Congratulations to all the amazing art education blogs that made it to the Edublog finals!  Let’s show our support and put art education at the top!  It only takes 2 seconds to vote so be sure to do so in each category, EVERYDAY! Based on the extremely close vote tallies from last year . . . every vote counts!

• Best group blog – The Teaching Palette
• Best ed tech / resource sharing blog 2011 - The Art Teacher’s Guide to the Internet
• Best teacher blog 2011 - Brunswick Acres Art Blog
• Best educational use of a wiki 2011- Fugleflicks
• Best use of audio/visual/podcast – Dryden Art
• Best class blog – Art of Apex High School
• Best new blog – Dryden Art by Tricia Fuglestad
• Best educational use of a social network 2011 - Art Education 2.0
• Best twitter hashtag 2011 - #artsed
• Best free web tool – Artsonia

Create a detail detective game. Use the amazing detail found using the zoom feature and take few quick screen-shots. Have your students match your detail to the correct location on the artwork. Learn more in this earlier post.

Integrate into other online media. The first of the three “Bedroom” paintings created by Vincent VanGogh is featured in Google Art Project.  See an example on how these Bedroom paintings are used in a Livebinder format.

Create an art scavenger hunt. Present a series of clues about a work of art featured by Google Art Project. Here’s an example (see if you can figure it out): Start at the Google Art Project home page. Clue 1. Painting is located in Spain. Clue 2. Created in a Cubist art style. Clue 3. Contains a musical instrument. Clue 4. Uses a neutral color scheme. Clue 5. Signed artwork in the lower left corner  (Click here for the answer.)

Explore Perspective. The zoom feature enables you to reach deep into a picture and see items otherwise missed. Does the artwork follow the rules of perspective? A few examples include Young Knight in a Landscape and Mary Enthroned with the Child.

Discuss copyright and fair use.  Older students can tackle copyright and fair use issues in our digital culture. Here are some resources to get you started: Columbia University, BlackBook, Curator the Museum Journal, The Official Google Blog.

Use Google Maps to Explore Google Art. See a thumbnail view the exact location of each museum in Google Maps while exploring the artwork room by room.

Compare and Contrast. Easily toggle between works or art using the collections feature. Compare by genre, media, or artist.

Integrate writing. Ask students to reflect on how viewing artwork in the context of a museum or with increased detail impacts their opinions about a work of art. Students can write out ideas and share with the class or use a Google Form for idea collection.  See an earlier post on how to create your own Google Form.

Create a Picture Book. Get inspired by Istvan Banyai’s picture book Zoom. Create your own picture book by printing detail images in a series that zooms out from an unexpected perspective. You can click here to see an example of an art collection zooming out. You can also create a group problem solving  and communication activity by giving each student one picture. Then have students try to organize images from most zoomed in to most zoomed out by using only words to describe their picture. Click here for activity details and an example using the Zoom books.

How do you plan to use Google Art Project with your students? Share your ideas in the comments area below.

Let’s add to the list! What art blogs are must-reads for you?

Thank you to all our loyal readers and guest authors as we continue to advocate for quality art education.

• I had never heard about Merlot (peer reviewed online resource of teaching and learning materials). A quick search on Merlot turned up this awesome Cave of Lascaux interactive explorer.
• LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the American Visionary Art Museum. Although I was not allowed to photograph inside, I spent about 20 minutes outside admiring the sculptural forms.

Once I finally made it inside, the theme of the museum became very clear by the words and messages incorporated into the art.  Watch this entertaining video featuring the art of Chris Robert-Antieau to get a feel for what the museum is about.

My favorite Visionary Museum message through art: “Some stare though me and refuse to see that we are different branches of the same tree.”
-Athlon Clark

• Took the plane home with the Artsonia guys and learned some top secret plans to make Artsonia even better.  (Pressure’s on guys!)
• Learned about some great web resources from Jean King.  Special needs: I Can’t Draw Syndrome and ArtPromote.   Character development: Powerful Projects.
• Inspired by Samantha Melvin’s teaching empathy through art curriculum.
• Discovered a timeline of Carrie Mae Weems life!
• Make your presentations Sticky by Craig Roland was a crowd favorite.
• Saw a great video presentation on Universal Design Learning by Kathy Rulien-Bareis.  Her methods are very useful for creating an adaptive classroom addressing special needs.  Watch her video segments one, two, three, and four.
• I got a chance to present an art experience that that incorporated science, writing, social/emotional development, and technology into the art curriculum.

Tons of additional great resources from conference presenters can be found online.
Did you attend NAEA Conference this year?  What did you discover?

Today we discovered that Scholastic Instructor named The Teaching Palette one of the Top 20 Teacher Blogs!  A huge thank you to all our readers who have inspired us to keep writing about issues that impact the art education field!

Other blogs listed among the Top 20:

• Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog
• TEACHFOR.US
• Docere Est Discere
• Needleworks Pictures
• Integrating Tech
• Digital Anthology
• Science Fix
• Principals Page
• A Year of Reading
• Youth Voices
• It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages
• Regurgitated Alpha Bits
• Techno Tuesday
• Classroom solutions
• Just a Substitute Teacher
• Hooda Math Blog
• Learning is Messy
• The Jose Vilson
• Tales From the School Bus

If you’re looking for the image editing power of Photoshop or Illustrator without the hefty price tag you may want to consider trying the Aviary Suite.  It’s a free web 2.0 technology with a pro version available for $24.99 a year. Aviary is not only an image editing tool but it’s also a visual social network.

