Learning@Whitney

At MW2007 staff from the Whitney Museum of American Art examined the development and integration of the Collect Art tool into the Learning@Whitney web-site design from a practical, pedagogical and technical perspective.

Chuck Barger from Interactive Knowledge, Inc (USA) who designed the site with the Whitney staff gave us a brief introduction to the technical and navigation side of the site. I was impressed with what I saw and took the time to explore the site myself. The site is divided into Teachers, Kids and Teens. You can pour through their catalogue of works, zooming in to very high resolution. We were told that there were some copyright issues with the site, as I suspected.

As well as quality images the site has content to match - there are guidelines for teachers to follow. Not only does each artwork provide teachers with plenty of curriculum links, but also ideas for projects and llinks to further resources. Of course not all teachers need this guidance, but it does provide the site with mass appeal.

Examples of what teachers put together showed diverse ways of using the website, from printouts and collages to electronic presentations. I'm looking forward to visiting the Whitney and picking their brains a little further.