Abstract: Through a series of Grades 5 through 9 case studies at Willow Park School in Calgary, Canada, Lori Shyba reflects on the perils and promises of immersing the computer as a creative partner in Math, Science, Humanities, and History course curriculum.
The term “Old School” has entered our lexicon as meaning an environment populated with a class of people committed to traditional values and practices. In education, this meant teachers being the form and content experts and children trusting in the wisdom of the sages to help them discover meaning. What happens when the children become masters of the technological form and teachers have to accommodate and assimilate to a new reality of student asserting themselves as experts? In this poster, Lori Shyba reflects on new media and videogame design project case studies that were implemented into in Science, Math, and the Humanities curriculum at Willow Park Arts-Based Learning school in Calgary, Canada.
The finding of this new media and videogame design work are:

• The students’ interactions with technological environments are leading them to construct new forms of knowledge.
• That computational technology can influence students’ social and moral reasoning about social relationships, including the student/teacher relationship.
• That new media and videogame design and creation can generate new forms of personal and collaborative expression.
• That due to students and teachers collaborating on these projects, mutual learning and creativity is emerging.

Key to the success of this project was faith in the process of collaborative discovery on the part of the teachers who, for the most part, parked their insecurities and diffidence about pervasive technology at the door. It was not easy for them to acclaim students as masters of the technological form, especially in the traditional hegemony of education.

Bio and Contact: Lori Shyba, MFA, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Commuications and Multimedia at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and formerly artist-in-residence at Willow Park Arts-Based School in Calgary, Alberta through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Her e-mail lorene.shyba@gmail.com and web site is www.loreneshyba.ca