Overview of the Field

The "digital media arts" as a field has exploded onto both the education and workforce development scene in the past decade. It is obvious that the California economy is heavily dependent on the digital media arts because they are the backbone of the information and entertainment industries. On the other hand the digital media arts have not taken root inside the education system for many systemic reasons that we will explore in this paper. The world has changed dramatically over the past two decades and yet schools seem to lag behind other institutions when it comes to recognizing the importance digital media arts. One objective of this paper is to explore the extent to which the digital media arts are now a part of the educational experience of all of our children and to raise questions about how many of the changes new technology has brought should make its way to our classrooms.

It may seem unbelievable to us sitting as we do on the far shore of the sea change in technology but there was a time just fifteen years ago that some commentators thought the Internet was a passing fancy. Thirty years ago two inventors sat in a garage in northern California and made a bet on the utility of personal computers, a bet the most prosperous American company of its time, IBM, passed on. On one level it should be obvious that education must move ahead or die, but how and how fast are difficult, complex and almost perilous issues. We have witnessed how the development of new technologies has driven change in the manner with which we seek, gather, analyze, process and disseminate information. At the same time the technology itself has been driven to change and adapt by the rapid pace of new consumer and workplace demands. Every day scientists, scholars, artists and businessmen around the world seek better and faster technology to manage information and knowledge. Innovation and invention drive practices while new practices in turn drive invention; all at a dizzying pace. The only constant it seems is change.

While the digital age may seem overtly "technologic" there also is a compelling artistic side to it as well. It is clearly the case that science and mathematics are important core disciplines, but the need for creativity in imagining new technologies as well as organizing and sending messages is also critical to success in the information age. Sorting and interpreting the massive amount of information sent our way on a daily basis has brought about a whole new type of employee stress. The sheer volume of information can paralyze even the most competent person. We must have finely honed skills to discover what is important, what information has meaning and how we can best share this knowledge. What's more even the bedrock value of "knowing" itself may not be the only requirement. In her book Content Critical Gerry McGovern puts it this way, "What you know right now is not nearly as important as your ability to learn more. Your ability to communicate what you know is as important as what you know. In an age of stability, those who know inherit the earth. In an age of change, those who know how to know inherit it!"

Consider the latest technologic advances in telephones. The telephone today is a multi-dimensional instrument that is as much dependent on visual attributes as it is on sound. For a "new" phone to be competitive it must have the capacity to take and, transmit pictures and video, transmit text as well as send and receive a range of sound and music. The phone also can fix our global position and function like a mobile marketing maven. Marketing experts today understand that the phone or PDA of tomorrow will be the principal link we have to the world. In fact the newest marketing techniques depend upon global positioning. Phones being marketed in Asia this past year include a global positioning device combined with the yellow pages to remind the consumer that they are near a bookstore or coffee shop. The phone beeps in and asks, "wouldn't you like to take a break or go shopping?" The phone of tomorrow will recognize and keep track all of our favorite preferences from cars to colors, from pasta to pastries! "That restaurant you heard so much about is only fifty feet to your right," your maven entices. The phones of the future will spin stories, store and play on-demand videos or games and play any and all music we could imagine. These "Hyper techno-phones will transmit movie trailers as we whiz past a theater or run slick advertisements of sleek sports cars just as we drive past car dealerships. "Which new car would you like to test-drive?" our digital companion might ask. Business of the future will depend almost entirely on digital media to communicate new products, their value, and their relevance to each consumer. There will be less general advertising and more targeted pitches. We will be a nation of one-person niche markets.

Twenty years ago, technologic marvels such as mega computers were used mainly by graduate students at the nation's most advanced universities. Now they have been replaced with vast networks of computers linked together called the Super Computer. At the same time the average third grade student has at their disposal, technology that baby boom college age students could have only dreamt about. The power of laptop computers today is truly awe-inspiring. Every year hundreds of new products bring us new capacity to learn, entertain ourselves or just plain---stress us out.

All of these changes have brought challenges to education systems worldwide. But in contrast to commerce, policies for education change slowly. Educators have become leery of "the greatest new thing" because they have been burnt before. The ponderous nature of educational systems whether it is curriculum development, teacher professional development, adoption of textbooks or building facilities and buying equipment, may safeguard the public purse-strings but it retards the pace of change. How can schools keep up with change if every new massive investment in a computer system will be obsolete two years later? Clearly, educators around the globe have challenges to meet and new systems to create or consider.

The electronic gizmos of the real world so familiar to youth today, I-pods, computer games, MySpace, blackberries and digital phones are for the most part wholly absent from their educational experience. It is as if students live in two worlds, one a hold-over of the industrial age, where change comes slowly if at all and the other a world on the cusp of the future that moves at a dizzying pace. This dissonance comes in many shapes and flavors. This change management dilemma can be summed up in the debate that accompanies schools today around the word "relevance." For most educators relevance has come to mean soft standards, lack of rigor, all form and no substance. The question is; is the opposite of relevance -- irrelevance? If it is, who would actively build a system that is irrelevant? So it is a natural question for educators to ponder; how much of the technologic revolution should we embrace? What parts of the new age of work is really the business of education in the first place? And how can schools ever hope to catch up and stay up with the pace of change in the world today? Can a curriculum be relevant and rigorous at the same time?

There are many many discrepancies between the world of work and the world of school. At a recent hearing before the state legislature a high technology executive bemoaned the fact that schools "emphasize the wrong things." One example was "We teach students that they must memorize facts when in fact you would be fired from your job if you wasted time trying to memorize facts that Google can find in seconds." His examples also included the project orientation of most high technology business where teams of workers from different disciplines share information and jointly solve problems. "If we did in school what we do in the workplace," he said, " we would all be expelled for cheating."

At the cutting edge of technology is digital media art. The arts in almost every culture in almost every time have served as the R&D for the culture. No lesser a guru than Einstein endowed the artist with seer-like status. The newest of new images comes first to the mind of the artist and then to the scientist. We know that advances in the entertainment field can lead to better science. Video game technology is now the basic technology for training fighter pilots. All true, but how much of this world belongs in schools? And if so what are the pedagogical issues? To which field of study does the digital media arts belong? Should the education system consider digital media as the stuff of science and mathematics, a highly specialized field of engineers that happens at the graduate school level or should the system include digital media as a core subject in K12 education and part of what is called "digital literacy?" Is it important for students to distinguish advertising from information and propaganda from facts? Should we teach children how to think in digital ways and create their own worlds and stories? What skills and knowledge should be part of this new curriculum and how is educational progress in this area to be measured? In the face of these changes it is not at all obvious what role the digital media arts should play in the K-12 and four-year education system.

What is Digital Media Arts?

Perhaps we should start with a description of "digital media arts." The term itself has only recently come into common usage within the past ten years. Indeed there are today only a handful of colleges that have well-defined course sequences or degree programs in this area. In high school the digital media arts have been scotch-taped onto existing courses in the visual and performing arts, business education, science and more recently the Career Technology Education categories. It is no wonder that the term engenders so much confusion.

For our purposes we will define the "digital media arts" as the field of work and inquiry that uses digital means to convey meaning and knowledge to people (students or workers) that emphasizes rich content, symbolic meaning, and the multi-sensory transmission of ideas, and depends upon creativity and imagination in both the sending of messages as well as the receiving of them. The field includes the applications and products from industrial design to web-design; from the design of circuits to the manufacture of high technology devices. The applications include products in entertainment, art, science, communications, business and any field where knowledge is best conveyed in interactive, multidimensional language. Digital arts are based upon the maxim "show me rather than tell me."

