Interacting on the Internet.

How often have you heard someone say, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." What about you? What kind of art do you really like? Why do you like it? What about your students? What kind of art do they like, and why do they like it?

Viewpoints: Exploring How You Understand Art is an interactive online activity that can help you identify the kinds of art you enjoy, explore the reasons these works appeal to you, understand that there are a number of ways to look at art, and have insight into the points of view others hold about art.

Viewpoints is posted on ArtsEdNet, the Web site of the Getty Education Institute for the Arts. This self test is based on research originally done by Michael Parsons and extended by Faith Clover and Mary Erickson. Readers of SchoolArts may recall an overview of these viewpoints which appeared in February 1997.

Teachers using Viewpoints in the classroom can assess their students' art understanding and develop strategies for engaging them with unfamiliar artists, artworks, and ideas.

Consider what some teachers have said about their experience using Viewpoints with their students:

On the brink of the twenty-first century, the Internet has become a rich source of information and images for teachers. This program and others like it on ArtEdNet's growing multicultural curriculum resoruce, Worlds of Art, are being developed with opportunities for teachers to contribute their insights, not only to receive the insights of others. In this way we can build a community of educators dedicated to increasing our own and our student's understanding of art.

Faith Clover is a visiting professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona; Mary Erickson is a professor at Arizona State University; and Kathy Talley Jones is a consultant for the Getty Education Institute in Los Angeles, California.