What do the Arts have to do with STEM?

by Kathy Belcher

Manufacturing and STEM Cluster Specialist

 

Many educators and professionals advocate including the Arts with the integrated disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Including the Arts will lead to the proposed change to STEAM. Whether STEM or STEAM, the major emphasis is integration of the curricula, in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, rather than curricula taught as five isolated disciplines.

Including the Arts is a natural component that enhances and supports STEM curricula:

·         Arts education is a key to creativity

·         Creativity is an essential component of and spurs innovation

·         Innovation is necessary to create new products and industries

·         New industries, with their jobs, are the basis of future economic well-being (White)

An interesting example of the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and the Arts was recently featured in the Arts & Life section of The Dallas Morning News. The article highlights Kevin Page, a character actor in Robocop, and artist who created an innovative technology to assist him with pointillism painting. This is a painting technique in which many small dots of color are applied to the canvas to form an image. Georges Seurat, who is considered to be the father of pointillism, spent two years creating the famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte shown in the picture above. The painting is approximately 7-by-10-foot in size.

In only six weeks, Kevin Page created Sunday Afternoon: A New Pointillist Interpretation, his 8-by-6-foot interpretation of Seurat’s masterpiece.  How is this possible?  Page has a couple of patents pending on the robotic technology he used to apply the tiny dots of color to his canvas. The software-driven robotic paint tool, with a video camera mounted near the tool, allowed him to create in weeks the same effect that Seurat spent two years creating. 

Page reflects, “Science is the why of things, technology is the how of things, art is the meaning of things”. His occupation as an actor and artist was the creative stimulus to innovate robotic technology that assisted him in painting his interpretation of Seurat’s masterpiece in a fraction of the time. This is an excellent example of what the Arts have to do with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. So, how can CTE teachers integrate the Arts in STEM and other disciplines to stimulate creativity and innovation needed to ensure new products, new industries, and a growing economy?

References:

Granberry, M. (2013, January 28). Character actor adds robotic painting tool to his resume: POINT MAN. The Dallas Morning News, p. E2, E6. 

White, H. (2010). Why STEAM? Retrieved from STEAM Website http://steam-notstem.com/

Information Overload

Book Review by
Lynne Cagle Cox

Spira, J. B. (2011). Information overload: How too much information is hazardous to your organization. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 
Information overload is defined by Spira as a general "inability to manage the flow of information so that people can easily find what they are looking for without being overwhelmed" (p. 6). In 2010, according to Spira, information overload cost the U.S. economy almost $1 trillion and at least 28 billion productivity hours. In an era when nearly 80 million people (over 40% of the workforce) in our country are considered knowledge workers employed specifically in the acquisition, manipulation, and production of knowledge, the impact of information overload the American economy is simply staggering. 

Information has exploded at an unprecedented rate in the last five years with the shift to a 24-hour/7-day news cycle and the unprecedented growth of national annual Internet traffic from 10 exabytes in 2008 to a predicted 767 exabytes in 2014. From relentless email, instant messaging, text messages, and social media exchanges to redundant software, inefficient search tools, and endless required meetings, information overload is taxing the individual modern knowledge worker as well.

Information overload: How too much information is hazardous to your organization begins with an introduction that chronicles the history of information since the development of clay tablets as communication tools in 4000BC to the modern era of electronic tablets and cloud storage options. The book itself is divided into two parts: Part I – How We Got Here and Part II – Where We Are and What We Can Do. Topics include technology/software developments and generational differences that have contributed to the information glut we currently face, aspects/components of information overload, research-based attempts to manage information on an organizational level, and general recommendations for minimizing the impact of overload on individuals and organizations.