose of printmaking, photography, etc. Our work in this area has been minimal, and we have been interested in having the output from these be prints and photographs rather than the image on the computer screen. The advantages for this application for printmaking, to which I can speak more directly, includes the ability to understand color separation by playing with layers of color in Photoshop. One can also create images or type, or video frames, output them onto acetate and use them to create a photo-silkscreen, litho or etching. Printmakers in the larger world are investigating techniques in output such as luminous IRIS prints, wax/ ink prints and color inkjet plotters. It is natural for printmakers to be involved in this type of technology, for the whole history of printmaking as a fine art is that of an alliance with commercial processes. Alois Senefelder, the father of Lithography was involved in finding a cheaper way to print music when he stumbled on the grease and water principles that still sustain the basis of our commercial printing industry.

The resurgence of printmaking in the United States in the 1960′s was related in part to the idea of democratizing art, making it available for those who previously could not afford it. The idea that multiples could be created by painters put less emphasis on the preciousness of the painting. Many painters and sculptors were guests at printing ateliers and made wonderful prints. This was synchronous with the rise of conceptual/ performance and video art as non- object oriented art. It was an anti “High Art ” stand.

However especially in printmaking, that idea was easy to corrupt. Some painters had printing technicians photographically reproduce a favorite painting rather than using the qualities unique to the print process and reveling in their capabilities. The approach of just reproducing a painting is repugnant to printmakers, who are inspired by the peculiarities of the process, who seek the same for computer manipulated imagery. To be true to its nature, the computer aided image should not try to look like something it is not, video should not try to be film, but use the unique properties available to each media as the basis for image making.

The complications about using these technologies in Printmaking include the pixelization of the image output for use in the print. In addition, the size and orientation of the computer screen is difficult to work with and movable monitors are too costly. The color qualities on a luminous screen are very different from that of ink on a white page, and therefore students must learn to make adjustments. Use of some of the computer options can appear “gimmicky” or “slick” since they are created for the commercial press and must be used very carefully. In addition the cost to the individual student for processing images in a way we can’t accommodate here can be quite high. The last but probably most important issue is technical support. Things can and do go wrong all the time. If they can’t be fixed quickly, projects will be delayed and plans for the class can collapse.

Research on the World Wide Web

One option which appears promising, though is full of problems at this point is the World Wide Web. For artists who are in a location where museums are not plentiful, seeing reproductions of artwork, even digitally reproduced, is better than nothing. Most major museums offer sites on the Web, and therefore access to some images in their collection and educational materials. Some of these are reproduced in printed form, and I prefer these when available, but the speed of publication on the Web allows for simultaneous viewing while a show is on exhibit. In addition, there are many on-line galleries, associations and independent artists who have pages on the Web, all with the most current work. It is hard to get reproductions of a wide range of current visual work, and therefore the potential for students of contemporary art is great. Portions of video work can even be accessed this way. There is simply no other source this current, multi-sensory and available.

There are problems with the Web for artistic research of course, related to problems everyone else has. The largest issue for me is the unedited nature of the work. One can spend vast amounts of time looking at junk and only finding a few gems. Of course this isn’t much different from a physical trip to Soho in my experience, and costs far less. Directories of proven sites published in trusted magazines are a partial relief from this problem. The flip side of this is the fact that even I or my students could publish on the Web without too much cost or trouble. We could have a class portfolio, under the Kenyon Home page to help prospective students understand the quality of the work done here.

The learning curve is another omnipresent issue. Until surfing the net is easier than programming one’s VCR, it won’t become a universal tool. User friendly interfaces are helping this, but in all technological areas, this needs to improve to the degree that most consumers are comfortable with.

The issue of copyright and the nature of protection of intellectual property will have to be dealt with more thoroughly. Some museums have small images of entire works that are highly pixilated and only sections in clear detail, to avoid piracy. Some artists won’t take the chance, and others would rather their work be seen than protected. This issue will only increase as laws are made, regulations applied.

