Mrs. Bivona gets published!

"Unbound by Place or Time
Museums and Online Learning"
by William Crow and Herminia Din

Two summers back, I signed up to take my first online class. "Face to Face ~ Comparing Portraits". It was through the Metropolitan Museum of Art and it was the first online class they had ever offered. In the beginning I was not sure what I had gotten myself into, but it didn't take long for me to realize that it was going to be one of the BEST professional development experiences of my career! At the end of our 2 weeks together online, we had an opportunity to come together at the Metropolitan with one of our instructors, William Crow. William is an Associate Museum Educator for the Met, he oversees programs for K-12 teachers and off site school programs. Herminia Din our other instructor is from Alaska, and could not make it. Herminia is an Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Alaska - Anchorage. Not everyone could come to our on-site visit to the Met since participants were from ALL over the world, but many did and it was wonderful to meet, in person, these people we knew so well online.

Last summer, the Metropolitan offered another online professional development class and I was hooked - I signed up again! This time we explored the idea of Landscape, and again it was an excellent class.

Then last fall William contacted me and asked me if I would be willing to write about my experiences in the online classes that I had taken through the Metropolitan, I enthusiastically said, "YES!" So, last week at the American Association of Museums Conference in Philadelphia, the book - "Unbound by Place or Time, Museums and Online Learning" was released, and my case study can be found on page 67! How exciting! Congratulations to William and Herminia on publishing this book and thanks to both of them for allowing me to be apart of it!

If you are a teacher and you are interested in finding out about the Metropolitan's Online class for this summer ~ CLICK HERE! Go to the second section where it says 2009 Summer Teacher Institutes.

Mrs. Bivona takes an on-line class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

Hi Everyone!
I hope you are having a wonderful and relaxing summer! I have been busy painting and wallpapering my house, but I have also been taking an awesome on-line class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was the first time the Met has ever offered a class online. It was called Face to Face: Comparing Portraits - an online interactive workshop from elementary school teachers. Mrs. Defrancisco, art teacher at Liberty Corner took it as well. Over the 2 weeks we looked at a variety of portraits -- then we blogged about them, created wikis with lots of infomation and inquiry-based questions and we even created our own self-portrait (which we then photographed and uploaded to our blog)! We learned so much!

It was an excellent opportunity to communicate with teachers from ALL over the country, there were 28 of us in the class from 16 different states. We had 2 excellent instructors, William Crow from the Met and Herminia Din from the U of Alaska. On Tuesday, July 30, 2007 we were all invited for a tour of the Met in NYC. Mrs. DeFrancisco are going to attend, I will take lots of photos to share with you!

I am looking forward to sharing all that I have learned with our students at Mount Prospect!

Enjoy the rest of the summer -- see you all soon!

Mrs. Bivona