Back on the Net

Students have been working online for several assignments lately which have turned out very well. One assignment to share involves the city of Chattanooga's voting on Public Art. Chattanooga is an arts-filled city, and has a strong history of supporting public art for its citizens and visitors. Our local museum, the Hunter Museum of American Art, has a Website which is hosting the free public voting for the latest series of artworks. Artwork is being installed at key points around the city like the zoo and the parks downtown.

The Hunter Museum's voting site, found here, shows the three proposed works of art, including information about the artist and the specific work proposed, as well as other examples of the artists' work. Anyone is free to visit the site, learn more about the art, and make a selection on which they think is the best choice for that spot in Chattanooga. The campaign has gone on several months now, with my students excitedly wondering which piece has won at the end of each voting period. 

I am now incorporating the wiki into these types of online assignments. Instead of just having the students write their responses in the sketchbooks for review, students are creating their own wiki pages to respond to the artwork and propose their own choices for the city's Public Art. So, instead of their ideas sitting quietly unseen by all but me in their sketchbooks, or instead of them freaking out about having to talk in front of class and saying less than they are thinking, we both get what we want. Students share ideas and discuss, and they communicate using  the tools they are more comfortable with. The wiki serves me again as an interactive platform for the students to propose ideas and make comments when discussing works of art.

See student responses (organized in folders by block) and online assignments on the wiki here.