Smarthistory: The Blog

Khan Academy and the Google Art Project

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:01:00

You may have been wondering what Smarthistory has been up to since we joined Khan Academy in October. We’ve had to keep this hush-hush…but we can now announce that we have contributed more than 100 videos to the unbelievably great, second iteration of the Google Art Project.

We’ve made 90 Khan Academy videos expressly for version 2, which launched today, April 3rd, at the Musée d’Orsay, the Art Institute of Chicago, and museums in many other countries. We’ve also contributed 26 pre-existing videos to the Art Project. Finally, we worked closely with Sandbox Studios to create an engaging introduction to looking at art. Our videos can be seen in the education section (the playlist is embedded at the bottom of the first page) and on the specific object “detail” pages.

We jumped at this opportunity because the Art Project has such enormous educational potential. It is critical to gather works of art from different institutions to tell the nuanced stories of art history. The Art Project brings together works of art from 151 museums in 40 countries within a cohesive visual environment. The high resolution images, powerful zoom function, “Museum View” (an interior version of “Street View”) and the ability to collect and annotate images, are all features that are ideal for teaching and learning.

Museums of art safeguard, make accessible, and interpret our shared cultural history even as they help to define the civic aspirations of their communities. Museums have always been defined by place, although traveling exhibitions and, more recently, museum websites have helped to “jail break” the art. André Malraux famously identified this new ability to see across institutional collections in his essay, the “Museum Without Walls.”

For a “Museum Without Walls” is coming into being, and…it will carry infinitely farther that revelation of the world of art…which the “real” museums offer us within their walls.

——André Malraux, The Voices of Silence

As always, all Smarthistory.khanacademy.org content is free and open. If you’re an art historian, museum educator, or curator, and you’re interested in contributing to the work we’re doing, please contact us.

We especially want to thank Colleen Brogan and Rachel Ropeik for coming through in a pinch and for their uncanny ability to make complex ideas clear.

The University of Illinois, Springfield, is running a Massively Open Online Course – a MOOC (organized by Ray Schroeder). If you’ve never heard of a MOOC, read Marc Parry’s article in the Wired Campus blog. This MOOC is  “devoted to examining the state of online education and where e-learning is heading.”

What I’ve been wondering for a while (and even commented on a blog post on elearnspace, but my comment wasn’t posted), is why the the presenters are so overwhelmingly male.

Here’s the list:

Ray Schroeder (UIS) Moderator
Bruce Chaloux (SREB)
Bob Hansen (UPCEA)
Witt Salley (MoDLA)
Karen Swan (UIS) Moderator
Phil Ice (APUS)
Ben Arbaugh (UWOSH)
Michael Cheney (UIS) Moderator
Alexandra Pickett (SUNY)
Bethany Bovard (NMSU)
Nic Bongers (Oakland U.)
Glenda Morgan (UIUC) Moderator
David Middleton (Seton Hall U.)
Patricia McGee (U. Texas San Antonio)
Cable Green (Creative Commons)
Larry Ragan (PSU World Campus)
Jeff Newell (IL Com College Board)
Shari McCurdy Smith (UIS) Moderator
George Siemens (Athabasca)
Jason Rhode (NIU)
Shari McCurdy Smith (UIS) Moderator
Karen Vignare (MSU)
Linda C. Smith (UIUC)
Curt Bonk (IU)
Bruce Chaloux (SREB)
Seb Schmoller (ALT UK)

By my count, that’s 7 women to 18 men.

Geez and I thought education was woman’s work…

Today marks the mid-point of our crowdsourcing experiment in fundraising on Kickstarter and we thought that was a good opportunity for an update.

We are hearing from new teachers nearly every week who are adopting Smarthistory.org and in the past 31 days (January 13 to February 12), our site has been visited 81,684 times by people in 154 countries. This map shows the percentage of new visitors around the world during the past month (darker = a higher percentage). Free and open education works thanks to our generous supporters.

Google Analytics map showing the percentage of new visitors to Smarthistory.org 1/13/11-2/12/11

As of a few minutes ago, 197 amazing people have pledged to Smarthistory and with 22 days to go, we only need to raise an additional $1,028 to make our goal. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform, so this project is driving us a little crazy, and we look forward to breathing again when we cross the goal threshold.

The Smarthistory.org Kickstarter campaign launched one week ago and we wanted to offer an update to our amazing contributors and a little kick for our supporters who have not yet given.

First, a huge THANK YOU to all that share our vision for open educational resources (OERs) and for Smarthistory. We see a very bright future for education where problems with access diminish thanks to extremely high quality OERs. In our own field, we see a future where art museums, libraries, colleges and universities no longer produce content primarily for their own students and visitors but instead develop systems where resources are pooled to create more comprehensive resources for a much larger audience of learners.

In the meantime there is our little project, Smarthistory. We are already reaching across institutional boundaries to create historical narratives and hope the crowd-sourced funding model that Kickstarter has pioneered will be the engine for our growth. Maybe, if we are successful, other OERs will take this path.

Our focus now has to be meeting our $10,000 goal since Kickstarter is an all or nothing structure. We have had an amazing week and have already raised $4,455 toward our goal, but if we only raise, for example $9,000, the project doesn’t fund and Smarthistory get nothing.

Most of those reading this have already given and so this is preaching to the choir, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t end with an appeal, please encourage your friends and colleagues to watch our video and support the free and open education that Smarthistory.org offers. Thank you.