Access is another issue. At this point, the difficulties of access keep me from a full use of this tool. When it is on every desk, and everyone is well versed in using it, it will be much easier to assign tasks on the Web. The issue of access can also be critiqued on a larger scale, where access and knowledge are still reserved for those who can afford it. This creates an even further division between rich and poor. Those with access will have an unfair advantage in classes. There are arguments for a less expensive education through the use of the Web for distance learning, for those who cannot afford to attend a residential school. I find this idea lacking because distance learning would preclude developing a culture of learning that includes some of the methods of visual inquiry. (Twigg, Brown)

Conclusion

Throughout the development of technologies, artists have been on the forefront of exploration. Joining with scientists and inventors, they have been willing to brave the learning curve, playing with new tools as a means of discovery and conceptual development. Teachers of art have long been facilitators within communities of learners who are willing to risk their personal expressions with each other in critical discourse. This student centered, hands-on learning style is now being embraced by other disciplines in the Liberal Arts. This change is in keeping with the new information technologies, and is an asset to learning in as much as it is reliable, approachable and accessible. In this way we are preparing students to be flexible, life long learners, a long standing goal of a Liberal Education.

Bibliography

Adams, James L. Conceptual Blockbusting, Addison Wesley, Reading, MA, 1986

Atkins, Robert “The Art World and I go on line” Art in America, Dec. 1995

Brint, Michael “Being Digitally Educated, Dewey, Technology, and Distance Learning” Return to text

Brown, J and Duguid, P “Universities in the Digital Age”, Change, July/Aug 1996 Return to text

Edwards, Betty Drawing of the Right Side of the Brain, J.P Tarcher, Inc. Los Angeles, 1979

Elkins, James, “Art History and the Criticisim of Computer – Generated Images,” Leonardo, Vol. 27, No. 4 pp. 335-342

Gardner, Howard, White, N, and Blythe, T. If Minds Matter:A Foreward to the Future, Vol.II Skylight Pub. 1992 Return to text

Hagen, Charles, “The Fabulous Chameleon Video Art,” Art News, Summer, 1989, p. 118

Hanhardt, John G., & Hall, Doug and Fifer, Sally Jo, Illuminating Video:An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture, BAVC

Hanhardt, John, ed. Video Culture A Critical Investigation, Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1986.

Hill, Edward, The Language of Drawing, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1966 Return to text

Judson, William D.,”Bill Viola Allegories in Subjective Perception,” Art Journal, Winter, 1995

Kanter, B “Finding Art on the Internet” High Performance Vol. 18, Num. ½, 1995 p.84

Kelly, Kevin, “Eno, Gossip is Philosophy,” Wired, May, 1995, pp. 148f

Lauer, David Design Basics, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Chicago, 1990

Lovejoy, Margot, Postmodern Currents, Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media, UMI Research Press, 1989

Lurins, Sandra, “Common . Dreams / Unique . Visions,” HOW, August, 1996, p. 94f

Madoff, Steven Henry, “Art in Cyberspace: Can it Live Without a Body,” The New York Times, Jan. 21, 1996, p34

McCorduck, Pamela, “America’s Multi-mediatrix,” WIRED, March 1994, pp 84f

Mellencamp, Patricia, “The Old and the New Nam June Paik,” Art Journal, Winter, 1995

Mensing, Margo, “Electronic Textiles: New Possibilities,” Fiberarts, Summer, 1996, p 42 – 45

Popper, Frank, “The Artist and Advanced Technology,” Leonardo, Vol. 28, No. 1 pp. 27-33, 1995

Seipel, Joe,”Reshaping Education,” Sculpture, September, 1996, p. 22f

Sieling, Neil, ed. The Techno/logical Imagination: Machines in the Garden of Art Intermedia Arts Association, 1989

Truckenbrod, Joan Creative Computer Imaging, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1988

Twigg, Carol “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure” Educom Review, Vol. 29, No. 4,5,6, 1994 Return to text

Villasenor, Maria C., “Video/Media Culture of the Late Twentieth Century,” Art Journal, Winter, 1995

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I. The Experience of Education in Digital Life

In his 1995 book, Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte signals what many believe to be a paradigm shift from “atoms” to “bits”–from an “atomic” orientation to the world consumed by material interactions to an orientation unburdened by such impediments as space, time and atomic weight. Racing unfettered at blinding speed over vast distances of space, the bit, the smallest unit in the “DNA of information,” [1] has done more than help usher in the post-industrial age of information. According to Negroponte, it has become the basic commodity of interaction in the post-information age–an age in which the possibility of digital living has become increasingly viable:

