Steal this Research

Hmm. This is definitely something to keep an eye on. Could have an impact on our classrooms in the long view, but perhaps even more directly right now on our ed school classes and access to information. According to Ars Technica, MIT's faculty has voted unanimously for open access to all publications researched at the university. Some publishers are aghast.

Professor Hal Abelson, in a statement provided by MIT, said, "scholarly publishing has so far been based purely on contracts between publishers and individual faculty authors. In that system, faculty members and their institutions are powerless. This resolution changes that by creating a role in the publishing process for the faculty as a whole, not just as isolated individuals." Ann Wolpert, who directs MIT's libraries, said, "in the quest for higher profits, publishers have lost sight of the values of the academy."

Jeez... between this fight and the recent Kindle text-to-speech business, the publishing industry is sure looking kinda jerky. Maybe they should take a cue from the likes of bands like Wilco who have only benefited in sales from putting stuff online for free. Counter-intuitive? Surely. 21st Century? Totally.

Resource: Heilbrunn Timeline of the History of Art

Another post in a series of great online resources for paperless teachers as well as any teacher who wants to bring an online element into her or his classroom:

The Heilbrunn Timeline of the History of Art, hosted by the Met, is the single best resource for art history students that I have found online. While there are individual sites dedicated to individual exhibitions or artists that are better in their own ways than the Heilbrunn Timeline, there is no single resource that covers the breadth of World Art History better.

Holding Western and Eastern traditions in equal measure, the Timeline allows students to research by era, region, artifact-type/art-style, in a completely hyperlinked environment supported by scholarly papers both accessible to the novice as well as useful to seasoned teachers.

I would advise using the Thematic Essays as examples of exemplary writing, as writing about art is often quite a new challenge for students who otherwise rarely are asked to write critically about things they 'see'.

The Timeline is an excellent resource for Fine Arts and History teachers alike. There's also plenty of room to use the resources -- especially the interactive world maps -- in a foreign language classroom.