Art Sharing on the World Wide Web

Sometimes the limitations of space, size, fragility of media make it difficult to display kids artwork at school. Sending artwork home with kids can also be risky. It's hard to know if it ever makes it. In a choice-based art classroom, I think that it is especially important that families support and encourage their children in their creative pursuits. This year I have decided to use a website called ARTSONIA as a way to display and share artwork with families. The teacher can take photos or make scans of work as the students complete it. I have instructed my students to complete artist statements complete with titles so that I can enter those in along with their images. Granted, this process can be very time-consuming, but so far I can see that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks as students seem excited to participate. As an added incentive, parents can purchase products with their child's artwork printed on it and 20% of the profits go back to the school in the form of gift cards. Not bad!

 



 

My favorite part of the year is after all of the initial instructions and classroom guidelines. After they finally get the hang of the class order and my expectations of their behavior, I finally release them to their own ideas. What a joy to see the variety of interests, invented techniques, and ideas.