The industrial age, very much an age of atoms, gave us the concept of mass production, with the economies that come from manufacturing with uniform and repetitious methods in any one given space and time. The information age, the age of computers, showed us the same economies of scale, but with less regard for space and time… [By contrast,] in the post-information age, we often have an audience the size of one. Everything is made to order and information is extremely personalized… The post-information age is about machines’ understanding individuals with the same degree of subtlety (or more than) we can expect from other human beings.Such customized digital living entails more asynchronistic communications (like e-mail), billions of bits of information on demand (in such forms as TV programs, videos, music, and news), and less and less dependence on being in a specific place at a specific time. [2]

In examining the educational implications of living digitally, Negroponte captures many of the central pedagogical points now being advanced by prominent policy analysts urging the development of distance learning opportunities. [3] In most instances, such approaches consist in the creation of highly individualized asynchronistic learning programs accessible on demand. This form of delivery is said to particularly aid the growing numbers of non-traditional students whose lives require that learning be less and less dependent on one’s ability to be in a specific place at a specific time.

Whether delivered to a classroom, laboratory, workplace or home, learning digitally as an experience is said to be one of individual exploration, experimentation, and expression. Emphasizing the benefits of computers as learning tools, Negroponte notes that

While a significant part of learning certainly comes from teaching–but good teaching and by good teachers–a major measure comes from exploration, from reinventing the wheel and finding out for oneself. Until the computer the technology for teaching was limited to audiovisual devices and distance learning by television, which simply amplified the activity of teachers and the passivity of children. The computer changed this balance radically. All of a sudden, learning by doing became the rule rather than the exception. Since computer simulation of just about anything is now possible, one need not learn about a frog by dissecting it. Instead, children can be asked to design frogs, to build an animal with frog-like behavior, to modify that behavior, to simulate the muscles, to play with the frog. By playing with information, especially abstract subjects, the material assumes more meaning. [...] Anecdotal evidence and careful testing results reveal that this constructivist approach is an extraordinarily rich means of learning, across a wide range of cognitive and behavioral styles.[4]

“Learning by doing,” “finding out for oneself,” “playing with information,”–Negroponte’s orientation sounds a lot like an updated version of John Dewey’s educational approach. Stressing similar ideas, Carol Twigg, a senior analyst for EDUCOM and one of the leading advocates of distance learning, claims that “what we know about high-quality learning, cooperative learning, and discovery learning-implies a learning-by-doing model rather than the passive, classroom-based model that typifies the teaching infrastructure.”[5] Against such passive learning, Dewey notoriously stressed the importance of experience as an active process. “To ‘learn from experience’ is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequences. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction–discovery of the connection of things.” [6]

In a similar vein, discovery labs for physics and other natural sciences (like the CUPLE program developed at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) stress the experience of discovery through exploration and experimentation. By using a studio approach to learning, computer simulations allow students to discover scientific principles through their own active engagement. Jack M. Wilson, Director of the Anderson Center for Innovation in Undergraduate Education, explains the basic premise underlying such initiatives: “The focus is on student problem solving and projects,” he tells us, “and not on presentation of materials. The emphasis is on learning rather than teaching.” [7]

While the CUPLE program uses multimedia tools authored by experts for student use in the discovery, experimentation and exploration of science, multimedia offers new domains of student expression as well. “We are entering an era when expression can be more participatory and alive,” Negroponte tells us. “We have the opportunity to distribute and experience rich sensory signals in ways that are different from looking at the page of a book and more accessible than traveling to the Louvre.” [8] Rather than simply interacting with a designed exercise, students can become their own authors–designing and architecting multimedia projects that integrate both different disciplines and media.

CITYSCAPES at Kenyon College is just one example of a course developed to focus on the student as the creative agent of learning.[9]From a literary walk through the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires to an analysis of the role of women in the agricultural economy of Nairobi, students in this course become authors of multimedia projects that focus on specific themes related to particular cities or regions of the world. In addition to the Internet and library resources, these projects, currently produced as a CD-ROM, combine videos, photographs, recordings, interviews, and journals made by the students themselves. As authors guided by both local scholars and distant experts in various fields related to their study, students become increasingly fluid in coherently drawing together and creatively comingling function and form, method and subject, narrative and design.

