What is Media Arts?
That's a great question! The media center used to be called the library. Our students would come and learn about fiction and nonfiction books. They would learn about different book genres like mystery, fantasy, and science fiction. Students would learn how to use reference books like atlases, encyclopedias, thesauruses, and dictionaries to find information and to do research. They also learned about the Dewey Decimal System and how we categorize books in the library. We still learn about all these topics!
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However, the library began to change as we added more computer and digital technology. At first, we only had a few desktop computers our students could use to search for books on our online catalog and to do research. Now our library has printers, a Smart Board, laptops, Chrome Books, and tablets. We have more and more applications on our computers as well as many websites we can visit online to enhance learning. Our library has become the media center in our school.
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We needed to rethink our library classes. We developed a curriculum, which is a plan for what we want our students to learn over the whole school year. Library class became media arts. Media arts also became a special just like gym, art, and music. In our media arts classes students learn about the different technologies we have in our school and how to use them safely. Our students are doing much more than learning about books and book borrowing in our media center! We are learning how to be students and citizens of the digital world.