The bottom line is that the former boundaries may no longer be relevant. Old lines separating the arts and science, the esthetic and the commercial as well as the academic and vocational are very much blurred in today's world. Partly because the arts have become more scientific as learning today utilizes the same techniques and principles artists and storytellers have used for ages. They include infusing perception with meaning, adding feeling to facts, using symbols and metaphors to communicate complex concepts and knowledge. The digital arts have set the pace for what the transfer of ideas and knowledge can be. The ways in which we learn today owe much to digital media arts. Learning involves using all of our senses in multidimensional ways. Contemporary learning theory is more about experiencing realities directly rather than transferring abstractions. This constructivist approach is gaining new adherents daily.

Take for instance the many new ways technology has helped organic chemistry students learn about chemical reactions. In the past, organic chemistry was limited by the two-dimension world of textbooks. Now, chemical reactions, organic molecular structure and cell architecture are explained with the use of interactive, three dimensional dynamic renderings where students become accustomed to moving the molecule about in three dimensional space, making clear how bonds can be formed with other molecules. Surprisingly the most often used software for this activity is "Combustion," designed as animation software.

Today, the world of forensic science depends heavily on digital media arts to explain what could have happened in a given "crime" scenario, showing to a visually oriented jury, in virtual reality, how a crime may have been committed. The more compelling the script and the image the more likely the jury will embrace a particular theory of the crime. In architecture and home design, traditional animation software has been modified to demonstrate in a three dimensional mode, how a building design will handle stress and use tensile strength far exceeding the meaning of a two-dimensional explanation. Homeowners today can experiment with many designs for furniture, color patterns, and other design elements. In nearly every field of endeavor the digital media arts are utilized to reveal data, meaning and insight to workers and consumers.

The Knowledge Revolution- The Big Picture

"Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement." Peter Drucker

Most scholars studying economic and social movements agree that we have passed from a post-industrial world to a knowledge world where knowledge is now viewed as the most important of all assets. Some might say, "Well, we have been in the information age for a long time now. What's so new here?" That comment lies at the heart of a fundamental misconception that we should clarify at the outset of this discussion; that is, there is an important distinction between information and knowledge. This distinction is critical to our understanding of digital media arts because knowledge sharing is based upon human understanding and the transfer of meaning not just data. That means context, point of view, esthetics and emotional dimensions are all necessary ingredients to communicate knowledge at the deepest levels. In one sense the raison d'etre of digital media is the effective communicating of human experiences and knowledge and not the simple transfer of information.

A superb analysis of the difference between knowledge and information is found in a landmark article entitled "Knowledge Management, Understanding the Difference between Information Management and Knowledge Management." by experts Jose Claudio Terra and Terezinha Angeloni, entitled, The full extent of the argument cannot be recapitulated here but I think the following distinctions are important.

"Information is defined as 'organized data' (Saint Onge 2002) or 'data endowed with relevance and purpose' (Drucker 2001). Defining knowledge is a much more complicated task. Knowledge can only reside in one's mind and is the result of human experience and reflection based on a set of beliefs that are at the same time individual and collective. In the case of knowledge as simple as it may seem, individuals play a prominent role as creators, carriers, purveyors and users."

Whenever we misperceive knowledge as information we are apt to "miss the point," to strip messages of their nuance of meaning, their essence and power. The messages we deal with in contemporary life increasingly complex and so is the mode of transmission. The conveyance of knowledge provides a human context to information. Today, the mode and means of disseminating knowledge owes as much to aesthetics as it does to simple language. It is for this reason that digital media arts are at the core of the knowledge based economy and knowledge revolution.

Too often schools make this same fundamental mistake. The computer is utilized as an efficient but simple typewriter or glorified abacus. Yes, computers can make the process of transferring information easier and yes, computers have greatly aided in computational problems (without the super-computer we would not have mapped the human gnome) but of course they are much more powerful than that. If school is about learning and the transfer of knowledge then the computer must be more profoundly utilized.

In this knowledge-based society, people of the world are linked closer than ever before in human history. It is possible to have companies with workers spread throughout the globe, participating in the same project. The knowledge revolution and the knowledge economy depend upon workers' ability to find, interpret, and share knowledge. The new worker must work collaboratively across disciplines, develop new ideas and products, and coordinate efforts with others by conveying this new grasp of knowledge efficiently and expediently. This may mean collaborating with other workers in different countries using different languages imbedded with a host of cultural values. That communication is more apt to be visual and experiential rather than linear, contextual rather textual, with digital media arts added value and a human touch.

In November 2006 Newsweek Magazine devoted an entire issue over challenges related to the knowledge-based economy and these implications on America's future. Today, markets are worldwide and so is the workforce. That means that our education system too is in a world market. Our students must learn at a pace than maintains our position as the world leader. In his dissertation called "Ideological Evolution: The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy" researcher Harry Hillman Chartrand makes the following two observations:

"'New growth theory' reflects the attempt to understand the role of knowledge and technology in driving productivity and economic growth. In this view, investments in research and development, education and training and new managerial work structures is key. (Secondly) Employment in the knowledge-based economy is characterized by increasing demand for more highly-skilled workers."

New growth theory attempts to quantify the capacity for any given economy to grow based upon the sum total of that society's knowledge. One article in the November 2006 issue of Newsweek warns that we are at risk of falling behind in our global competitiveness in part because our students are not acquiring and using knowledge at the same rate as other growing economies such as Ireland, Scotland and India. The United States still has the most college graduates based upon percentage of its population but these statistics may be masking the erosion taking place at the graduate school level in some of our most prestigious institutions. Foreign graduate students studying in America in the fields of science, technology, the arts and medicine are off by at least 20% as much as 50% in the case of theoretical physics. California companies in the entertainment and information industries are outsourcing thousands of high-level design jobs each year because our students have not been prepared for those positions.

The burden of workforce preparation falls mainly to our education system. In the industrial age, the workforce was neatly compartmentalized into skilled and unskilled labor. The manager class was educated at the university in the liberal arts. If they needed to become more "professionalized" they would go to graduate school. The unskilled workers learned a trade in high school or by joining a guild. The workforce of today is infinitely more fluid, management and labor is not so clearly demarcated. Geographic isolation of the workforce is increasingly less and less of an issue. The workers of today may be drawn from populations around the globe. Today all education is related to workforce preparation to one degree or another. The workforce questions we ask are critical to global competitiveness. Who are these highly skilled workers? What are they skilled at? How can our education system do a better job at increasing the supply of highly trained new workers? These are questions that must be answered by the education system.

In the past the United States could count on several factors to maintain leadership in the world economy, stable political system and government, a vibrant free-market economy, universal education, public institutions of higher learning with a commitment to research, strong investment in domestic capital and infrastructure and leadership in technological development. We still enjoy many of those competitive advantages but our position is no longer safe.

