About this Project
The art museum world is changing and evolving in order to keep up with the digital age. Many art museums now can live as virtual spaces on the Internet via various online platforms such as Google Art Project. Through this platform, art museums have broadened their communities and have the capability to connect with them all over the world. Within this capstone research project, I propose to explore how art museum educators can move beyond the museum’s physical space and take advantage of the virtual museum, through Google Art Project. I will implement this project with one of The Phillips Collection partnership school, The Inspired Teaching School in Washington D.C. I will be creating an arts-integrated lesson plan that will culminate in two visits to the school. The first will be a virtual visit to The Phillips Collection, the second will be a follow-up visit to the classroom. This project will result in an arts-integrated classroom lesson for third and fourth graders following D.C. common core science standards.
Project Links
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Purpose I investigated how students explore The Phillips Collection digitally, when given the opportunity. I introduced the students to the innovative platform Google Art Project as a means for the students to visit the museum virtually. Through the use of the Google Art Project platform as well as the Visual Thinking Strategies (Housen & Yenawine, 2009) method I created two lessons that fostered the students’ critical thinking skills through arts-integrated learning. I implemented these lessons using the Prism.K12 method. This method is the primary teaching strategy used at The Phillips Collection along with the Visual Thinking Strategies.
The Visual Thinking Strategies (Housen & Yenawine, 2009) were implemented during the two visits in order to discover and investigate the artworks at hand. This method has consistently been shown to increase a student’s critical thinking skills (Housen & Yenawine, 2009). I discussed and collaborated with the Inspired Teaching School’s (ITS) teachers as well as my colleagues and created two dynamic in-classroom lessons during a professional development meeting. After my two in-classroom visits I asked the teachers from the Inspired Teaching School to complete a survey via Survey Monkey regarding their experience with the project. I will presented a hard copy survey to the students involved in this study where they circled words and emoticons as well as sketched some pictures that best described their experience at the museum virtually (see Appendix C). The product of this study is an arts-integrated Prism.K12 lesson plan designed and intended for the third and fourth graders of the Inspired Teaching School, located in Washington, D.C. These in-classroom lessons focused on the District of Columbia’s common core science standards for their particular grade level. Another result of this capstone project is a guide on how to use Google Art Project to reinforce a museum’s collection and the community it serves. These lessons will assist other art educators and museum educators in implementing learning experiences through platforms like the Google Art Project in tandem with classroom connections, for potential museum visits. SignificanceArt museums are significant educational institutions. The art museums of the world are broadening their audiences beyond their local communities. Currently, art museums are becoming active participants in the digital world by creating virtual galleries and museums of their collections and exhibitions. Museums are creating interactive applications to be downloaded on one’s smartphone. They are also pushing their visitors to use social media outlets in order to share their experiences of the museum to the world (Bautista 2014 & Bernstein, 2011).
This project is significant because it has the possibility to foster a new generation of museumgoers. This project will give students the opportunity to visit museums around the world with ease through the devices. As a result, perhaps more students, families, and people will visit these important cultural institutions from all over the world and gain the opportunity to learn in them at their own discretion. |