Art Educators Web 2.0


The digital technology used on this web-quest, titled "Street to Studio" about the life and art of Jean-Michel Basquiat really evokes a sense of play and exploration.  The first tab allows you to view some of his paintings related to defined themes that shaped his work, within each of these slide of images, you can move the image around to explore it even further while it provided some factual posts over the image to describe the importance of one feature or important aspect.  The second tab allows the user to follow a timeline of the artist's life and understand, even more, how significant events in his life shaped his art, his choices, and his contributions.  The third tab gives the user an opportunity to bring these elements of the artists life and the themes he based his work off of together into a work of art of their own following a similar style.  Its gives a box with very simple painting options and colors similarto Microsoft Paint.

I don't think I would change how the technology is used in this case to further education but I would definitely make things more accessible and have fewer routes to pages such as more images of art based on the certain themes from the first page, or I would find a way to make the information appear as you mouse over the image instead of needing to click on words to make the facts appear and disappear.

My Idea:
I want to create a web quest where students are asked to curate their own exhibition of art from various contemporary artists that relate to one another and then give the show a title and provide a very brief idea of the type of work presented there.  After the work is selected, maybe 6-8 images of at least 3 artists, the student will be asked to create a work of art of their own that also fits into the show and applies to the theme they created.

Jennifer (our host teacher) expressed that the students could be exposed more to the work of contemporary artists.  By giving the show a theme and a title, the student has to understand the themes used by the artist to bring together different images so they gain an understanding of the artists and their work and exposes them to different names in the art community.