The goal for using technology in visual arts education is to provide all students with additional ways in which to communicate about and within the arts, to create artworks and express ideas artistically, and to understand and appreciate the arts. The challenge to visual arts educators is to offer students opportunities to use combinations of old and contemporary technologies for creative expression. Electronic technologies facilitate learning about the historical and cultural context and development of the visual arts. The technologies may also assist students in learning about issues related to criticism and valuation of visual arts.

Advances in electronic technologies, such as laser discs, hypercard, interactive computer-videos, art and design software, desktop publishing, and visual databased, are now affordable and available for use in schools. CD-ROMs and the information highway provide burgeoning access not only to technical information but also to visual arts information, exhibitions, museum collections, multimedia presentatins, communication, journal critiques, and reviews that suggest strategies for the use of the visual arts in the classroom.

Using technology for assessment is one of the most valuable applications for visual arts teachers. Recording students' work on videotape permits students to evaluate and reflect on their own work. Video portfolios can be economically duplicated, transferred to CD-ROM, stored, and shared with others. In the process students develop a sense of history, an awareness of a common past, and a sense of accomplishment.

The implications of technology for visual arts education are both challenging and profound: challenging because technology needs to support student learning and enhance the fundamental knowledge and skills of students in one or more forms of the visual arts; profound because technology provides visual arts educators with an immense amount of information and resources. Access to visual databases in museums, such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., provides teachers with instant access to images by master artists. Students also have the opportunity to enhance their learning through their own research in these databases.

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