Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Re: [Yasmin_discussions] What does STEAM have to do with it

Roger:

I tend to agree with Ruth on this, but I would since I am primarily a computer
scientist. So, I do exactly what Ruth is suggesting: looking to the arts for ways
to attract (not "trap") the majority of students (non-CS majors) into understanding
and appreciating CS and mathematics concepts. As to the last point, I think
teenagers are fully equipped to decide any way that they like (I think I may be
paraphrasing David Bowie's "Changes" here). People will tend toward one thing
or another - some with different degrees and percentages. I am not primarily
out to create art for its own sake but I could not do without art since it informs
my philosophy.
This semester, I am teaching students systems theoretic concepts (state, event,
time, feedback, queuing, etc) but through rich-media as afforded by Max/Msp. I
don't know anyone else doing this and we need more of this kind of thing in
a STEM field such as Computer Science. For me, it is mastery of the
mental abstractions that is the final goal, but this cannot be done without
the arts (e.g., the instances which make, and not only reinforce, the abstraction).
We must "see" and "feel" the abstraction everywhere for the abstraction to be
mastered.

-p



I realize that we should not force ourselves into boxes but there are some th
On Sep 9, 2014, at 4:42 PM, roger malina <rmalina@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> Ruth
> thanks for your comment- you say:
>
> In STEaM, the arts serve as an on-ramp for rigorous science
> and math content learned through engineering design. So in my humble
> opinion, that is what STEaM has to do with it.
>
> this reminds me
>
> A colleague of mine once mis-spoke and said- yes we can use the
> arts to "trap" students to get them to go into science and engineering=
> the 'on-ramp'metaphor connects to the frequent metaphor of the
> STEM pipeline as if people are cargo getting into a pipe= mind you
> he was an engineer very happy of the poor public image of engineers
>
> it seems to me that STEM to STEAM is also a whole other dimension-
> so much of art and culture now uses STEM for the purposes of making
> amazing new kinds of art and culture- from the creative industries,
> to entertainment to the digital arts and art and biology and art and
> the environment= and arts and space exploration ( see the work of
> the mexican space art collective and the nano satellites they are building)
>
> for me part of the STEAM argument is that we want to create amazing
> art and cutlrre that is truly of our times, uses the useful technologies
> for art making and cultural expression
>
> for teenagers- isnt it counterproductive for us to force them into
> STEM or non STEM
>
> roger malina
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Paul Fishwick, PhD
Chair, ACM SIGSIM
Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology
and Professor of Computer Science
Director, Creative Automata Laboratory
The University of Texas at Dallas
Arts & Technology
800 West Campbell Road, AT10
Richardson, TX 75080-3021
Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick
Blog: creative-automata.com

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SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
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