Applying digital media to art and art education ... some thoughts

Digital Media Projects with Purpose
            How do we combine the social aspect of new media with art to create something powerful and purposeful? Minddrive.org is an after school program helping at risk students achieve. Students built an electric car powered by social media. By converting tweets, shares, and likes into wattage, the car had enough fuel power to make a trip to Washington, DC and gain support for their program and students (http://youtu.be/zHj7vusmtCQ).
            Australia’s Benevolent Society in collaboration with Designworks created an interactive tunnel of LED lights. As people shared their hopes for the future through a website or Twitter using #hopesforchange the more dynamic the lighting effects would be come. The hopes were displayed on social media feeds, promoting positive change (http://www.designworks.com.au/tunnel-of-hope-at-vivid-sydney.html).
            Lastly, the transformation of Bejing’s Water Cube into public art serves as a mood ring of China’s social media. By collecting data on emoticons used in the Chinese version of Twitter, the Water Cube is lit in different colors with varying tones and movement to reflect the overall mood of the day (http://youtu.be/9RS92_vnYpw).

Projects for the Classroom
            Using these projects as inspiration, a very practical application would be curating something through the use of hashtags with Twitter or Instagram. What issues are important to your students? Ask them. By using a hashtag and allowing students to tweet for a certain period of time about issues that are important to them or on their minds, you could gather data on how to proceed next with a project. Giving students a true voice and an active role in a democratic microcosm of the classroom will be the first step in the project itself. As students participate in the evolution of the project, they will experience firsthand collaboration as it occurs in real time. Will experts need to be called in to help a project come to fruition? What are practical applications of this project? What do the students hope to accomplish? While admittedly, this is very open-ended, the educator would be tasked with helping to guide the project to be manageable and productive. 
            Another use of hashtags would be to connect two classrooms from very different parts of the world, or even two students. Almost as an Instagram pen pal, two students from other ends of the country or world could visually document their typical day as a student, sharing a unique hashtag, they could create a visual diary comparing and contrasting their world. This could build compassion for others, by connecting students and helping them to see commonalities as well as differences. As a culmination of the project, the instructor could work with each student to compile key images and build a website dedicated to the undertaking as a class.