Web Critique: NAEA, AIC, CPS

National Art Education Association (www.naea-reston.org)
Wow! I haven’t looked at this site in a few months, so this was the first time I saw the redesign. It presents the organization’s resources for art educators in a much more accessible and attractive way than before. In addition to providing a ton of information on research, news, grants, and professional development opportunities, the site also strongly promotes interactivity. This makes it a site people will visit more frequently than one that just has the same old information that never changes. Educators can upload images of student projects to Artsonia, comment on the NAEA blog, and upload teaching portfolios. Members can also make personal profiles and customize a MyNAEA portion of the site, which contains a profile, classroom galleries, lesson plans, and portfolios.

I did find the Lesson Planning section of the site a bit lacking—there are links to external sites and Artsonia to use as a starting point to find ideas, but there doesn’t appear to be a collection of lesson plans contained within the site. I’m sure members have a lot to contribute—it would be great if they could upload them to a centralized place on this site. The plans could be searchable by age group, materials used, etc.

The job listings were frighteningly sparse; if the NAEA offers this feature on their site, they should publicize the existence of their job board to schools and museums so more employers post listings there.

The Art Institute of Chicago (www.artic.edu/aic/)
The primary reason I use this site is to search the collection for specific images. I love that there are several different ways to search (browsing by theme, browsing A–Z, or using a regular keyword search). It’s really helpful that there’s a “My Collection” feature—users can add works to a personalized list. E-mailing and printing are also clickable options on the page for every image, making it easy to share images with others. Copying images is enabled when you right-click on them, so they can be placed in a teacher’s slideshow for students or placed within any document.

This site does an excellent job of promoting events and special exhibitions in an easy-to-find way for potential visitors. I also appreciate that the hours and address are right there on the homepage—I hate having to hunt for that information on websites of places I want to visit.

Chicago Public Schools (www.cps.edu/Pages/home.aspx)
If I were a parent considering options for where to send my child to school, I would find this site comprehensive and easy to navigate. Especially cool are the pop-up info bubbles that appear when you roll over all the search options. Once my child started school, though, I would probably go to his or her specific school’s site from then on. For that reason, I would encourage CPS to make sure every school has its own site with at least basic information about important dates, contact information, etc.; not all schools appear to have their own sites. (I know there are some CPS schools that have much, much more important issues to address right now than creating a website, but this could be a long-term goal. Also, CPS could hire a web designer who could make sites for all the schools that don’t have them with some sort of template.)

But since I’m not a parent, I’m a future teacher, the first thing I clicked on was the Careers page. I clicked on the Elementary Directory and got a “The page cannot be found” message. Disappointing.

There are not many opportunities for users to contribute to this site. I was amused by the "Share a Story" instructions under the "Contact CPS" menu. It says, "Do you have a great story about a CPS student, teacher or school? Did you attend a CPS event that you can’t stop taking about?" It’s nice that they are especially eager to hear positive feedback…but…well, as far as I know, there are quite a few people out there who have not-so-positive stories. Those are important for CPS to hear too. Some sort of forum that promotes honest, productive discussion about various issues within CPS would be a good addition to the site.

Introduction

When I asked my 2-year-old nephew how he made a finger painting hanging on the refrigerator at his house, he grinned and proudly exclaimed:

"I made it...with...my hands!"

That made me happy to be learning how to be an art teacher here at SAIC.

This blog is for my Cyberpedagogy class.