Google Art Project: Virtual Art Museums

What it is: Google never stops amazing me, this time they are amazing me in the form of a partnership with art museums around the world.  Art Project is an incredible collaborative project that is powered by Google to bring art museums into your classroom.  Art Project lets students discover and view more than a thousand pieces of art online in incredible detail with Google street view technology.  Students can virtually move around the museum’s galleries, zooming closer on works of art and navigating through interactive floor plans where they can learn more about the museum and explore.  Artwork view lets students view the art at high-resolution, expanding the information panel lets students read more about the art, find more art by the same artist and watch related YouTube videos.  Students can act as curator and create their own artwork collection by saving specific views of the art and build a personal collection.  Comments can be added to each piece of art and share with families and friends.

How to integrate Google Art Project into the classroom: Google Art Project brings art museums from around the world into your classroom.  Take a virtual field trip to the museums using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard.  Let students take turns acting as a museum tour guide by clicking on the extra information and reading it out loud for students while they look at the artwork. After the class tour of the museum, students can use classroom computers or a lab to create their own collections.  Students can comment on each piece of art and share the collection they curated with family and friends.

Use Google Art Project for a compare and contrast activity. Students can compare and contrast the type of artwork they see in the various art museums, compare and contrast styles of art, or compare and contrast the work of different artists or time periods.

Use the artwork as the base of a creative writing activity, students can choose a piece of art and write a story about the artist, or about what is happening in the work of art.

Need help demonstrating a technique? Art Project lets students view artwork in such detail that the techniques are easy to point out and describe.

Tips: Due to copyrights, some pieces of art will appear a bit blurry when students zoom in.  The majority of the pieces can be seen in very high levels of detail.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Art Project in your classroom.

iboard: Counting Fish

Picture 3

What it is: Counting Fish is a fun sample interactive whiteboard activity from iboard.  Students can count fish added to the ocean, add, group, subtract, and compare sets.  Click on “Totals” to find out how many of each fish have been added to the ocean.


How to integrate iboard: Counting Fish into the classroom: Counting Fish is a great little web application that can be used in the primary math class.  Use with the interactive whiteboard asking questions such as: “Can you count the creatures as I put them into the ocean?” “There are two lobsters already, how many will there be if we add four more?,” etc.  Counting Fish can be used to help students visualize complex problems or word problems.  Set up Counting Fish on classroom computers as a math center where students can practice adding, subtracting, grouping, and counting.  Create question cards to accompany the center that students can answer with a partner when they visit the center.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased.  Counting Fish is one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: Counting Fish in your classroom.