678 Free Art History Books
A couple of weeks ago I shared 60,000+ images of art and artifacts to download. Those images may be useful in art history lessons. What could also be helpful in creating art history lessons is The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s library of 678 art history books online. All of the books can be read online or […]
60,000+ Images of Art and Artifacts to Download and Re-use for Free
The Museum of New Zealand offers more than 60,000 images of art and artifacts to download and re-use for free. The images are a mix of public domain images and images labeled with a Creative Commons license. The museum makes it easy to determine how an image is licensed. To determine the licensing of an […]
More “Color Our Collections” Collections
Back in December I shared the Smithsonian Learning Lab’s Color Our Collections collection. That’s a collection of coloring pages based on portraits in the National Portrait Gallery. You can download those coloring pages for free. This morning through an Open Culture post I learned there are nearly 100 more museums and libraries that have similar […]
1759 Art Lesson Plans
The playroom in our house has lots of Crayola products in it because my daughters love to make pictures to hang on our refrigerator and cards to give to friends and family. And like most kids they don’t always remember to put their boxes of crayons and markers away. While picking up one of their […]
Great Art Explained
Despite the efforts of my friend Maggie, I don’t always understand what makes one work of art great and a similar-looking one fit for display in a Hilton Garden Inn. I thought about that last weekend when I came across a YouTube channel called Great Art Explained. The channel seems to have been made for […]
An Encyclopedia of Comic Artists
Peanuts drawn by Charles Schulz, Calvin and Hobbes drawn by Bill Watterson, and The Family Circus drawn by Bil Keane were the comics that I was drawn to as a kid. By the time I became a high school teacher my students didn’t recognize any of those comics and I didn’t know the ones that they […]
Best of 2022 So Far – Smithsonian Canvas
I’m taking the rest of the week off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far. This week the Smithsonian Learning Lab released a new tool that could be very helpful to history and art teachers. The tool is simply called Canvas (no connection to the […]
A Google Maps and Earth Activity for Art Classes
When I conduct workshops on Google Maps and Google Earth I always point out that the uses for those tools extend beyond the realm of geography and history. One example of using Google Maps and Earth outside of the typical geography setting is using Google Maps and Earth to have students place art and artists on an interactive […]
Pi Day is Coming!
Pi Day (March 14th or 3.14) is next week. If you’re looking for some Pi Day activities to do or some videos to share about pi, take a look at this list of resources that I’ve compiled over the years. Numberphile has a few good videos about pi and Pi Day. Pi with real pies is a […]
A New Smithsonian Learning Lab Tool for History and Art Teachers
This week the Smithsonian Learning Lab released a new tool that could be very helpful to history and art teachers. The tool is simply called Canvas (no connection to the LMS of the same name). Smithsonian Learning Lab’s Canvas tool lets you build colllections of Smithsonian digitized artifacts and arrange the display of those artifacts […]
How to Share Google Arts & Culture Experiences in Google Classroom
Last week Google Arts & Culture published a great online exhibit titled Walk the Great Wall. It’s a fantastic colleciton of Street View imagery and multimedia stories about the Great Wall of China. As I wrote last week, Walk the Great Wall includes detailed imagery of the bricks of the wall, short lessons about the […]
How to Create Comics – A Four-Part MOMA Series
From telling personal stories to summarizing historical events to illustrating creating writing over the years I’ve shared a bunch of ideas for using comics in classrooms. And I’ve shared a bunch of tools for creating comics (resources linked at the bottom of this post). While I enjoy the process of creating comics, I am not […]
Five Ideas for Using Google Earth & Maps for More Than Social Studies Lessons
Later this week I’m conducting an online professional development workshop about Google Earth and Maps. One of my goals for the workshop is to help participants develop ideas for using Google Earth and Google Maps for more than just geography and history lessons. To that end I’ve put together a short list of ideas and […]
Explore the Royal Academy of Arts in Google’s Arts & Culture Apps
Google’s Arts & Culture site and corresponding apps make it possible for students of all ages to virtually explore thousands of fascinating landmarks and works of art. This morning Google announced a new collection with the Arts & Culture site. That collection features the Royal Academy of Arts. The highlight of the Royal Academy of […]
Gallery AR – Augmented Reality Art on Your Walls
Gallery AR is a free iPad app and free iPhone app that anyone can use to view classic works of art in augmented reality. The app features art work that was digitized by The Art Institute of Chicago. Gallery AR digitally displays works of art on your walls when you point your phone or iPad […]
Create Online Art Galleries With Wakelet, Padlet, and Google Sites
In last week’s episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I answered a question from a reader who was looking for a way for students to be able to submit examples of their artwork and have them displayed in a public gallery. The suggestion that I made on the podcast was to try using Wakelet […]
