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Arts @ the Core of 21st Century Learning: What We Learned
Posted on05. Jun, 2010 by admin.
Word cloud of conference session topics created at www.wordle.net
The Be Blog
“Arts @ the Core of 21st Century Learning” Conference in a Nutshell…
Missy Crutchfield and Melissa Turner
Be Magazine | www.bemagazine.org
This year the City of Chattanooga Department of Education, Arts & Culture and Be Magazine partnered with the Southeast Center for Education in the Arts “Arts @ the Core of 21st Century Learning” Conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Arts @ the Core is a national level conference highlighting presenters from Crayola, the College Board, ArtsSmart, and teaching artists and consultants from across the nation. As this was our first year attending Arts @ the Core, we spoke with a number of participants who travel the arts and education conference circuit, and overwhelmingly, their responses were “SCEA Arts @ the Core conference” is the best in the country. The interaction and hands-on experience and applications rank the highest as reasons why this conference stands out among the rest.
As we got out our reporters’ notebooks and recorders and began to listen to the latest on integrating arts and creative technology in education, and the economic impact of the arts across the spectrum, it sparked a “Be Conversation” about the similarities between the early beginnings of the green movement back in the 1980s and the emergence of the creative culture now.
It is no longer about that “radical voice” in the desert, the arts movement is sinking in as we collectively acknowledge that the arts and creative thinking and working skills prepare us for moving forward into the 21st century workplace. Business Week magazine featured creative skills as crucial for successful employment in the 21st century.
Business Week study on “How Arts Education Builds the Skills that Business Values”:
- An education in the arts encourages high achievement.
- Study of the arts encourages a suppleness of mind, a toleration for ambiguity, a taste for nuance, and the ability to make trade-offs among alternative courses of action.
- Study of the arts helps students to think and work across traditional disciplines. They learn both to integrate knowledge and to “think outside the box.”
- An education in the arts teaches students how to work cooperatively.
- An education in the arts builds an understanding of diversity and the multicultural dimensions of our world.
- An arts education contributes to technological competence.
(Source: Business Week, October 28, 1996)
As Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” and Daniel Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind” harken the coming of an integrated and wholistic creative economy, business leaders and government and industry are recognizing the impact of the arts and creative culture movement in fueling innovation on a number of levels.
Here are some of the take-aways we wanted to share with Be Magazine readers… Please stay posted for future Be stories and profiles related to this important conference, “Arts @ the Core of 21st Century Learning.”
Partnership for 21st Century Skills
Joining Voices: Arts Advocacy and 21st Century Readiness
Cheri Sterman, Crayola (Eastman, Pennsylvania)
Cheri Sterman with Crayola opened the conference with a look at the national scope of arts advocacy—from national organizations and educators to government and business leaders—realizing the economic impact of the arts in education and training students who are ready to work in the 21st Century workplace.
“For every $1 spent on early childhood education, the public benefits $8 in economic return,” Sterman says. “And the individual benefits are more like $30 in economic return for that investment.”
“Creativity is as important in education as literacy,” Sterman says. “And we should treat it with the same status.” Sterman shared the 4 C’s that are crucial skills in the 21st Century workplace: Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication.
Sterman spoke of school principals as the Chief Executive Officers for their schools—being a Voice of Change and having a Heart for Children. The arts educators are the “Chief Creative Officers” for their schools. They are the “Peacocks”—“Be the Voice of Change.”
Partnership for 21st Century Skills presentation
Sterman also shared a quote from author Richard Florida’s new book, The Flight, “I call the age we are entering the creative age because the key factor propelling us forward is the rise of creativity as a primary mover of our economy.”
Crayola Visual Voices: Kids Speak Up for Creativity
Asking kids, “What does creative mean to you?”
Access to Arts Education report (U.S. Congress is currently reviewing)
Tools of the Mind report (Science, 2008) Findings: Creative Experiences improved child outcome in preschool study
To learn more visit:
www.crayola.com
Arts Integration Through the Lens of Educators, Administrators, and Business Leaders
Jennifer Unger, ArtSmart (Texarkana, Texas)
Kay Thomas, ArtSmart (Texarkana, Texas)
Watch a YouTube video clip of Kay Thomas talking about Arts at the Core:
To learn more visit:
www.trahc.org
Digital Tools for Students to Showcase Their 21st Century Skills
Bill Sheskey, Sheskey Learning Solutions (Seneca, South Carolina)
Bill Sheskey specializes in creative Web 2.0 tools for building literacy. Learn more about some of the tools available on his blog at www.billsheskey.com.
Check these tools out:
Photo Story 3: a free download allowing students to create photo slideshows with voice narration.
iPhoto: similar to Photo Story 3, for Mac users
Todaysmeet.com: A free real-time survey and feedback website
To learn more visit:
www.billsheskey.com
Connecting Through Collaboration: Exploring the Physics of Dance
Erica Locke, Sallie B. Howard School for the Arts & Education (Wilson, North Carolina)
Michael Peckerar, Sallie B. Howard School for the Arts & Education (Wilson, North Carolina)
In a model arts-integrated school in Wilson, North Carolina, dance instructor Erica Locke and physics instructor Michael Peckerar collaborated on an integrated unit on the physics of dance—introducing the dance students to the physics of their dance steps and the physics students to the science of dance.
To learn more visit:
www.salliebhowardschool.com
Making Learning Irresistible: Expanding K-12 Instructional Design
Dr. Tim Tyson, Educational Technology Consultant (Manhattan Beach, California)
Watch a YouTube video clip of reflections from Dr. Tim Tyson:
Wrapping up the Arts @ the Core conference for 2010, Dr. Tim Tyson shared his vision for education in a high-tech world:
“We need to make learning irresistible.”
“I don’t have a lot of answers, but I have a lot of questions.”
“When we invest trust in our children, they reward that with loyalty.”
“Education is not this—‘Shut up and sit down and fill out that worksheet!’ Kids need meaningful experiences.”
“Stop beating the creativity out of our kids!”
“Our children are not numbers and yet the decisions we make about our children are primarily based on numbers.”
“I challenge you—we need a paradigm shift. We are the facilitators of young people’s education, we are no longer the experts!!”
“We have before us the real opportunity to redefine public education in the U.S.—no one has ever had this before. It’s at our feet and we can decide whether to do it or not… Let’s have the poets, musicians, playwrights, artists, peacemakers, healers—Moms and Dads, teachers and principals, School Board Members— Coming together building a legacy for the future so that the next generations look back at us at the turn of the next century and say— ‘They lived up to the challenge… They chose to care and to impact the world and to make it a better place…’ Don’t waste a “Once in a Lifetime Opportunity—This Is Your Destiny.”
“Make it so!”
To learn more visit:
www.drtimtyson.com
To learn more about the SCEA “Arts @ the Core of 21st Century Learning visit:
www.utc.edu/scea