Users maintain a profile, contacts, favorites, access to chat boards, tutorials and more. Images created in the Aviary Suite can be shared with the community or kept private in a user account, and then saved in a variety of formats or downloaded to your computer.

Plus, users can import images from a URL, Aviary Library, Flickr, Picasa or Facebook directly into any of Aviary’s five programs – Phoenix, Falcon, Peacock, Toucan and Raven.

Phoenix does image editing and has tools like layers, masks, effects, undo history, and more. Peacock is what Aviary calls their “visual laboratory”. It features tools like generators, effects and controllers. Toucan is their color swatches and palettes. It features many of the usual color palette tools but what really was interesting to me was their color deficiency preview tool. It allows you to choose from a list of color vision deficiencies and see how someone who is color blind would distinguish your color palette. It would be a great way to teach students how other people see the world. Toucan is a simple tool, but in conjunction with the other programs in the Aviary Suite you can create some amazing images. Raven is their vector editor program and the first of its kind on the web.  It allows you not only to create complex vector art but to carefully scale and create logos, clip-art, large print ready graphics, and t-shirt and clothing designs.

The newest program is an image markup tool called Falcon. It allows you to capture images from your desktop or a web page and edit them in your browser. It is similar to Skitch or Jing but with additional capabilities since it can be used in conjunction with Aviary’s other programs. Just install Talon, a Firefox extension for Aviary, and you can quickly annotate, mark, crop and resize your captured images. Or you can transfer the images to any of the other Aviary programs for more in-depth editing. Falcon would be a great tool to have students critique an image of their own, a classmates or from a pool of stock photos.

If you teach a computer graphics program at a middle or high school and are looking for an exceptional resource or additional tools to extend beyond the classroom lab, Aviary might be a solution for your program.  Students don’t have to stop creating once they leave the lab since they can log on and design anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Below are two videos featuring Aviary’s Raven and Falcon programs.

(Trouble viewing this video? Try this link.)

(Trouble viewing this video? Try this link.)

We were excited to view The Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing at the educator open house. The new edition designed by Renzo Piano makes the Art Institute of Chicago the second largest art museum in the United States. The layout and design of the new galleries that now house the museums 20th and 21st century art collections are impressive but, as educators we were truly amazed by the new Ryan Education Center.

The new eduction space boasts five classrooms, three huge studios, the new Crown Family Education Center and the new David and Marilyn Fatt Vitale Family Orientation Room. Not only are these educational spaces truly state of the art but, have one of the most sought after views in the city as they look onto Millennium Park. The image above was taken on my phone in one of the new studios.

Along with the fantastic educational space , The Art Institute previewed new interactive software and resources featuring pieces from their collections.  This July they lunched that material online in an interactive website for kids called the Curious Corner. The site is geared more towards the elementary age child but, also has resources for educators and parents. Visitors can choose form three different categories of interactive games such as Story Time, Match Up and Play with Art. The Match up section is one of our favorites it lets you match texture, shape or sound. Below is a short clip of some of the interactive games children can explore on the site.

(Trouble viewing this video? Try this link.)

Below is a couple of ideas for utilizing the Curious Corner in the classroom.

• Use the “Story Time” games as an introduction to teaching children about the messages, stories and meaning behind many pieces of art.
• Use the “Match Up” sound game as an individual activity for analyzing the parts of a work of art. As a student matches each sound to different area of a piece of art they will notice new details and better understand what is happening in the image.
• Use the Cornell Box section of the “Play with Art” game to have students create a still life that is meaningful to themselves. Print the completed computer still life images and have students use the grid drawing processes to enlarge the image. Choose a media such as colored pencil or chalk for students to add detail to their personal still life drawings.
• Use the “Match Up” game as an introduction or extension activity for concepts like texture and shape.

Share how you could utilize this site in your classroom in the comments section below?

Here are a few of the findings in Visual Arts:

• “Students eligible for National School Lunch Program have lower average responding score in visual arts than those who were not eligible. There is a 29-point score gap between the groups.”
• “Eighth-graders in private schools have higher average creating task score in visual arts than students in public schools.”

Additional insight into the study can be found in a New York Times article.

Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, perhaps summed it up best:

“This Arts Report Card should challenge all of us to make K-12 arts programs more available to America’s children and youth. Such programs not only engage students’ creativity and academic commitment today, but they uniquely equip them for future success and fulfillment. We can and should do better for America’s students.”

This study reminded me of my unofficial job as an advocate for the arts. The TeacherTube video below makes a great case for supporting the arts in every community.
Arts advocacy articles you may find useful:
Age of the Right Brain
Visual Interaction with Art Boosts Academic Achievement
Why Arts Education is Crucial, and Who’s Doing It Best
Arts Appear to Play a Role in Brain Development
Three Rs Are Essential, but Don’t Forget the A – the Arts
Technology Makes Art Education a Bigger Draw

Update 6/17/09: NAEA, Maximizing The Nation’s Arts Report Card - Great review of 2008 Arts Report Card with key findings and links to news press articles.