Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Greek Iconography Workshop Ideas

Right now I'm taking Google's Power Searching online course and am enjoying it.  In our 4th lesson, I learned that images can be dragged/dropped directly into the search bar for imaged searches (but not on tablet devices; cf. below!).  I got to thinking that this could be incredibly useful in looking at Greek iconography with students.  We offer the Medusa Mythology Exam as an optional exam to our students at the school, and I think we could have a lot of fun in a workshop combining the iconography of the mythic figures covered in the exam with the search tools we've learned in the course.  As an exercise, we could give students images from Greek vases or other pieces of art and ask them to identify the figures, based on what they see.  Then, they could check their guesses by searching for the image online and even figure out more about the image, e.g. its museum location, approximate date, etc.  Basically, it's an online scavenger hunt.
But, as noted in the course, image searching does not work with tablet devices!  Our school is in the beginning stages of implementing a 1:1 program starting next year, but we haven't yet chosen a device.  I'm sufficiently excited in the ability to search images in this way that I think this is another strong argument against adopting an iPad or other tablet device.  For now, I'm going to demo this myself in one of our JCL club meetings, but it's an idea I intend to explore in greater detail in the near future.

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