Digital Technology in the Visual Arts Classroom: An [Un]Easy Partnership

Abstract

This article scrutinizes the dichotomy of the uneasy and easy partnerships that exist between digital technology and visual arts education. The claim that by putting computers into schools “we have bought ‘one half of a product’… we’ve bought the infrastructure and the equipment but we haven’t bought the educational piece” (McKenzie, 1999 as cited in Joyce, 2005, p. 52) is considered. Despite the ease with which many art educators have embraced technologies and tools for artistic practice in their classrooms in the past, maximizing the Internet and information communications technology usage in the visual arts classroom has been somewhat problematic. This issue and the largely absent “educational piece” of the product, that is, art made for the Internet and purpose built for Internet-as-gallery, are addressed.