• News
• Reviews
• In Print

• "The physical art portfolio case is old hat compared to ArtSite, software that can create a digital art collection including museum works alongside students' own artwork and writings. Perfect for the K-12 crowd, ArtSite produces electronic pages that complement everything from stick figures to Impressionist masterpieces."
-Scholastic Administrator Magazine

The Art of the Web
Online art galleries help districts foster visual art programs.

• ...The Louvre, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Gallery of Art also have similar online exhibitions. Still other art education Web technologies have been developed, such as (can be found at) ArtSiteNet... The software can be purchased for classroom or district use and features a large database of art and classroom project ideas, along with tools to create online student galleries and portfolios as part of a district Web site.

... A recent study by the National School Board Association and Americans for the Arts found that, among many other benefits, students involved in rigorous arts education were four times more likely to be recognized for academic excellence in other areas.
-District Administrator Magazine

To read the whole article, please go to the online version of District Administrator, a magazine for K-12 education leaders.

• ArtSite: Sharing Art and Ideas
by Laurie Greenly
School Arts Magazine

Years of teaching led me to wonder how I could enhance learning through a simple, fully customizable computer program that both teachers and students could use to encourage creative discovery and at the same time build a knowledge base of art from all over the world. I envisioned even a single classroom computer or school or district network becoming an exciting ongoing resource through which teachers and students could access art from numerous museums and also the art and writing of their peers - a program whose content could grow and change as years pass.

The Internet offers a wealth of art images. Think back just a few years. Unless you were able to travel extensively, it would have been difficult to view multiple works by an artist who interested you, since they would be widely dispersed.

Planning ArtSite
My plan was to create an intranet program, which could be customized for any teaching environment. I wanted to design a program that made extensive use of low cost Internet resources. The software would give teachers and students the ability to easily access, select, and organize images and descriptions from print media and from museum or gallery web sites. They could build their own art collections emphasizing their choice of subjects, styles, cultures, and historical interests. Students could contribute to a group portfolio displaying their own art and writing. All of the pages would be easily searched, saved, and printed for sharing and grading.

When I began work, choosing the navigational topics was easy. The “Museum” section would be for teachers to select and display art and descriptions they have found on museum web sites or written themselves. Each Museum page would include a group of studio or art history project suggestions to encourage self-guided learning related to the image and description shown. In the “Gallery” section students themselves become curators by exploring museum collections, choosing art, and commenting on their choices. In the “Studio” section students could add their own art and writing for display in the “Portfolio” section. A key concern was to provide a password-protected “Teachers Resource” section where teachers could customize program content as well as manage student records. The whole project would be called “ArtSite”, a word many European art web sites use instead of “web site”.

Providing useful program content and designing a simple and functional interface were important. To start off, the program would be loaded with images and descriptions from a number of Internet museum web sites in 11 collection categories: American Painting before 1945, European Painting before 1900, Artists' Biographies, Works on Paper, Modern Sculpture and Design, Modern Painting, Photography, Egyptian Art, Greek and Roman Art, Asian Art, and Art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The art had to provide a rich learning environment so that students of varied cultural backgrounds would be motivated to contribute their own selections and research.

Making ArtSite Work
The backbone of ArtSite is a database. Students and teachers register to create a user name and password. Logging in personalizes the program by directing students and teachers to their own individual records. Simple forms and buttons are used to create Museum, Gallery and Portfolio pages. Teachers can easily add, delete, and modify all aspects of the program including student registration records. Each section of ArtSite has its own search criteria. The Museum is searched by collection name, the Gallery can be searched by collection name, class name, and/or students name, and the Portfolio can be searched by class name, student’s name, teacher’s name, grade level, media, and/or academic year. The pre-loaded Museum is best suited for grades 6 through college, however teachers can easily re-write the content to motivate younger students.

The fair use clause of the copyright law allows images and text to be downloaded by teachers and students for educational use. As the developer, I had to approach museums for permission to use their images and text for what some thought of as a commercial use. This proved to be a long and complicated task since I had proposed a use they had never addressed before. The permissions ranged from simple and free of charge to lengthy contracts and relatively high fees. Some works needed additional permission from the artist’s estates. I am grateful for the help of those museums who gave me permission to include the web page images and descriptions from their collections. In the end, a unique group of 64 Museum pages were added to ArtSite. I referred to my own teaching experience, the descriptions provided by the museums, and additional research to include at least 2 or 3 project suggestions on each page - a total of 168 research and studio projects ideas. Teachers can modify or expand the initial museum selection with their own choice of art, descriptions, and project suggestions to match their individual teaching style.

ArtSearch
The last piece of the puzzle was to add the "ArtSearch" section, a teacher customized Internet search engine loaded with fifty web links offering good quality art images, descriptions, and/or activities. If an Internet connection is available, ArtSearch opens the selected web site in a second browser window for easy access to enrichment and research.

The project evolved over a period of more than a year. As new ideas were considered, the program continued to improve. When ArtSite was introduced into a few schools, teachers offered useful suggestions which have been incorporated into the newest version.

Postscript
ArtSite continues to evolve. Since this article was published, we have added over 50 new new museum pages and plan to keep adding more. Some of the new pages are part of the new "Artists Biographies" museum collection. We have also spruced up the design of the program and upgraded all the how-to movies and teacher's guide.

Thanks to teacher feedback, we have added the ArtBlog so that students can form a discussion by commenting on other students Gallery pages. Teachers pre-approve all the comments and can turn the ArtBlog on or off for each class.

For print images or additional information, please contact us.

Copyright © Leaning Post Productions. All rights reserved. Home