Along with their expressive and experiential potentials, many see the greatest advantage of computer learning environments in terms of their potential for customization. Course materials can be delivered to fit the different learning styles of students and developed to help students realize their unique potentials and capacities. According to Massy and Zemsky, the two most fundamental advantages of information technology are the new “economies of scale” it offers and its ability to provide what they term, “mass customization.” “Technology allows faculty to accommodate individual differences in student goals, learning styles, and abilities, while providing improved convenience for both students and faculty on an ‘any time, any place’ basis.”[10]

In the post-information age, most surmise, the advent of sophisticated and customized simulations across the curriculum will increasingly provide the basis of experience for engaged learning. Many who are helping to lay the foundation for the future of information technology and education advocate the creation of a National Learning Infrastructure that could deliver these sophisticated simulations “anytime, anywhere, to anyone.”[11] If these trends continue, the experience of education in digital life may well be one of more convenient asynchronistic communication, customized educational services on demand, and less and less dependence on being at a specific place at a specific time. Yet, for all of the Deweyean-sounding practices that are supposed to accompany these educational delivery services–learning by doing, exploration and experimentation, play and discovery–I doubt it is time to begin celebrating the realization of Dewey’s educational philosophy in the post-information age.

II. Learning as a Social Environment

If many proponents of distance learning follow Dewey’s lead in emphasizing experiential and constructivist models of education, few follow his views regarding the inexorably social and relational nature of learning. Most of their accounts portray distance learning (at least at the level of higher education) as a highly individualized process of self-development, driven by the student’s own initiative toward the successful acquisition of specifiable skills.[12]

For Dewey, no matter how individualized or customized the material that is being explored, learning is not an isolated enterprise that takes place within the self or between the individual’s mind and the material it confronts, but a social activity that takes place within the context of a social environment. “As matter of fact,” Dewey tells us,

every individual has grown up, and always must grow up, in a social medium. His responses grow intelligent, or gain meaning, simply because he lives and acts in a medium of accepted meanings and values. Through social intercourse, through sharing in the activities embodying beliefs, individuals gradually acquires a mind of their own. The conception of mind as a purely isolated possession of the self is at the very antipodes of the truth. The self achieves mind in the degree in which knowledge of things is incarnate in the life about him; the self is not a separate mind building up knowledge anew on its own account. [13]

From Dewey’s point of view, even the ideal of education as self-development must be understood as a social process achieved through interaction and relation with others. Rather than fostering this ideal, advocates of distance learning, particularly those who stress self-paced, independent study, tend to reinforce individual isolation. “The effort at isolated intellectual learning contradicts it own aim,” Dewey claimed, for it “precludes the social sense which comes from sharing in an activity of common concern and value.” [14] In examining the economic efficiencies gained by computer innovations, Massy and Zemsky tellingly report that without a supportive social environment, “the students who would most benefit from self-paced learning have the least motivation to do so.”[15]

The prevailing attitude toward teaching is also particularly telling on this point. In Twigg’s words: “Because of the widespread availability of self-paced learning materials, direct faculty intervention throughout the learning process will lessen.”[16] Like a small country being invaded by a foreign power, the idea of faculty interaction is not said to be condemned simply because of the enormous costs of the labor involved (although one suspects that this is the most significant issue). Rather advocates of information technology assume a notion of independent learners at the center of the enterprise who simply do not depend on faculty as the primary source of their learning. While Dewey was among those to argue against a teaching-centered model of education, he would certainly reject the radically asocial dimension of distance learning as it is currently being discussed. [17]

Once again, Dewey’s position is that the social environment–the interdependence and engagement of individuals in the performative acts of learning–is a necessary condition for developing the unique capacities of individuals. Even if such a model as the National Learning Infrastructure could develop an individual’s dispositions for distance learning; in its current direction toward individualization, it would be difficult to account for the experience of sharing in a common activity that is central to Dewey’s understanding of both the social environment of learning and the social aims of democracy.

