My Favorite Thing - by Tracey Brown

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We are often asked about our favorite digital instructional tools and while I could talk about the student engagement afforded through Minecraft Education, or the real-world connections made with Google Earth, or even the formative assessment tools built into Nearpod's Activities, my real favorite is a tool brought to us by Google Arts & Culture.

Artwork Zoom

Google partnered with museums and galleries to allow high definition photography of some of the most famous works of art. This means that viewing them on your screen can allow you to get closer and visualize more detail than you would be able to see if you were visiting that artwork live, in person.

With zoom, students can go from this:

Under the Yoke (Burning the Brushwood)
Eero Järnefelt

To this:


The zoomed-in view allows us to examine how artists can capture emotion in their work. We could even begin with the zoomed-in view and ask the students to speculate about what the girl in the painting is thinking, or feeling, or what she might be experiencing right now before zooming out to show the whole scene. 
This type of activity pairs nicely with Discovery Education's Spotlight on Strategy Six Word Story or Half the Story. It could even be partnered with Wixie's I See, I Think, I Wonder template, or Lumio by SMART's Notice and Wonder Organizer.

Other uses of this amazing tool can include allowing students to focus on a particular scene in a busy image:
Proverbs
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Or allowing students to examine brush strokes in a mixed-media creation:
The Scream
Edvard Munch

Or explore easy-to-miss "Easter Eggs" artists may have included in a piece:

Jadeite Cabbage
Unknown Qing dynasty 

To find artwork with the zoom feature, you can search Zoom on Google Arts and Culture, or look for the magnifying glass on any piece of artwork. There are almost 21,000 items that have high definition imagery available!
























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