Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
Guest Post: Teaching Art History with Blogs
Today I have a guest post featured on the new blog Experiments in Art History. I worked with Nancy Ross, the owner of this blog, to produce the “Art History Flashbook” at CAA’s THATCamp last month.
I think Nancy’s new blog will be a great way to approach issues regarding technology and art history teaching. For those of you who are interested in thinking about blogging from a pedagogical standpoint, please check out my post!
Your guest post asks “do you use your own blog while teaching?” “Do you assign your students to maintain blogs?” And “what blog assignments have worked for you and your students?”
Interesting stuff. Already a few years ago I was asking students to read specific posts in my and other art history blogs. This was because reading books and academic journal articles is excellent, but doesn’t always happen. As long as the topic is small enough, 1000 words in each of 4 blog posts is much more accessible than a densely written journal article of 4000 words. By small I mean eg William de Morgan’s tiles. By big I mean eg Impressionism.
I have never thought of asking students to maintain blogs. What a cool thought.
Hi Hels! Thanks for your comment. I also think that smaller topics are much more accessible to students. Blog posts sometimes fit with their learning style, and even sometimes their attention spans! I think that it’s much more common for people today to learn in spurts, given the way that information is shared on the internet and social media.