In contrast to Dewey’s concentration on the social functions of education, the individual ends of distance learning are most frequently described in terms of the acquisition of definable skills. “It seems to me,” Carol Twigg writes,

that our definition of learning is changing in a number of ways… Increasingly, viewing a college education as mastery of a body of knowledge is becoming outmoded. Instead we recognize that graduates need to have acquired skills… along with such abilities as finding needed information and working well with others.[18]

With this emphasis on acquired skills, we are also beginning to see more stress placed on educational outcomes. “Because of its capacity to focus on individual assessment,” Massy and Zemsky note, information technology “will make the teaching and learning enterprise much more outcome-oriented.”[19] In large measure this growing emphasis on skills and outcomes is related to a greater consumer orientation to education. Increasingly students are looking “for increased competition between higher education providers to work to their advantage as consumers.”[20]

While Dewey too understood the importance of acquiring skills, he would no doubt be disturbed by the instrumental and pecuniary ends of distance learning. In his essay, Individualism, Old and New, he claimed that “the development of a civilization that is outwardly corporate–or rapidly becoming so–has been accompanied by the prevailing mentality of the ‘business mind’” and the prevailing standards of value derived from pecuniary success alone.[21] On the educational front, the ability to buy economic success is understood in terms of the acquisition of skills of technical mastery sold at the best price. Yet paradoxically, Dewey argued, even if these skills are quite broad and fluid, such narrowly conceived individualist attempts to find economic security in an increasingly insecure economic world produces the conditions under which individuals become increasingly lost, unable to “find support and contentment in the fact that they are sustaining and sustained members of a social whole.”[22]

For Dewey, a highly individualistic or libertarian model of learning severely narrows and restricts the meaning and practical effects of education’s social function. In his view, the purposes of education in a democracy are necessarily both individual and collective in nature. They consist in developing individuals’ natural capacities and acquisition of skills in concert with their preparation for the activities of engaged citizenship and reflective thought. Indeed, without pathological effect, the growth of the individual–the unique development of the individual’s talents and skills– cannot be separated from the social environment of shared activities, values and common interests within which the individual is sustained and grows.

Although information technology has the potential “to increase learning productivity in the areas of codified knowledge and algorithmic skills,”[23] it may not serve these larger social purposes. Indeed, even if one could argue that sharing in common activities that are primarily non-algorithmic can take place within the social environment of distance learning, Dewey would strongly criticize the disembodied nature of such a “social” environment.

For Dewey, learning digitally may well push Cartesian dualism to new heights as minds connect over vast distances without the inconveniences of time, place and body. In his view, the separation of body and mind culminates “in a sharp demarcation of individual minds from the world, and hence from one another… [This] dualistic philosophy of mind and the world implies an erroneous conception of the relationship between knowledge and social interests, and between individuality or freedom and social control and authority.”[24] In educational practice, it often assumes the form of a body of knowledge distinct from its social purposes and a mind free from its social context and physical constraints. As Sidney Hook explains, a dualistic theory of mind and body, according to Dewey, “converts functional distinctions in the ‘moving unities of experience’ into separations of existence. Thus mind is considered separate from the body, whose activity is viewed as an alien influence on how the mind learns and the self is divided from its environing physical and social world.”[25]

Even as a real time-interactive-talking heads-model, being digitally educated decontextualizes the experience of learning and realizes in practice what Descartes only separated philosophically: Minds communicate through bits, bodies move through atoms. The most elemental dualism of the post-information age is thoroughly Cartesian. Detached from the motion of our bodies and disengaged from our local physical and social surroundings, education in the post-information age does not connect, but separates the self from the world, and thus from others. Rather than fulfilling its promise, learning digitally seems only to compromise the most significant elements of Dewey’s educational philosophy.

III. Learn Locally, Think Globally

Although information technology, like the printing press, opens up radically new options for education, Dewey would remind us that computers are, after all, tools. And, like all other tools, they provide ways of getting around and fulfilling one’s purposes in one’s environment. The question is how can we best use the tools of information technology for our educational purposes and aims?