The Digital Media Arts and the California Economy

"Companies will increasingly be measured by their knowledge rather than by their physical assets... But it's creativity that enables the transformation of one form of knowledge to another." -- John Kao, from 'Jamming'

The rise in importance of digital media arts to the overall education of students is directly related to the knowledge revolution. The digital media arts certainly include the entertainment industry but of course extend to a great number of other areas as well. These combined industries are known as "the creative cluster". In 2004, RAND published a much reviewed report entitled "Gifts of the Muse; Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of Arts" by Kevin McCarthy and Elizabeth Ondaatje. In this report, authors conveyed that there are 550,000 businesses employing 3 million people nationwide in the creative industries. California's share was over 600,000 workers in all creative industries. We also know that the entertainment industry is big business. A report entitled The Film Industry Profile of Los Angeles prepared by the Economic Development Corporation of Los Angeles concluded that in 2002 the film/video industry revenues surpassed $34.2 billion in California alone. This accounts for nearly 2/3 of the industry nationally. When you add the video gaming industry, web-based industries any other digital sectors that figure rises to nearly $50 billion. Leaders in the forefront are indigenous California companies, most particularly, Electronic Arts of Redwood City and Activison of Santa Monica. The Entertainment Economy Institute estimates that the entertainment industry in California employs 346,000 workers annually. Interestingly enough in any particular year almost half of the "entertainment workers earned their primary income in non-entertainment jobs. One could conclude from the data that the stability of the entertainment industry is suspect but in another sense the data suggests that entertainment workers are actually in high demand in many related fields. Many entertainment workers are not digital employees but analysis of job categories one might call digital suggests an extracted concept; digital media workers trained in the entertainment industry retain value across disciplines and in all fields of commercial endeavor. Employment experts report that a digital media background is considered to be a gateway career in the new economy.

Careers in the Digital Media Arts

Aeronautics
Animation
Architecture
Auto Design
Digital Publishing
Entertainment & Amusement Parks
Film/Video
Forensics
Furniture Design
Journalism
Law
Medical Imaging
Marketing/Advertising
Molecular Biology
Music/Recording
Real Estate
Sound Design
Stage and Set Design
Training/HR
Travel/Tourism
Web Creation and Design

While it may be impossible to actually put a figure on the total revenue of workers in digital media arts, suffice to say it is one of California's leading industry clusters. In a report to the Regents of the University of California in 2003 the following observation was made:

" Seven industry clusters are particularly critical to the current performance and future vigor of the California economy: agriculture, biosciences, computers and semi-conductors, information technologies, telecommunications, entertainment/media, and aerospace."

It isn't hard to see how the digital media arts are related to all of these industries and are in fact the underpinning of at least three of them.

California must continue to train workers in these fields if it is to retain its leadership position. Unfortunately we are not alone in recognizing the importance of these industries to economic health. We are no longer alone in cultivating these industries. Today countries as diverse as India and Ireland have outstripped our abilities to build the digital workforce. For example, a Wikipedia entry entitled the "Film Industry in India" shows that in 2003 India released 877 feature films and 1177 shorts while there were a total of 473 films in commercial release in America. A comparative analysis of marketability and quality notwithstanding, it is accurate to say the film industry output in India is larger than in America. India will have to upgrade quality to compete in foreign markets, yet the data is troubling on a number of levels. There are many reasons for the rapid gains made by India, but two primary ones are new technology has dramatically reduced the technologic cost of making a film (other costs such as marketing have skyrocketed) and India has a robust home-grown industry no longer dependent on American capital and talent.

These countries have make meteoric progress precisely because their governments have committed to work with companies to develop a comprehensive digital media curriculum. At a recent hearing before the Assembly Critical Issues Committee (November 2005), a dozen business leaders from California based companies catalogued a litany of outsourcing of jobs to countries including UK and France to Vietnam. More critical still, these companies testified that it isn't just low-end service positions that are being outsourced; it is high-end development, research and design positions at high wages that are leaving California. When asked directly what are these countries doing that we are not the industry representatives unanimously said, "These countries have responded to the needs of the employers and they recognize the leaders of tomorrow will need to be scientifically and artistically advanced. In both of those areas California schools and colleges have fallen behind."

The consensus at the hearing was that even when California schools do place an emphasis on technology they emphasis platform dependence not digital skill building. Randy Nelson, the director of Pixar University, said it best. " Our children do not know how to think creatively, or use their imagination. They can't draw and they can't tell coherent stories. These are the skills we look for. Many applicants we see are so tied to using a particular software they can't think in digital terms. By the way, Pixar doesn't use any software available on the market; we design it according to what the artists need. We need flexible, creative workers with a lot of experience using their imaginations." Nelson also said that they had not hired a CSU or UC graduate in four years yet have twenty-two graduates of the California State Summer School of the Arts. (I refer you to the interview with Rob Jaffe, director of Inner Spark, the California State Summer School of the Arts for more information about CSSSA.) Nelson said that the Summer School was doing one major thing right, immersing the students in learning the fundamentals of artistic expression, not the use of computers.

The same principles hold true for a number of knowledge-based jobs. Knowing how to learn and build knowledge and create meaning are all dependent on skills inherent in digital media arts. Not surprisingly, Peter Drucker, the iconic high priest of technologic innovation has a lot to say about the "knowledge revolution." Like dozens of other scholars his basic conclusion is that it is not the acquisition of information, which is the key to success in the knowledge economy, but the organization of systems to manage knowledge (or as he wryly observes 'managing ignorance'). That sentiment seems to be a constant idea for analysts of the knowledge revolution. The implications for education are enormous. They include the following general observations:

1. Education will need to emphasis processes of learning rather than product outcomes.

2. Education will have to change from information and fact acquisition to knowledge management and utilization. (Many writers have observed that Google has rendered memorizing factoids useless).

3. Building skills in the knowledge-based economy will require schools which are real and virtual, the new school will necessarily be a 24/7 operation.

4. Education will recognize the need to increase a student's creative aptitude, being the ability to problem solve, imagine new uses for information, find innovative ways to compare and contrast systems and understand the languages of creativity, including visual languages of art and science.

5. Education will move toward an emphasis on the mentor-teacher, who guides or leads students through educational experiences in conjunction with computerized instruction.

6. Education will be valued as a life-long enrichment process. (Perhaps the most astounding observation Drucker made in an interview was that the United States has the clear advantage in one area of the knowledge economy because it has the most highly organized, dynamic and pervasive "life-long" learning system).

These comments are general observations about education in the future as they pertain to schools around the world, not specifically American schools, but they are useful ideas on which we might base some recommendations. Naturally, applying them to the education system as it presently exists raises enormous strategic and tactical issues.

What Should A Comprehensive Digital Media Arts Curriculum Look Like?

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." Einstein

Creativity and imagination are two of the core competencies of the knowledge age. There may be almost universal agreement that the digital media arts are excellent pedagogic means to build creative thinking and imagination in students but it will take more that that understanding to have them root in our contemporary systems of education. There are many barriers to wedging any new set of learning objectives into the school day. The digital media arts do not lend themselves easily to the requirements of No Child Left Behind both because the skill set for them has not been completely designed and tested. In addition, NCLB requires teachers to demonstrate a level of expertise in their area which digital media arts teachers may have difficulty proving. To some extent the forces that drive decision-making in education are static and persistent. Additionally, college entrance requirements are so pervasive there is little room for "enhancement" or "enrichment" classes, often terms used to define digital media courses. The notion of the school day and school year will have to be adjusted to reflect the requirements of digital media arts. Getting a handle on what should be taught in a comprehensive or specialized high school program can be daunting. Because the digital media arts have so many components in the arts and sciences and have even more applications integrated into many other content areas, building a single linear program that mirrors a mathematics or social studies curriculum is probably impossible.

The digital media arts carry economic, academic, social and civic implications for our society collectively and for our citizens individually. We have already reviewed why the state faces an economic imperative to educate its youth in digital media arts, namely it is a vital component of the California economy. We have also seen how keeping industries in California will require a skilled and trained workforce. In addition, the digital media arts are, by leaps and bounds, becoming the dominant means of expression in our visual age with so many fields of study dependent upon digital media for survival. So, justification for including digital media arts into the curriculum has been based largely on the realities of the workforce demand.

