Art & Technology: Creating an Assignment at the Met Across Space & Time

These days articles are published everyday about the disadvantages of technology in education. Will Richardson recently tweeted about his frustration that the media always make the argument “black and white, rather than right time, right place.”

I cannot argue with the fact that technology has made my life easier (even if it’s only made it easier to live a life where I’m a slave to technology).

I have a class of 9th graders headed to the Metropolitan Museum today. In preparation for the trip I was able to go on the Met’s website, examine the items on display in the Greek & Roman galleries, then easily take these kinds of screen shots to put into their assignment sheets:

Using the Met’s website made life much easier for me. First I could make the assignment more exciting for the students by assigning them each a unique artifact instead of assigning everyone the same artifact or asking them to choose an artifact (and hope that it fits the criteria I’m looking for). Second, I was able to preview the collection and choose the most relevant pieces without having to travel into the city and spend the day looking at the Met (some might consider this a disadvantage), and third, the Met not only tells you exactly what’s on view in the galleries, but also in which gallery a visitor can find the piece, so my kids won’t be aimlessly wandering the galleries without a clue where to look. And to think I did this all from the comfort of my living room at midnight last night.

Now my kids have something of a scavenger hunt in the Met, with an interesting assignment attached: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JvMPrHLm1thb5HSq_z7m3wo0FFhiTtuihiptrbCwL9Q/edit?hl=en_US

Thanks to the Met for their great website!