Caves to Cathedrals on Flickr

Did you know that you do not need PowerPoint to make presentations, and that, in fact, better options may exist? I have tried the MDID image viewer, but I needed somewhere to put the translations of inscriptions, so I did not consider it a useful option.

But valid options exist. Slide Rocket looks amazing, but is not yet available to the public. 280 Slides looks less amazing, but is currently available.

Both of these programs make slideshows much easier to share, as well as facilitate greater mobility (no memory stick to forget).

Yesterday evening, I came across this post on 21st Century Teaching & Learning, a blog about “how to effectively integrate web 2.0 tools into instruction”. The blogger, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, teaches art history and, at least from my perspective, stands at the cutting edge of digital learning.

In this post, Dr. Pacansky-Brock shares a slideshow that she presented as part of a series on on-line teaching. I was most struck by slides 5 and 6 showing a traditional syllabus and a web-inspired syllabus. Although the more traditional among us may abhor such seeming frivolity or even pandering, looking at these two versions of a syllabus, I realized that the form of the traditional syllabus reflects the limitations of the technology of a different age. Why shouldn’t we take advantage of our technological capabilities in order to make syllabi, first, more visually appealing, and second, more interactive?

In this post, she also shares a VoiceThread from one of her classes (you may also discover other uses to which she has put VoiceThread). VoiceThread is not new to on-line educators, but it is new to me. VoiceThread amazes me, and I easily see its potential for the traditional classroom. The greatest struggle, I find, is to create autonomous learners. I ask students to spend time looking closely at works of art in order to prepare for class, but they seldom understand what this means. I also encourage them to form study groups to force them to articulate what they see; this they rarely do. The next time that I teach, I will use VoiceThread to guide the students preparation for class and to facilitate a conversation among the students about objects and monuments and thereby to train them to look at and talk about art. In turn, such preparation would permit greater depth and more meaningful discussion during class time.

Thanks to the Digital Research Tools Wiki, I have discovered two on-line tools for creating timelines. While Simile requires facility with HTML, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University offers a more accessible Timeline Builder.

I usually encourage students to make timelines, in order to manage the periods and works of art, but they seldom do. An on-line program would make this task much more enticing. To promote active learning, the students should really do the work, but I think I will make my own next time as well!

My course used Gardner’s Art through the Ages, 12th edition, but I will also consult the 13th edition, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: A Global History (with ArtStudy Printed Access Card and Timeline) (Gardner’s Art Through the Ages), for any improvements.

I will also refer to Marilyn Stokstad’s Art History, Combined (3rd Edition) and Laura Schneider Adams’ Art across Time 3/e Hardcover, as well as Hugh Honour and John Fleming’s The Visual Arts: A History (Combined) (7th Edition).

Just as I will critique my syllabus, I will also critique these surveys. 

Here I offer to you the syllabus that I created when I taught ‘Caves to Cathedrals’ in the fall of 2007.   Please be cautioned – this particular class met four days each week, for a total of 55 class meetings over the course of the semester.  Most courses would not meet this often or this much.   We covered a lot of material and had time to go into some depth for each and every period studied.

My guiding principle as I developed this syllabus was to look at works of art that date to the same historical moment in close proximity to one another.  As anyone familiar with the standard survey texts knows, most do not facilitate such an approach.  I therefore needed to cut and paste the pages, virtually-speaking. 

My postings to this blog will describe how I taught this syllabus.  As I go along, I will offer some critique of the syllabus and ideas on how to improve it.