The social and civic imperatives are less understood and appear not to be high up on the list of those things many education leaders believe that schools ought to do. However, the ubiquitous nature of digital media I would argue has already changed the equation, whether we like it or not. The changed equation is due in part to the theory that using the digital media arts engages a whole new set of visual and auditory learning modes. Many of our leading institutions have paved the way in underscoring the importance of digital media arts. The McArthur Foundation invested $50 million in 2006 in a new program to examine the ways in which media influences youth in our society and what educators can do to develop media literacy. The Academy of American Pediatrics has developed information and programs for schools and parents about the impacts of media on children.

One of America's leading scholars in the field of media, Henry Jenkins published a book in 2004 called Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. This is what he says about the impact media has on youth and the responsibility education has build civic assets in our society:

"Educators must work together to ensure that every American young person has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant (in our democracy), can articulate their understanding of how media shapes perceptions, and has been socialized into the emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as media makers and participants in online communities. Fostering such social skills and cultural competencies requires a more systemic approach to media education in the United States. Everyone involved in preparing young people to go out into the world has contributions to make in helping students acquire the skills they need to become full participants in our society. Schools, after-school programs, and parents have distinctive roles to play as they do what they can in their own spaces to encourage and nurture these skills."

This debate about the value or impact of media on children has been around since television first hit the airwaves. Educators responded to the pervasive and perceived dangers in television in the 1970s by developing new "educational" programs such as Sesame Street, which uses television as a learning medium. Broadcasters and the FCC followed with standards for equal educational programming in prime time or afternoon television programming. However, much has changed in the last five years. Today, television as we know it may itself be an outdated technology. Today the computer is the new multi-media delivery system. Without question, the two most utilized sites for scores of youth today are MySpace.com and YouTube.com. According to An article published by Media Buy Planner on the web entitled "Major Marketers Love YouTube" in April 2006.

"When YouTube was formally launched in December 2006, viewers watched 3 million videos daily. Today that number has reached 40 million."

As astounding as it may seem as I write this article in January a scant one-year after the launch, the number has risen to more than 100 million videos watched daily and viewer-ship is growing exponentially. YouTube publishes and distributes 65,000 new videos every month. The explosion of digital video is a world- wide phenomenon. The world is spending 33 million hours every day watching videos uploaded for free by an un-adjudicated talent pool of more than 100,000 videographers.

MySpace.com is an even more pervasive youth Internet destination, with more than 50 million MySpace accounts having opened since it went public in 2003 (I admit to having one myself!) with the vast majority of them opened by youth 14-23 according to MySpace commentator Danah Boyd. Indeed Ms. Boyd a well-known blogger posted an article this week bemoaning the fact that MySpace itself may be experiencing "fatigue" and new teen spaces with more "social connectedness" await discovery this year. Whenever a social trend morphs faster than scholars can study it, there is a point when knowledge becomes compromised. This perhaps is why blogging is so prevalent. Scholarship has been replaced with shoot from the hip, sometimes with deadly accuracy and sometimes without relevance not, commentary that can empower or distort, advocate or satirize, all it seems with equal facility. Writers don't have time to do comprehensive studies with footnotes and attribution, they just blog.

The impact of all this on school is almost incomprehensible except to say that digital connectedness means the Internet is certainly a threat to outpace schools as the place where young people met, hang out and deliberate. In addition students have a difficult time distinguishing the real from the fictional and facts from opinions. MySpace after all is a verbal/visual medium and teenagers have a proclivity to believe whatever is in print (or right before their very eyes) must be fact.

These trends have produced what is called the "Participatory Society." Many arts scholars have noted the parallel phenomenon they call "flattening of the cultural democracy." Everyone is a viewer and nearly everyone contributes. We are all participants of the digital culture and as such we look at millions of images every day. More new information is available to sample than ever before in our history. Naturally most observers note that there are pluses and minuses to these goings on. On the one-hand the digital divide is no longer the boogeyman it once was. Who today doesn't have access to some technology. Yet there is a new danger in society that replaced the digital divide and it is called the "participation gap" where the rich and the knowledgeable have a marked advantage over the poor and the ignorant in not having access to media. In short the haves tell their stories to the have-nots. The haves can tell their stories better because they possess greater skill in understanding media and because the pace of change favors those already in advantaged positions. Should educators be worried? You bet.

The very nature of our democracy rests upon a person's ability to make knowledgeable decisions about public policies that are in their best interest. But what exactly is in their best interest? With advertising masquerading as information, and opinions rampant, it is very difficult not to be overwhelmed by the noise. It is difficult not to succumb to the superior leverage of a more accomplished media user's point of view.

The lessons here are that if the school system in America does not provide its citizens the tools to make sense of this bewildering world, there will unequal access to knowledge, and people will not be able to exercise their rights to freely choose leaders. Maladies will plaque the democracy. What happens when a million sound bytes replace ten substantive articles on any given issue? My Space makes for a very poor public forum and YouTube is no substitute for newspapers or even television news, but those realities are upon us.

In summary, educators must certainly try and embrace the media and use it to their advantage. That means constructing a curriculum that educates students in all disciplines, develops a well-trained literate workforce, provides a forum for social discourse that is fact-based, and a democratic forum that actually results in equal participation and effective decision-making.

The Four Components of Digital Media Arts

It would help to map out the four components of a comprehensive digital media arts program. There are four basic strands (with distinct goals) a digital media arts program can have. They include general understanding of the field including the study of how the media arts can influence decision-making in contemporary life and society (digital media literacy); digital media arts as an artistic mode within the visual and performing arts (arts centered); practical applications in other content areas (applied digital media) and the basics of how to design and create new media systems (computer science). It is unlikely that any student will need or want to experience course-work in all four areas of the digital media curriculum. Let us first consider each of the four strands

Digital Media Literacy

The history of media literacy has demonstrated several periods of ascendancy followed by periods of retrenchment, starting with a rise in the 70s, cutbacks in the 80's another rise in the 90's followed by some retrenchment after No Child Left Behind legislation passed the Congress in 2001.

Critics of a digital media curriculum argue that media is an unfit subject for academic study because it lacks rigor and doesn't constitute an actual field of study. Media studies classes have often been seen as "soft" courses that are more apt to "entertain" students than inform them. However, as the influence of the digital media specifically increases at a rapid pace, there is a renewed interest surfaces in developing comprehensive or at least integrated curriculum in digital; media literacy.

Many digital media educators argue that everyone who is in the digital society and a member of the knowledge economy will need to be able to understand and interpret digital media as a consumer at the very least. The digital media arts touch our daily life in dozens of ways. As we have noted above, every citizen in our society should have a working knowledge of digital media arts so that they will be able to gather information, evaluate opinions, analyze data, respond to other people's point of view, debate issues, be an active participant in the political world and the workings of their government as well as carry out a healthy and active pursuit of happiness. The summary of the term " media literacy" comes from an article in Educations Week magazine October 27, 1999 called "Has Media Literacy Found a Curricula Foothold?" by Frank Baker and Robert Kubey.

"To be media literate is, simply put, to possess the critical thinking skills needed to "read" mass media communications, be they advertisements featuring sophisticated-looking women smoking cigarettes, quick-cut shootout scenes in action films, or coverage of far-off wars on the evening news. Rather than being passive consumers of movies, TV shows, and video games, or looking at them as neutral vehicles for information possessing some valid claim to authority or truth, students learn that media 'realities' are 'constructed' -- whether to produce an adrenalin rush, sell a product, or reflect a social or cultural idea. They may also learn about the economic concentration of today's mass media, and the ways that large media corporations censor and control information."

