Arts & Culture
Reviewed by Maria Widmer
Details: Google, June 13, 2016, iOS 9.0 or later
Cost: Free
Review: Google partnered with over 1,000 cultural institutions to bring users a chance to explore artworks, artifacts, and archival resources while on-the-go, in the classroom, or at home. Users can explore museums, landmarks, and heritage sites through 360° self-guided panoramic tours, browse by artist, movement, time period, color palette, medium, etc., and save their favorites in a personally curated collection.
Teachers looking to incorporate the Arts & Culture app into their instruction might ask students to explore, based on personal interest, collections aligned with a theme or time period covered in the formal learning context.
Perhaps the strongest educational affordance of the Arts & Culture app is the way it models different ways of thinking about artwork. A seemingly simple painting, for example, might carry political significance, represent an innovation in the use of a certain medium, or spark a new art movement. By modeling these different ways of organizing and analyzing information, Arts & Culture functions as a mobile Semantic Organization Mindtool with which students can learn (Jonassen, Carr, & Yueh, 1998, p. 1). Further, by exploring the artworks and artifacts of dozens of cultural institutions worldwide, learners can develop their Global Awareness skills.
Sources:
Jonassen, D. H., Carr, C., & Yueh, H. (1998). Computers as mindtools for engaging learners in critical thinking. TechTrends, 43(2), 24-32. doi:10.1007/bf02818172
