guest post by Burstein!
Think of Smarthistory as less of a textbook and more as a way to eavesdrop on a conversation between some very knowledgeable folks that don’t take themselves too seriously. Less dry and staid than NPR, but still having top quality analysis.
But Why? In their words:
We are dissatisfied with the large expensive art history textbook. We find that they are difficult for many students, contain too many images, and just are not particularly engaging. In addition, we find the web resources developed by publishers to be woefully uncreative. We had developed quite a bit of content for our online Western art history courses and we had also created many podcasts, and a few screencasts for our Smarthistory blog. So, it finally occurred to us, why not use the personal voice that we use when we teach online, along with the multimedia we had already created for our blog and for our courses, to create a more engaging “web-book” that could be used in conjunction with art history survey courses. We also realized that this content would be useful to museum visitors and other informal learners. We are committed to joining the growing number of teachers who make their content freely available on the web
Here Are A Few Related Posts You Might Enjoy:
- History Hacker, Hosted by Bre Pettis on The History Channel
- Chap-Hop History, The History of Hip-Hop in Five Minutes by Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer
- 2600 Online, Play 50+ Classic Atari 2600 Games Online
- The History of the Burning Man Sculpture
- How to Grow Online Community
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thanks for the shout-out for Smarthistory! I’m one of the contributors (I do Greek & Roman art) and I am so glad to see the site getting good press from non-academic and non-stuffy sites!
BTW, Smarthistory just won a Webby for best educational website! :)