Media Literacy is distinguished from other digital media curricula because it is "about" media rather than "making" media products or studying digital processes. However, because media is now almost completely ubiquitous, it appears leaders are more willing to consider how media literacy contributes to a more participatory democracy. It is one thing to study media as entertainment. It is quite another thing now that media has attained the status as the dominant mode of communication in business, education and political life. Knowing how to use critical thinking skills to decipher meaning in the media has taken on more serious and in some ways an onerous tone. Digital Media may be more related to free exchange of ideas in the market place of knowledge than educators had previously been willing to admit.

California Curriculum Today- Where does Media Literacy Fit?

Digital Media Literacy is making appearances in high schools in California as an elective course taught in either the visual art department or in social studies. Most often however, digital media literacy is a strand within social studies courses or language arts classes depending on its orientation. Media of journalism usually is a two to three-week strand involving activities of studying truth in media, or examining how advertising has become integrated into journalism or just an overview of how media communicates ideas to viewers.

The more likely choice is to build digital media into social studies classes about American life, political and government institutions or popular culture. In a national study of digital media the California Social Studies Framework was identified as a model. The framework includes a model lesson with the following activities:

"Students evaluate, take, and defend positions on the influence of the media on American political life, in terms of: (1) the meaning and importance of a free and responsible press, (2) the role of electronic, broadcast, print media, and the Internet as means of communication in American politics, (3) how public officials use the media to communicate with the citizenry and to shape public opinion."

Subjects that utilize media literacy standards include:

- Journalism
- English/Language Arts
- Speech/Debate
- Television/Pop culture
- History
- Social studies

One of the most hotly debated questions is; should California schools expand media literacy to a self-contained "strand" of a communications curriculum, perhaps a section of language arts, as England and Australia do, or should media literacy be expanded only as an integrative idea in other content areas as is presently the case? A second question is: should media literacy be expanded to include newer forms of digital communication such as Internet blogs or campaigning through the Internet and if so where in the curriculum should this content strand appear?

Still another approach is to begin a media literacy strand in elementary school grades, with so-called "inoculationist" objectives. The Academy of Pediatrics has taken this view since they point out that by the time a youngster reaches the 8th grade he/she has already watched more than two years of television and used the Internet to communicate with friends. In their view, parents should teach their children about media influences if schools do not. The AAP has always maintained that media influences are responsible for increases in violence and other undesirable behavior such as drinking, smoking or sex. Many educators believe that however worth and noble the intent inoculationist objectives actually demean children and media classes should be more about how media works for good and for bad in the society without fear mongering.

Digital Media Arts -- Mode of Expression Within Visual and Performing Arts

Digital Media Arts are often taught within the art or drama classroom using VAPA standards. When considering digital media as a subset of visual and performing arts, the faculty and administration must confront many issues and barriers that range from finding enough students, working within the confines of sub-standard equipment, instructional time limits, keeping software current, finding qualified teachers, working in a single platform format (MacIntosh or Windows), how to make classes UC and CSU eligible, working with community colleges, adapting VAPA standards, finding appropriate facilities and many others. It is a daunting challenge.

Perhaps an even more important question is in what department does the digital media arts fit? (Please look at the Interview Compendium for more discussion on this topic) While most of the content of these courses are drawn from visual arts standards, the standards themselves generally do not contemplate aesthetics in a digital format. The California State standards conform to the generally accepted format for the arts. That is, within the arts there are four recognized disciplines, visual art, dance, music and theater and within each discipline there are five categories of standards each related to artistic operations, i.e artistic perception, artistic expression, historical and cultural context, aesthetic valuing, and connections, relationships and applications. As with other subjects the arts have standards related to each grade level.

The VAPA Standards includes the following statement about digital media:

"Throughout the standards technology is recognized as an essential tool that enhances learning and expression in all the arts disciplines and provides for additional forms of expression in the digital and electronic media. New technologies for the arts and arts related computer applications and emerging artistic careers are especially vital in California where the demand for individuals with artistic skills and career orientation has been steadily growing in the vast arts and entertainment industry."

A careful examination of the standards reveals that the use of media is seen only as an enhancement of the arts or at best a kind of translated art-form but essentially there are no standards designed from the ground up as digital media standards. For example the High School Theatre Framework uses the following activity:

"3.1 Identify and Compare how film, theatre, video and electronic media productions influence our values and behaviors."

In the Visual Arts Section the electronic arts make an appearance in the "Aesthetic Valuing" section:

"1.6 Compare and contrast similar styles of works of art done in the electronic media with those done with materials traditional used in the visual arts."

These documents tend to utilize the digital media arts only as a counter-point to the arts expressed in more traditional ways, which is not to say that they are deficient per se rather this usage points up the need for separate standards and framework specific to the digital media arts. Digital Media Standards might have sections on aesthetic valuing using the aesthetic principles for digital media, modes of expression unique to digital media and with historic and cultural context of the digital arts themselves.

If a school does happen to offer a sequence of course-work within the arts department(s) that sequence typically would include the following array of class offerings or some combination thereof:

. Introduction to digital media (understanding of media, beginning graphics, basic video package)
. Drawing and digital images
. Digital photography
. Animation I and II
. Digital design
. Digital film/video
. Film Production (treatment, script, story-boards, acting for video, lighting, technical aspects, sound)
. Radio/television broadcasting
. History of Media (art history, social history of media)
. Internships in digital media

Few high schools in California will offer this complete a package of courses. It is more often the case that teachers volunteer to teach a media class because they have an interest in media. In our survey of teachers we found only two teachers whose primary background was in digital media. Of course, many teachers who are currently working in the system today did undergraduate work before 1990 prior to many advances in technology. In 1990 digital media was not a huge major for undergraduates and most of the people who did graduate with a communications or digital art major quickly found work in the entertainment/media industries. They did not tend to enter the classroom.

Our survey also revealed that teachers often invent the courses themselves. It is rare that a school will "build" curriculum in this area absent an interest from a teacher. It is also difficult for teachers to receive professional development in this area. The kind of curriculum building and training that typically comes from structures like the California Arts Project does not offer much help. That is because the vast percentage of effort at the CAP is devoted to the traditional visual and performing arts, areas in which they do a spectacular job. The California Technology Project resources are geared to assist elementary school general credentialed teachers.

Most high school teachers get assistance from their subject matter associations in this case the California Art Educators Association. That organization is just now beginning to build resources in the media. In fact because there is no professional teacher organization dedicated to digital media arts, teachers often find themselves on an island without mentors or clear pathways to success. When they leave their school often the curriculum goes with them. Recently programs such as the Digital Art Studio Partnership Program have been established that fill in the gap and connect digital media teachers with each and with industry resources region by region. However, teachers in this field when asked will almost always identify getting resources and help with curriculum development as the primary obstacle they face.

Another issue is that the curriculum in these classes is often developed from the only software that is available to the teachers. Many schools have only one kind of hardware available to them either MacIntosh or PCs and therefore they have only one series of software programs. This is an added difficulty in standardizing a curriculum because the classes become software specific and the curriculum is often embedded in the capacity of various software. That is, the basic activities in the classroom are those operations the computer is capable of doing.

This points out one of the weaknesses in the American development of digital media. As we noted earlier, industry officials often criticize American students because they are platform literate but cannot perform tasks or operations in a multitude of environments. In the real world of digital media, one program is chosen over another on the basis of its ability to perform various functions and tasks, much as a carpenter would chose a particular saw. There are rare cases in which high schools have capacity in more than one platform.

