You may have seen (or tried) the latest trend of finding the piece of artwork that looks most like your selfie. This is a fun use of the Google Arts & Culture app/website, but there is so much more you can do with Google Arts & Culture in the classroom!
1. Take a Virtual Field Trip-The "Explore" menu through Google Arts & Culture gives the user an opportunity to tour famous sites, landmarks, and museums using Street View (which teachers may be familiar with if they've ever used Google Maps or Google Earth). In a few short minutes, I was able to travel from the Great Pyramid of Giza to the Colosseum in Rome to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY. Teachers could use this feature to connect to ideas in subjects across the curriculum like locations in a novel, studies of foreign languages/countries, and landmarks from history.
2. Look Closely-When viewing works of art (which includes paintings, photos of historical events and people, and places), the user is able to zoom in on features down to the brush stroke. This could be a great way to compare and contrast artists' styles, to look for examples of symmetry, or to look at details of life in the 19th century. There are lots of options for use of this feature!
3. Explore History-The information in Google Arts & Culture seems to be endless-photos, artwork, historic people, places, and events, museums, and more. There is a search feature if the user knows exactly what he/she is looking for. Additionally, the home page includes a highlights section, which includes items like surprising facts, spotlight works, people born on the current day, and events that happened on the current day in history.
4. Find Your Painting Doppelgänger-I had to try out the trend of using the app to find a work of art that looks like me. My result came back at a 65% match, but I've seen some people post matches that could be twins! Scrolling down in the app gives the user the opportunity to upload a selfie. Google scans the image and searches its database for several matches. This could create some great discussion the the classroom, but it is probably more trouble than it's worth. If you have a minute and are checking out the app, try it just for fun! Note: The app is a little different than the website, and you're only able to use the "selfie" function through the app.
How could you use Google Arts and Culture in your classroom?
I'm a little worried about the art feature, because I've seen several articles where it's picked some "not-quite-school-appropriate" art, and I worry that we could run into issues. Have you seen anything about filtering?
ReplyDeleteI can see why this could be concerning, but I have not seen or found any current options for filtering. If I needed to have students utilize the search feature, I would make sure the search terms were very specific i.e. the exact name of a work of art or historical figure. Google Arts & Culture could be a resource that the teacher uses and displays during a lesson so the students aren't doing any searching at all. I guess it just depends on how this tool would best fit the needs of the classroom!
DeleteThis is great, especially for kids who will never get a chance to go to a museum. I'm sure they won't come across anything more inappropriate on the app than they would if they actually went to a museum, but if they did...you have a great 'teaching moment'. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteJen-I agree...we have quite a few students in our area who will probably never make it to visit a large city, let alone a museum. Google Arts & Culture could be a great learning opportunity for them!
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