Nearly 900 Free Art History Books – And an Art Lesson
Around this time five years ago I discovered that the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts free online art history texts. A recent Tweet from Open Culture reminded me of that collection. Today, I revisited that collection and discovered that it has expanded to 569 volumes. All of the books can be read online or downloaded […]
13 Great Drawing Lessons for Students
ShowMe is a popular app for creating whiteboard style instructional videos on iPads, Android tablets, and Chromebooks. ShowMe users have the option to publish their videos for inclusion in a public gallery of instructional videos. It was in that gallery that I found thirteen videos published by an art teacher named Nikkie Milner. The topics […]
A Google Maps and Earth Activity for Art Classes
When I conduct workshops on Google Maps and Google Earth I always point out that the uses for those tools extend beyond the realm of geography and history. One example of using Google Maps and Earth outside of the typical geography setting is using Google Maps and Earth to have students place art and artists on an interactive […]
Monet Was Here – Take a Google Earth Tour of Monet’s Works
Monet Was Here is a new exhibit on Google Arts & Culture. The exhibit coincides with the opening of a new Monet exhibit at the National Gallery London. The Monet Was Here online exhibit features works that are on display at National Gallery London and other museums around the world. Monet Was Here includes a […]
How to Create Animations With ABCya Animate
ABCya Animate is a free tool that students can use to create animations. It can be a great tool for elementary school and middle school students to use to create animations to use to tell a short story. For example, in my demonstration video the animation I started to make could be used as part […]
1766 Free Lesson Plans for Art Teachers
My refrigerator is quickly getting covered with the art my toddler makes with her Crayola crayons and construction paper. Looking at one of her boxes of crayons over the weekend I was reminded of Crayola’s huge collection of lesson plans. Crayola’s lesson plan library contains 1766 free lesson plans. There are lesson plans for every […]
X Degrees of Separation – The Connections Between Artworks
The big news over the last few days about Google’s Arts & Culture app has focused on people using the app to find their doppelgangers in the museum collections digitized by Google. While it is a neat feature, there are other Google Arts & Culture experiments worth trying. One of those is called X Degrees […]
Doodle 4 Google is Back for 2018
Google’s annual drawing contest is back again for 2018. This year’s Doodle 4 Google theme is inspiration. The contest is open to students in grades K through 12 in the United States. To enter the contest students should create a drawing that represents something that inspires them. The drawing, of course, must include the word […]
Google Arts and Culture: Art Collection
This is the second post in a series about Google Arts and Culture. In the first post, we took a look at the history of the project. Today we are going to explore some of the ways to access the artists and galleries. To access the menu of options you will need to click on the “hotdog” […]
Crayola for Educators
Crayola for Educators is a website that contains all sorts of resources for teachers. There is an online store that has every Crayola product you can imagine. The store is searchable by product, type, age, and price. The site contains links to free printable coloring pages as well as videos that show different techniques. The Educators menu […]
An Interactive Display of the Declaration of Independence
The Digital Declaration of Independence is a fantastic website on which students can learn about the Declaration of Independence and the men who signed it. The Digital Declaration of Independence is an interactive display of John Trumbull’s painting Declaration of Independence, a scan of the text of the Declaration of Independence, and a map of […]
Mapping Local Art – A Google Maps and Earth Activity
Winslow Homer [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. Whenever I conduct workshops on Google Maps and Google Earth I always point out that there are uses for those tools beyond the realm of geography and history. A recent, popular, example of this is found in the Google Arts & Culture Institute’s Street View imagery of museums. While the Google […]
One Image Inspires a Lesson
This is a guest post from Rushton Hurley. Rushton is the founder of Next Vista for Learning, a great place to find and share educational videos. Imagine starting class without saying anything. The students look at you, awaiting something. You wait long enough to catch their attention, and then project this image in front of […]
View 3500+ Art Exhibitions Online
Thanks to Open Culture I have just learned about the Museum of Modern Art’s new website that showcases artwork from the more than 3500 exhibitions that have been held at MoMA since its founding in 1929. MoMA’s Exhibition History site lets you browse through the highlights of every exhibition that has ever been on display […]
Smarthistory Offers a Crash Course in Art History
Smarthistory offers is a free online alternative to expensive art history textbooks. Smarthistory features more than just images of notable works of art. The combination of video lessons, text articles, and audio lessons about eras and themes in art history is what makes Smarthistory a valuable resource. Students can browse all of the resources of Smarthistory by […]