Another major issue to be faced in this arena is that academic preparation in the visual arts at elementary and middle schools is often not adequate. The problem is complex and requires a great shift in the way in which we view elementary school visual arts education. What a student will need to know at the high school level in order to operate digital media programs which have not yet been invented is difficult to predict. The digital media artist of the future might be any elementary student. It is impossible for students at that age to obtain specific training in technology and even if they did by the time they get to high school whatever technology they used as an elementary student will have become obsolete.

What industry experts point to as a model skill set needed for any high school digital media class even one in a science class, is probably good basic skills in visual art, especially drawing. California schools present tremendous variability in visual art instruction at the primary grade level. Even within the same district, the time on task for visual art varies tremendously from classroom to classroom. Many students receive minimal art instruction at the elementary school level at best. Without consistent sequential art instruction for all students the quality of middle school and high school digital art programs will always be compromised. It is precisely in this area that Asian and European students have the greatest advantage. So, most media teachers and leaders in the field when asked what one thing they would change about the education system almost always say; establish comprehensive arts education throughout the system especially in the visual arts and especially at grades k-6.

In short, the quality of a digital media arts program in high school and college depends upon the quality of the elementary and middle school preparation. If students did not receive a rigorous and complete art education early in their education, it is often too late to remedy shortcomings by the time they get to high school. The tendency for students who have a less developed imaginative sense is to depend upon the computer to supply aesthetic abilities, a task that computers do very badly.

The common misconception in America is that creative jobs are outsourced to other countries because of competitive wage structures. However in several hearings before the California State Legislature industry leaders disputed that myth calling attention to the superior development of artistic skills in non-American students. John Hughes the principal at Rhythm and Hues an Oscar winning California animation studio has testified that for America to be competitive they will need to have a more sophisticated and complete arts education system. It's about the art not the technology, these leaders have said over and over.

These and other problems will need further study and concerted efforts at overcoming the shortcomings before California arts curriculum will be on a par with most European and some Asian nations.

Digital Media Arts-Career Technical education

One of the bright spots for digital media arts in California is a renewed interest and resources given to "Career Tech Education" both at the high school and college level. The Governor and the current legislature both recognize the importance of career tech education and have added resources to build a more comprehensive, coordinated or seamless program at the high school and community college level.

The California Department of Education is about to release the Career Technical Education Framework for California Public schools Grades Seven Through Twelve at the time of the writing of this paper.

This document approaches the digital media arts in the more traditional vocational education manner. This approach takes an applied rather than academic approach to digital media. The framework and the standards in this area develop a curriculum that is specifically geared toward preparing a student to directly enter the workforce in that area. The introduction of the Framework includes a background statement about career tech education. In it the authors of the framework highlight the relationship education has to employment and career preparation. The introduction includes the following comment:

"A review of existing literature highlights the twenty-first century workforce requirements in light of three new challenges:

1. The need for an increase in the quantity and quality of skilled workers;
2. The need for employees who are lifelong learners; and
3. The need for flexible, adaptable education and training systems."
The latest edition of the "Career Technical Education Standards Grades Seven Through Twelve" for the first time includes the digital media arts within the list of 15 industry sectors in California. The industry sector highlighted is Arts, Media and Entertainment. The configuration for the arts includes careers in Media Design Arts, Performing Arts (more traditional array of standards closely associated with VAPA standards) and Production and Managerial Arts.

The description of standards in the new document includes two categories of standards for each area, Foundation Standards and Pathway Standards. The foundation standards are drawn from the 1991 United States Secretary of Labor Report "Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills" or SCANS. These skills include work habits, general basic skills in mathematics or language arts and knowledge of career pathways.

There are eleven different Foundation standards:

1. Academics
2. Communications
3. Career Planning and Management
4. Technology
5. Problem-solving and Critical Thinking
6. Health and Safety
7. Responsibility and Flexibility
8. Ethics and Legal Responsibilities
9. Leadership and Teamwork
10. Technological Skills
11. Demonstration and Application

In addition there are specific Pathway Standards for each sector. Pathway standards "are concise statements that reflect the essential knowledge and skills students are expected to master to be successful in a career pathway." These standards are based upon existing career educational standards, academic content standards that relate to a particular industry and the standards of quality that are established by specific industries.

The inclusion of the arts in this area has not been accomplished without controversy. The more traditional "smokestack" industry educators have complained that the entertainment and media standards are two comprehensive, too big, include too much academic orientation and they have concluded "digital media arts" is not a real industry. Entertainment industry representatives to the standards and framework committees have argued that these are old biases against the arts and do not recognize that change in technology have "industrialized" this sector. Proponents point to the stated needs of business and industry leaders today, the nature of digital media tools, the need for creative workers at entry-level positions as evidence that the digital media arts are indeed an industry sector.

In any case the Career Tech Ed standards and the companion Framework draw from the Visual and Performing Arts Standards but also from Social studies and Language Arts standards. The Media and Design Arts career pathway comprises a large number of industry occupations such as user interface design, digital animation, print design, commercial photography, and cinematography as well as radio and television broadcasting. There is a great deal of overlap with other content areas. For example broadcasting may be found in the Information Technology area as well as in digital media.

It might be helpful here to draw a few distinctions and comparisons between the digital media arts viewed as part of visual and performing arts versus digital media arts as viewed as career tech education.

In general, if the purpose of the class is based upon aesthetic principles it tends to be in the VAPA content area. If the purpose of the class is to communicate non-artistic content then it tends to be in the Career Tech area. Let us stay with Broadcasting versus Video. In Broadcasting, the course objectives are to foster skills and technique that meet (or approach) industry standards generally tied to Language Arts and Journalism. The broadcaster has to use digital media to communicate events or ideas but is not creating aesthetic products. Effectiveness is measured by how much information is clearly presented not how it looks. The goal is not primarily artistic. The viewpoint should be objective. In video production, entertainment, art or documentary film, the artist is designing the content and produces a script with a personal subjective point of view that uses digital video transmission to tell a story or convey a human experience.

There is a whole new field of media criticism that studies this interface because many critics contend that news is being presented with more emotional spin and that the news can have liberal or conservative orientation. Conservative critics point to the Daily Show as an example of news as entertainment that slants the impact of world events. It is certainly true that a visual medium such as television is more prone to imbedded bias than newspapers might have carried in the past. Shading a newscast using fancy graphic elements and selective use of real events can occur because the digital media does have so much inherent power. This is one more area of gray that has been introduced by advanced digital media that needs further study and gives one more argument in favor of having digital media literacy in every school.

The distinction between academic versus vocational is important when it comes to classifying courses as meeting UC or CSU requirements. The inverse is also true. Vocational classes that are too academic may not meet industry production standards. NCLB has exacerbated this issue by requiring very strict rules about what is academic content.

These distinctions are also important in articulating curriculum with community college coursework or areas of study. In today's world the distinction between digital media arts as a high school course and digital media arts as a college level course is generally one of degree rather than kind. Many of the same concepts are taught in Filmmaking at the high school or community college level. One model program at Cleveland High School in Reseda solves the problem by working closely with two community colleges to articulate curriculum in order to avoid overlap and redundancy. At Cleveland High School many students have concurrent enrollment.

Some effective models at the 9-12 grade levels in high school digital media arts that work well with the Career Tech Ed structures include Career Tech Academies, ROP programs and Charter Schools. There is a discussion on those and other structures later in the paper.

