William: I am 25 years old; hardly a dinosaur. If we are truly in the same club, then please read my post again and understand what I said. My point was that education, while it does have to adapt to some degree to changing times, SHOULD NOT BE ABOUT SATISFYING PREEXISTING STUDENT NOTIONS. Students raised in the "digital age" expect school to be about whiz-bang computer stuff. Teachers who uncritically deliver that are not teaching, they are satisfying consumer demand. If the course content or philosophy relates to issues and techniques brought up by digital, then by all means, do it. But saying "oh, yeah, they'll love that, give 'em digital" is not good pedagogy, it's treating them like mall shoppers. There are fundamental concepts of photography that have nothing to do with digital anything, and in my estimation, the point of a good education is to (if you'll pardon the corporate phrase) get the students to "think outside the box." Right now, young people think in the digital box. They have been taught by advertising to accept the premise that anything digital is automatically better, whether or not the quality of the image, or the knowledge gained, proves to be inferior. Yes, there's a place for digital, it's a reality in today's world, and will become more so. But there is also a place for teaching young people that intellectual and artistic progress is not tied to the hottest technology. You know, silly me, but I think they ought to be aware of the fact that making an image is possible without (gasp) semiconductors!! I hasten to add that the vast majority of the world's images are still caught on film, and that the majority of photography's lifespan has been spent in film use. No, this does not mean ignore digital. What it does mean is don't cave in to the praise-the-new at all costs mentality that our consumer culture preaches. Community colleges and vo-tech schools teach this because their job - their only job - is to get kids jobs. Real education enriches you with history, context, and the means by which to discriminate between fashion/advertising/consumer trends and well thought out decisions that engage all levels of craft and art rather than the almighty dollar alone. In short: a presentation that foregrounded the ways in which digital technology offers a way to extend creativity (perhaps showing an artist using the medium in unconventional, thought-provoking ways) would be great. A presentation that simply uses digital "visual aids" to engage students because you don't give them enough credit to be fascinated by anything they haven't seen advertised is bullshit, and sells their minds short. You make the call.
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) If I can be long winded, another thing that makes me a bit nervous about digital as a teaching tool is the expendable, erasable, limitless nature of it. I don't think that good art, or well-reasoned papers, come from learning situtations that cushion each fall. For example, my photographic mentor, Joel Sternfeld, told us a story about how he went across the country when shooting for the books "American Prospect," and "On This Site," he had such a low budget that he limited himself to one negative per day, no exceptions. Joel shoots exclusively on 8x10. The result of this limitation was an attention to detail you rarely see in someone who's taught on 36 exposures or limitless memory cards. His work, I believe, speaks for this better than I can. The point I'm trying to make is that students don't need "Oh, I can just hit delete and do it again," they need to be forced to contemplate why they do what they do and how they get there. Once you've done that, go ahead, expand. But while you're "apprenticing," it shouldn't be so easy. I took Joel's lessons to heart, and started doing things shooting only black and white for certain projects that I would have preferred color for, or going out with my all manual Crown Graphic and only one loaded holder. Poverty took care of the rest, imposing its own limits
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