The Chronicle of Higher Education

I was delighted to learn, rather late last night, that smARThistory was mentioned twice in the past two days. It was mentioned in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday by David L. Wheeler, titled "It's Not Your Father's Art-History Intro: Professors Talk About How They Are Shaking Up Survey Courses." It is based on pedagogic issues raised at last week's College Art Association annual conference. Susan Ball, CAA's executive director is quoted as are a three other art historian. Then smartest is mentioned, In a separate session at the meeting -- "Teaching Art History Online"--... Two faculty members at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, told about "vodcasts," a solution to the competition between text and images on a computer screen. The two teachers record audio explanations of the artworks that play while the students are looking at the images. Samples can be found at http://www.smarthistory.blogspot.com The second mention was very generous indeed. It was written by Suhas Deshpande, Technology Assessment Analyst for the Canadian Heritage Information Network, in his blog Technology & Culture he wrote in part: smARThistory blog: effective podcasting and vodcasting "Art historians Beth Harris and Steven Zucker have an incredible art history blog that features highly effective podcasts and vodcasts... Their podcast on Cezanne (Cezanne Still Life at MoMA) is informative and provocative at the same time, owing to Beth Harris's avowed lack of admiration for Cezanne.... This site is a model for museums and art galleries who would like to use podcasts and vodcasts to feature content from their collections." Technology & Culture (www.thirdplanet.com) is a terrific edublog that touchs on numerous issues that I find particularly important and is well worth a visit.