ICT should be part of art education

Page 11
11-07-08

A LECTURER at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Mr Edward Appiah, has stressed the need for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to be an integral part of the Art and Design Education curriculum.
That, according to him, was to ensure effective teaching and learning in all levels of education.
“The world is moving on and we cannot stay on the sidelines in this global market of education,” he said at the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) monthly seminar in Accra.
Presenting a paper on “ICT in Creative Art Education in Ghana-A Review of Basic Education on ICT”, Mr Appiah said the use of ICT in art and design provided opportunities for learners to access the work of art and transcultural artefacts on a global scale.
Mr Appiah said it enabled students to develop their ideas in an experimental way and take creative risks, discover their ingenious potential by engaging in different kinds of activities.
He noted that art and design provided excellent opportunities for students to develop skills in a wide rage of software and communication technologies including desktop publishing, animation, digital photography, image manipulation, video, three-dimensional and web page design.
“ In order for ICT to impact most effectively on traditional school-based art teaching and learning, educators need to critically review available digital multimedia to assess advantages and disadvantages so that selection and utilisation of digital resources and objects best meet the needs of particular students and learning contexts,” he added.
Mr Appiah noted that teachers needed support to implement ICT effectively in their art programmes, and that such support could be in the form of technical personnel, subject and pedagogical expertise, appropriate hardware and software along with school infrastructures that enabled fast and reliable service.
“ICT has the potential to enhance real world experiences through collaborative communities of practice. Development in virtual technologies are creating new and exciting approaches to arts learning,” he stated, and indicated that ICT tools allowed new ways to manipulate existing and create new art practices.
He named some of the challenges in ICT as connectivity constraints, costs, access, language, content and dominance of western culture.
Mr Appiah, who lectures at the Communication and Design Department at KNUST, said although much had been done about the use of ICT in finance, governance and education, “very little has been done on the use of ICT in Art and Design education”.
A Deputy Registrar and Head of the Vocational and Education Department at WAEC, Ms Irene Dodoo, called for ICT and art to be harmonised, saying that “this should form the basis for all that we do.”
Some of the participants called for a change of the negative perception some people had towards art education, adding that once that was blended effectively with ICT, it would achieve the desired results.