Abstract:

As the meanings of art, artist, and artwork have changed by the digital technologies, art education has also needed to transform its nature. In-service and pre-service art teachers inevitably need to integrate themselves into the digital world. Because of their decreasing costs and increasing usage, mobile devices are reshaping individuals’ ways of learning with their technical and physical structures that enable them to use anytime and anywhere. Tablet computers in specific, have the potential of creating a huge impact in art education, with their applications designed in compliance with the environments that use the active participation as a main feature of internet, as well as digital art or new learning-teaching methods. They are able to lead art students to interact visual information in terms of accessing, using, producing, re-producing, storing, exhibiting and sharing it. However, the results of a research in Turkey focused on the mobile technology usage of pre-service art teachers shows that the Turkish art education undergraduate students see mobile devices as an assistant tool just to make internet research most of the time. Their opinions prove that they are not aware of the artistic or educational potentials of mobile technologies despite they are commonly using these devices in their daily lives. There is a need to design tablet art applications in Turkish, taking into consideration the Turkish art educational facilities or resources. In this context, an exemplary tablet application intended to design as a part of a more comprehensive research project. The intended project planned to conduct in design-based research and aimed to develop principles for the application in the context of interactive design, artistic and art educational purposes. This study covers the first phase of the project that aims to reveal the current usage, and the potentials of tablet computers in art education. The subject will examined through literature review, focusing on the examples of in-service art teachers’ practices using tablets in the art classroom, in different countries. Then the chosen art applications, mostly in free purchase for the ease of access, will examined on the way of identifying design criteria. This initial literature review expected to give a point of view for the development of design principles for tablet art applications, which will serve as both a personal and a collaborative learning environment.

Keywords:

Mobile learning, Art education, Tablet art application.