Media Arts Standards California UPDATE
Thank you Dain Olsen for your commitment to Media Arts instruction in California. Expand this announcement (click on headline) for more information including a link to the CA bill, and PDF Media Arts Education Introduction.
UPDATE Aug. 26, 2015 GREAT NEWS!!
Thanks to your rapid and powerful advocacy, I have received the following communication from the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) Tom Torlakson (finalized by Jack Mitchell), reassuring the media arts community that he is committed to including Media Arts in the next VAPA standards revision! We are beyond thrilled that this discipline not only will be considered in the revision because it exists in National Core Arts Standards, as it was previously in a similar bill - SB975 - last year, but there is now a stated commitment to "working with the legislature next year to ensure the explicit inclusion of Media Arts in California’s visual and performing arts content standards!” In other words, there will be Media Arts Standards in the next revision!
This provides a certain platform from Superintendent Torlakson around which we can galvanize this supportive community for the development of these standards, and obviously in advocating, promoting and developing towards Media Arts institutional implementation in California! So, I will be in contact with you all again soon as I will need much assistance now in reaching out to all interested supporters and media arts educators, artists, scholars, organizations, companies and students in order to begin forming this community. I will continue to keep you updated as this work moves forward in the following months and next year.
Spread the news! And many thanks again for your support and attention to this urgent matter!
Dain Olsen
Media Arts Writing Chair, NCCAS
Lead Teacher/Coordinator
Multimedia Academy, Belmont HS, LAUSD
Faculty, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Master of Arts Teaching
August 23, 2016: URGENT
Dear Colleagues, Friends and Supporters of Media Arts Education,
"Media Arts” has been specifically excluded from consideration for new arts standards for California in AB 2862, which will delay its inclusion as a formal arts education discipline for at least another generation. This is beyond my comprehension, given California’s historic legacy in its birth and development, its vital “Creative Economy”, and our “multimedia-centered" 21st C society!
As a “media arts educator” in LAUSD for over 25 years, I have seen firsthand the power of this unique discipline to change students’ lives, to instill excitement, to empower their voices, and to foster their learning, communicating and creativity. Media Arts is simply magical in its ability to give ALL students a means of expressing themselves in the media that they experience as audiences every day of their lives. This keeps students in school, and helps them to experience writing, research and complex production processes as meaningful and rewarding! Furthermore, it supports their critical awareness of media and digital environments,and prepares them to be participatory and proactive citizens in a democratic society.
Media arts, with its diversifying and complex new virtual and interactive forms, has the potential to foster a new form of cultural and design centered learning, including STEAM, that can propel the next generation to invent innovative solutions for our contemporary challenges. This will empower all of the arts in the next century, and support core instruction in culturally relevant and authentic applications.
Media Arts is endorsed by all national arts organizations and their affiliates (National Coalition for Core Arts Standards, NCCAS) and by other national media organizations, such as the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, and the National Association of Media Literacy Education. It has been, or is in the process of being adopted by over 20 states. In California, it is prominently endorsed as a Key Recommendation within State Superintendent Tom Torlakson’s "Blueprint For Creative Schools”.
Please see the attached document for a more detailed introduction to the discipline and its benefits for students, schools and communities, and its standards-based outcomes for 21 C learning and creativity.
Please join me in supporting the inclusion of “Media Arts Standards” for consideration in the renewal of California’s Visual and Performing Arts Standards for the 21st Century!
READ THE BILL HERE.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB2862
Your endorsement is truly important at this critical moment! Any other communication or advocacy you can perform is strongly encouraged! Let me know if you want to participate further. And feel free to forward this email to all who might be interested!
Sincerely,
Dain Olsen
Media Arts Writing Chair, NCCAS
Lead Teacher/Coordinator
Multimedia Academy, Belmont HS, LAUSD
Faculty, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Master of Arts Teaching