Digital Media Arts and Science Education

The fourth and least often observed course-work in digital media arts is in science courses. In some high schools in California a student might use digital media classes to prepare for college in science, mathematics, pre-engineering or computer science. Many new uses of digital media arts are grounded in scientific applications in biology, physics and chemistry. Typically the student receives 2 units for Computer Lab, whereby he or she obtains a basic understanding of digital media applications.

For example, the Fullerton School District under the leadership of Dr. Cameron McCune has developed model curriculum in digital media that helps students acquire knowledge of science.

"Dr. McCune's vision is to engage students through the media they know best... digital media. Through the district's magnet science/technology school as well as one-to-one computer Arts LAB students learn state content standards while developing their media literacy, critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills. The Beckman Science Project sponsored by Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation enables students to experience the wonders of science through an inquiry-centered science curriculum."

Other model programs are developed by non-profit organizations and imported to schools. The Lucas Foundation in its on-line magazine Edutopia describes a project-based curriculum that is centered around digital media but is science- based and is intended to fulfill college preparatory requirements through an integrated curriculum.
v The common thread to these courses is the idea that science is best taught through experiential or constructivist learning. Digital media plays an important role here both in the content of a course and how the course is taught. Digital media then is both a product and a process.

Companies like Autodesk have pioneered the use of digital media in science curricula and many high schools throughout California have courses in environmental science, earth science, biology, physics and chemistry heavily utilizing digital imaging to make the study of science less abstract and more tangible.

The issue here is this: what digital technology class should a student who intends to go to a four-year institution and maybe into post-graduate work in the sciences take in high school to prepare him for those academic pursuits?

Model Programs in Digital Media Arts

This paper is accompanied by a series of interviews with educators regarding the digital media arts. Some interviews are designed to highlight what might be best practices or model programs at the high school level. What is missing from these interviews of course is the fact that most high schools and in fact many school districts have little or no digital media course-work at all. We have not highlighted that fact. For example the Sacramento Sierra DASP region contains 48 high schools in its borders but there are substantial courses in the arts in only sixteen high schools.

The Comprehensive High School

In a comprehensive high school model the digital media arts will most likely be offered within the visual and performing arts department. That is because the digital media arts must either fulfill a college entrance requirement, or a graduation requirement in order to be a useful class for the matriculation of the student.

Generally students will engage the digital media arts either in a thread from a content area such as language arts or social science or they are enrolled in a visual and performing arts based class. Past that simple idea schools might wish to follow one or more of the "best practices" listed below:

1. Digital Media Lab- Making available a digital media/computer lab where students can check out cameras and other equipment to assist them in doing reports or other assignments in social science or English/language arts classes. Getting equipment into the student's hands is essential.

2. Student Mentors -- Many successful programs utilize students who have taken media classes as mentors to younger students who are willing to learn about digital media. Often the mentor can receive service-learning credits for this activity.

3. Professional Development- Most successful programs possess a common thread of offering teachers professional development contracted through colleges or software companies. Many companies offer free yearly update sessions for upgrades and changes in software. The Microsoft Settlement funds are a perfect fit here.

4. Digital Media Literacy- Many successful programs have an introductory course in digital media literacy as part of a language arts curriculum. This may be a quarter course in communications required of the freshman class. These classes include introduction to digital media, basic video production and participation in a project such as building a broadcast or teleplay about an important history or social studies lesson.

5. Sequential Curriculum- A model program will have upper division course sequences in digital media offered in the art department that meet both graduation requirements and college preparatory requirements.

6. Concurrent Enrollment - Model programs also may include the opportunity for students who have already taken introductory classes to take more advanced work at a community college.

7. Community Resources- (see below) Successful model programs will build community relationships with non-profit or digital media companies that allow the student to learn off-campus. The Fresno County model detailed in one of the interviews describes this kind of program. This may also be offered as a summer school intensive experience.

8. Extended School Day- Model programs will also extend the school day in some fashion uses funds from Schools for the 21st Century or Prop 49 funding to extend learning into afternoon hours or Saturday.

9. Use Available Resources- Many programs find help for their teachers encouraging teachers to get help from statewide professional organizations as well as the California Department of Education Career Tech or Visual and Performing Arts specialists who have many ideas for schools to implement.

10. Encourage Students to Show Work -- There are dozens of digital media showcases available to students in California. Students should be encouraged to enter work in competition or post portfolios of their work on YouTube or other venues to gain valuable audience feedback.

As mentioned earlier in this paper, a variety of special programs exist that provide the perfect opportunity for model programs. These include Career Tech Academies, ROCP programs, Magnet programs, Tech Prep or 2+2 programs and Charter Schools.

Career Tech Academies

There may be no better model to deliver an exemplary digital media arts program available to California in high schools than Career Tech Academies. The Department of Education publishes a directory of these academies. That directory lists 39 Career Tech Academies in the Digital Media and Communications field. Communities generally utilize a split schedule for participants. Students take core academic classes with other students but also are available for two to three periods for specialized course-work.

Career Tech Academies have superior structural advantages to offer. First, they are small learning communities and schools within schools at comprehensive high schools. Second, they offer flexibility in scheduling classes that comprehensive schools may find difficult. Third, they have access to a number of private, state and federal government funding sources including federal smaller learning community grants or CDE California Partnership Academy Partnership grants. Fourth, Career Tech Academies build partnerships with industries and offer students real-life experience in their chosen field prior to entering the workforce or going on to college. Fifth, they often employ teachers who are experts in their field because these teachers are able to teach courses that are highly specific and meet rigorous industry standards. Sixth, these programs are able to offer lower class-size, and career counseling generally not available to students in the comprehensive setting.

These academies are somewhat easier to start-up and maintain because they use the facilities of a comprehensive high school. They also offer the ability to have comprehensive students to take advantage of equipment and expertise that might prove cost prohibitive for a normal comprehensive school.

Magnet Programs in Digital Media

There are many examples of magnet programs that offer excellent digital media programs. For example, the Clark Magnet School in Glendale offers four specialized strands in areas including the Digital Arts. The program at Clark is based upon integration of core competencies in the digital arts into all classes offering an innovative and diverse program of project-based thematic material.

Other magnet programs in the Visual and Performing Arts have excellent Digital Media courses. One such example the school for SOTA San Francisco that offers award winning classes in digital media including film/video production and animation.

The value of magnet schools is somewhat similar to Career Academies except that they have additional advantages. These include the ability to offer specialized classes in a more academic setting, having the faculty specifically chosen for their expertise in areas such as digital media arts, and the fact that district level resources can be invested in these schools with the advantage of leveraged cost effectiveness. Magnet programs are often able to offer superior equipment primarily because they draw students from several schools and so are able to concentrate investments in key areas.

ROCP

One model that County Superintendent's of Education should find useful is the ROCP model. Many ROCP programs are run by County Offices of Education because they are regional in nature. The ROCP model offers the advantage that students may take courses at high school during an extended school day period. According to the Career Tech Ed Framework:

"In addition to specific career pathway skills and comprehensive career education, ROCPs also offer employment survival skills in many aspects of the industry sector, as well as placement assistance. Counseling and guidance services, and other critical support services. ROCPs statewide collaborate with business and industry organizations, public and private agencies, and labor associations to develop industry-based curriculum and offer instructional classes and programs to meet local business and industry needs. P.21."

In 2006, the ROCP program was offered an added bonus because the Chancellor's Office of the California Community College System distributed grants to programs in various industries under the auspices of Quick Start Grants. These grants were given to community colleges who had fostered a consortia of industry groups and ROCP programs in various regions of the state. One grant in the area of digital media was given to a consortium of Los Angeles Community College and The Entertainment Economy Institute which attracted more than 30 community partners.

