Creating a Virtual Art Museum

Along with classroom teacher, I am also one of the technology coordinators at our school. It sounds better than it is. Usually, it means fixing wires, turning on someone’s printer when they think it is just broken, or making sure the laptop cart is all charged up. Glory work, really.

I would like to find ways to help other teachers in my building think more about technology. Time does not always allow it. I have gone into other classrooms to show teachers how to do podcasting (for poetry), and had my sixth graders work as mentors with third graders on creating pictures in MS Paint.

This past week, I have been working as the technology person for a wonderful project that was envisioned by our librarian and art teacher. It fuses history, art, research skills and technology together. It is the We The People Virtual Art Museum and it is done by a group of fifth graders. The two teachers received some grants to get prints of famous artwork (found at Picturing America website, which is run by the National Endowment for the Humanities). The students researched the art and then recorded (on my little voice recorder) a guided tour of the print.

Next Friday, when the fifth grade hold its annual Living HistoryMuseum, we are going to set up a series of laptop computers with headphones, and allow visitors to “tour” the virtual art museum. We decided to make little movies with the podcasts (using Photostory3), and now we are working on developing a website resource. What I like is that this kind of project has many layers to it and hats off to my colleagues.

Here is one sample. This is about The Ladder for Booker T. Washington by Martin Puryear:

When the website is completed, you can be sure that I will share it out.Peace (in exploration of art across the curriculum),
Kevin