Teaching the Digital Generation

Students today live in digital worlds. Social connections and mini-soap operas play out on MySpace and FaceBook. Many of them have weblogs and websites. Because of their facility in these environments, I wanted to bring as much of it into Digital Photography as possible.

In ART 207 at Robert Morris College during the Winter Quarter, students shot all of their photographs using digital cameras. They selected some to upload to their Flickr accounts, and from there chose a total of 20 minimum to post to their photo blogs on Live Journal. To access the student blogs, see the links in the right hand column on my blog at www.jessicabeagan.blogspot.com. They also wrote reviews of two different photographers' work, and wrote four movie reviews on films we watched in class.

In teaching I have found that students learn well by watching films. We are an increasingly tele-visual culture, and the primary way in which information is mediated these days is on screen: television, movie, computer, iPod, cell phone, etc. Thus, it makes sense that these same tools be employed in the classroom to keep students engaged. In fact, this idea is the basis for my doctoral work in Adult Education at Northern Illinois University. Among the films in class were "The True Meaning of Pictures" about Shelby Lee Adams' work in Appalachia, "24 Hours on Craig's List" about the virtual community that has mushroomed online, and "A Scanner Darkly", a dystopian futuristic view of the near future told in the visual language of Adobe Illustrator or a graphic novel.

The final film we watched is the 2004 Academy Award winning documentary film "Born into Brothels." I chose this film for two reasons. First, the film is about photography. Inspired during the course of pursuing her own body of work, New York-based photographer Zana Briski began a photography class for the children of prostitutes in the red light district in North Calcutta. The children begin to document and discuss the world around them through their pictures, many of which are extraordinary. Their talent combined with Briski's unwavering dedication to helping her students begins to open doors for these children to attend school and show their photography around the world.

The second and most important reason I chose this film is that I want my students to be exposed to issues and ideas and lives OUTSIDE their own familiar context. There is an unfortunate isolationism in American culture, which is part geopolitical and part hubris. Students rarely have the opportunity to peer into windows on other walks of life. In this case, they saw the harsh reality of the lives of these children, many of whom have to vacate their family's one room and play on the roof while their mother is "working." At the same time, there is a thread of tension that runs through the film as it becomes evident that many of these girl-children will be compelled to "join the line" with their mothers once they come of age.

The students also were able to witness the institutionalized prejudice against these children in India. As the children of sex-workers, their options are few and the are obstacles many because society looks down on them. Briski's fight to get simple identification documents so that the children could attend school --- something we take for granted --- is well-documented in the film.

For more information on "Born into Brothels" and the foundation Kids with Cameras, please visit www.kids-with-cameras.org