Tech-Prep

According to the CDE new Framework for Career Tech Ed -Tech-Prep programs blend a combination of academic and career goals;

"Tech-Prep is a high school-to-college/apprenticeship educational strategy that creates a practical connection between academic experience and career goals, particularly in technical fields." page 25.

To date, many of these programs have been organized from the community colleges downward into secondary school. Three excellent programs using the Tech-Prep model in the digital media arts are offered by Hartnell College, Gavilan College and College of the Redwoods. (See blue text below)

Gavilan Tech-Prep Description:

The Gavilan College Tech Prep Consortium serves seven member high schools in an area that is changing from small truck farms to high tech electronic firms, wood and metal fabrication companies, food processors, and wine production. Gavilan College is located in the city of Gilroy and has a relatively small enrollment of about 4500 students. The region is primarily rural and suburban areas at the edge of the high tech industry surround the region.

The vast majority of the consortium's Tech Prep grant goes directly to the seven partnership high schools, distributed by way of mini-grants with the amounts predetermined in proportion to the size of the enrollment. The consortium works closely with the local ROP. For the last three years the focus of the Tech Prep program has been Digital Media.

Gavilan's focus has been to develop a Digital Media Pathway from the ground up over the last three years. This particular pathway was chosen at Gavilan in response to approval that Cisco, a large technology company, as well as other technology companies, had received by the county to build a new site within Gavilan's service area and the resulting demand to provide qualified employees from the local population base. To achieve a state of the art Digital Media Pathway, Gavilan hired a highly qualified Digital Media instructor with experience building this type of program.

Strengths:

. Successful involvement of all of the High Schools in the Tech Prep consortium through the mini-grants. The grants are automatically provided to each high school in their consortium based on the population size of the High School. Each High School has a site coordinator who receives a stipend for working as the liaison between the High Schools and Gavilan, including receiving the requests for use of the mini-grant monies each year.

. Articulation agreements providing a written commitment to a program designed to provide students with non-duplicative sequence of progressive achievement leading to degrees or certificates in Tech Prep programs.

Successful outreach by Gavilan's graphic design instructors to middle school and high school students.

Community Resources

The digital media arts play a prominent role in the social well-being and economic vibrancy of California. There are many community organizations that partner with schools to train youth in digital media skills development. We cannot list all of them but I have chosen a few to highlight.

Bay Area Video Coalition

The Bay Area Video Coalition is California's premier all-purpose digital media arts non-profit. According to their website BAVC (pronounced Bay-vac) offers the following programs:

"Bay Area Video Coalition, or BAVC is a nonprofit media arts center. BAVC was launched in 1976 as a way to make emerging video technology accessible to independent media makers. Today, with that mission still at its core, BAVC has evolved into a media arts "teaching hospital." BAVC will:

. Provide video editing suites and a number of media services at subsidized rates to independent projects

. Train hundreds of industry professionals each year in our workshops

. Teach low-income youth to create media

. Host networking events and offer discounts to BAVC members

. Provide fiscal sponsorship to noncommercial video projects

. Preserve aging audiotape and videotape with significant cultural and artistic value

. Train hundreds of industry professionals each year in our workshops

. Train other nonprofits how to use media arts technology for their own constituents

. Give awards, residences, and project completion grants to media arts

. Create educational DVD's

Digital Arts Studio Partnership

The Digital Art Studio Partnership (DASP) was created by legislation that passed the legislature in 2002 (SB 1937). DASP is a statewide partnership that includes schools, colleges, non-profits, youth organizations and industry partners to offer a wide variety of "intermediary" services. DASP operates through five local partners, non-profit consortia operating in five regions of the state including the Bay area, Sacramento/Sierra, Los Angles, Fresno/Central Valley and the Santa Barbara/Coast.

The DASP model proposes that industry support a variety of digital media arts projects both in-school and within the community for youth age 14-23. DASP engages model programs on a number of levels including setting up professional development seminars, expanding digital programs to new schools through buddy programs and connecting schools programs to community colleges and four-year institutions through voluntary articulation agreements. Over $1 million dollars worth of software has been distributed by the Sacramento/Sierra region through the offices of partner organization the Tower of Youth (TOY). This software has been distributed to sixteen area partner schools in the last ten years. DASP regional organizations also run showcase events like the Teen Digital Reel or North American Youth Film Festival that attracts media products from high schools within the region and nationally.

The Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena)

The Armory Center for the Arts is a community arts center that offers innovative approaches to creating, exploring, and presenting the visual arts to students of all ages. In addition to providing an outlet for contemporary art exhibitions and performances, the Armory offers studio art classes and a variety of educational outreach programs to schools and in the community. The Armory has developed many classes, exhibitions and partnerships in the digital media arts and run programs at schools through an artist-in-residence program but also use their space as a school site itself for the Armory Art High for students ages 11-18.

Numerous other programs in the digital media arts cannot be described due to limited space and scope of this paper. Three programs, Youth Media of Oakland, The California State Summer School for the Arts and the California Youth Democracy Alliance are described in interviews in the interview compendium.

What Can County Offices of Education Do?

The County Superintendent for Education is in an excellent position to advocate for expansion of all the visual and performing arts and most especially for the digital media art. They can also exert leadership in structuring partnerships with community colleges and helping to provide professional development opportunities for teachers that individual schools cannot offer.

The partial list following describes some activities the County Office might engage in to support digital media arts in schools:

1. Investigate the potential of starting a ROPC program in their county in the digital media arts.

2. Work with community colleges in their county to forge articulation agreements with high schools, and hold college "digital media career" fairs for students.

3. Become active members in the Digital Art Studio Partnership program.

4. Invite digital media industry partners to work in schools, mentor teachers, develop internships and hold career fairs.

5. Offer continuing education and professional development for digital media teachers in their counties.

6. Advocate within their organizations and at the state level for additional funding for digital media funding.

7. Use the California County Superintendent's Educational Service Association (CCSESA) administrative leadership regions to develop leadership in digital media arts.

8. Sponsor and support research on the educational benefits of digital media arts.

9. Establish a digital media arts coordinator in every County.

Summary Conclusions

The importance of digital media arts in the world is ascending as the world increasingly depends upon a knowledge-based economy. The increased capacity of the digital media arts to promote rich communication of meaning and metaphor has made digital connectedness part of everyday life. The rapidity of change has brought great advances but increased stress. The medium is so accessible and powerful that it has caused changes in behavior. It has changed how we perceive the world, ascertain new knowledge, entertain ourselves and influenced our earning capabilities.

Schools in California must respond to the challenges brought by these changes. It is imperative that digital media not be relegated to a role as an outside influence on students with few or any positive attributes. Schools can develop robust digital curricula that advance digital literacy and improve communication skills for both academic and vocational purposes. The digital media is also central to the responsibilities school have in graduating active citizens fully capable of participating in democracy.

County Offices of Education have various assets available to improve the standing of digital media arts in schools and propel student learning. There are dozens of structural options that schools can employ to expand their digital media programs. In the future, the digital media arts will be the primary means of continuing education thereby encouraging and perpetuating the life-long learning process. The grounding students receive in K-12 education will be an asset for long-term learning.

For all of those reasons schools should start preparations today to build a dynamic digital media arts program that speaks to the needs of their community, the economic health of California and the well being of democratic institutions.

Contact:

Paul Minicucci
CA Digital Arts Studio Partnership
3711 Dell Road, Carmichael. CA 95608
email: Artswarrior@aol.com
916/968-8095