In terms of delivery, advocates of digital learning often argue that information technology provides a better option than the traditional university. With its relatively fixed economy of scale and centralized location, the university has become a legacy of the industrial age. In Twigg’s words: “Our institutions of higher education are reminiscent of other kinds of industrial age organizations such as the factory and the department store–characterized by size and centralization–in contrast to the distributed, networked organization and mail-order shopping services of the 1990s.”[26] Twigg predicts that the ability to transmit through networked organization high quality learning tools customized for the individual student will begin to replace the traditional (teacher-centered) functions of the university. While there will still be a role for faculty and institutions of higher education in terms of certification, student services, and some collaborative experiences, she suggests, its centrality in the process of learning will significantly change as students become more independent and self-reliant and as physical contact becomes “less important to them.”[27]

Although Twigg may well be correct in arguing that the industrial designed university no longer provides the best option for educational delivery, her vision of the future predicated on independent learning, as we have seen, is not without its serious defects. In analyzing the profound implications of the printing press in America, Dewey noted that localism with its infinite variations and specific contexts tends to become stronger as the world (or at least information about it and our connection to it) grows closer.[28] And just as industry and politics are witnessing a tendency toward both decentralization and globalization, the best option for educational delivery may well be the more local community and small college system with new neighborhood and workplace learning centers further developed to meet the educational needs of both traditional and non-traditional students. Within these small colleges and decentralized institutions, the physical proximity of students and faculty would help to embody learning and knowledge as a social process.

To learn locally and think globally, students must have access to the tools of technology. Information retrieval, communication systems, and independent and collaborative learning tools are now necessary and even elemental parts of learning. But they are not sufficient. They must be contextualized within a learning environment. As most agree, learning tools can “stand in” for a physical and social environment, but they cannot replace it. One simply cannot replace the direct and palpable gravity of social interaction that is intrinsic to the atomic weight of learning with weightless bits traveling at blinding speed through thin fine fibers of glass.

As global communication systems eviscerate time and space, digital learning may transform the mode of educational production and delivery. It may even make the traditional university and large state institution obsolete. But as our access to the tools of technology become less dependent on space and time, as distance learning increases, the proximity of social interaction in the process of learning should increase proportionally: The more distant the means of delivery, the more proximate the learning experience should be in terms of the intensity, relation, and quality (if not quantity) of interactions between faculty and students. Rather than becoming less so, the physical and social environment may become more important as distant learning tools become more available. As in the case of localism and globalism, physical proximity and intensive social interaction may both compliment and counterbalance distance in learning. Although learning digitally may promise to make us less dependent on time and space, it is only within a social environment of learning that we can begin to celebrate the experimentation, exploration, and expression–the idea of learning by doing–central to the spirit of John Dewey.

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Endnotes

[1] Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, (New York: Borzoi-Knopf, 1995), 14.

[2] Ibid., 163-65.

[3] For example, see William F. Massy and Robert Zemsky, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity” 4.

[4] Ibid., 199f. Return to text

[5] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure” 5.

[6] Dewey, Democracy and Education, in John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899-1924, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 147.

[7] Jack M. Wilson, “The CUPLE Physics Studio,” The Physics Teacher.

[8] Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, 224.

[9] A description of CITYSCAPES can be found in “Strengthening Teaching and Learning in the First Two Years,” PEW Charitable Trusts (Number 9, January 1996), 4.

[10] Massy and Zemsky, Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” 2. (www.educause.edu/ir/library/abstracts/nli0004.html)

[11] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure.”

[12] Although one of these skills may involve collaboration, it is nevertheless described as a kind of “pull yourself up by your own boot straps” social environment of independent learning.

[13] Hook, “Introduction to Democracy and Education,” 304.

[14] Hook, “Introduction to Democracy and Education,” 44.

[15] Massy and Zemsky, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” 4.

[16] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure,” 8.

[17] On the role of the teacher and the social purposes of education, see Dewey’s The School and Society in The Middle Works, vol. 1.

[18] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Infrastructure,” 1. See also, Jeremy Shapiro and Shelley Hughes, “Information Technology as a Liberal Art,” Educom Review (March/April):31-35.

[19] Massy and Zemsky, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” 3.

[20] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Infrastructure,” 4. Return to text

[21] Individualism, Old and New in John Dewey: The Later Works, vol 5, p. 67f. Return to text

[22] Ibid. Return to text

[23] Massy and Zemsky, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” 2.

[24] Hook, “Introduction to Democracy and Education,” 300.

[25] Hook, “Introduction to Democracy and Education,” x.

[26] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure,” 5.

[27] Ibid., 8.

[28] See “Americanism and Localism” in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 12, p.12-16.

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