Bedazzled-Interactive Museum and Art Gallery Magazine
What it is: Bedazzled is another site from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In this interactive magazine, students can discover more about style, fashion, and accessories from the past to the present. Students will learn what clothes say about them (and what they say about people in the past), look at accessories throughout history, read an interview from a jewelry designer and learn how to make their own jewelry, learn about what fashion tells us about different cultures, view actual pieces of fashion and accessories from the museum, and learn about what jewelry was used for and represented in the past.
How to integrate Bedazzled into your curriculum: Do you have students (read: fashonistas) who are absolutely positive that they don’t like history? Introduce them to a love of history with the Bedazzled interactive magazine. Your students will be drawn in by the fun fashion magazine and will be intrigued by the way that fashion can be used to learn about history. Allow your students to explore the pages at their own pace as a center activity on the classroom computer or in a lab setting where each student has a computer. The magazine is an entertaining read but also packed full of history. After your students read through the magazine, challenge them to choose an accessory, fashion item, or jewelry to learn more about. Ask them to find out what was happening in the time period that the piece is worn and how the item can help them better understand the people of the time period. Take it a step further by asking students to write a fictional short story about the person who wore the item using historical facts that they learned in their exploration.
This interactive magazine is a great way to show your students that history is more than a collection of dates and facts. History is about stories, it is about people just like them. Give your students that connection and the love for history will begin to blossom. This site would have hooked me as a child!
Tips: Bedazzled was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Bedazzled in your classroom!