I guess I’m feeling energetic this week because I’ve come up with another list that joins my other Websites Of The Year. I expect to take a break after this one and put time into adapting these “Best of…” lists into a page on my website suitable for student self-access.

This list, The Best Art Websites For Learning English, is probably a little more arbitrary than my others. Here, not only are the rankings of which are best is pretty subjective, but the notion of what qualifies as art is, too.

I’ve also included links to examples of how my students have used a couple of these web applications.

There are a ton of art-related sites on the Web. However, I only think ten are excellent tools for language-development and worthy of being on this list. Four are very, very similar, so I couldn’t really distinguish among them. So, for the first time, there’s a four-way tie for first place.

Here are my choices:

Number six is the Language Guide Art Page. As in The Best Music Websites For Learning English, it’s pretty important for English Language Learners to learn basic art-related vocabulary.

Artpad is number five. It’s sort of like a “revved-up” Imagination Cubed. You can see how my students used it to illustrate some collaborative stories they wrote here. After each sentence you’ll that their name is highlighted as a link. Click on it, and you’ll see their illustration for the sentence they wrote. (Unfortunately, Artpad went off-line for a VERY long time. It’s back working now, though. However, none of their older drawings were saved, including the ones in the story)

Number four is the Historic Tale Construction Kit. Students can have fun creating a medieval tapestry that tells a story.

The Artist’s Toolkit is number three. It provides image, audio and text support for students to learn basic art concepts and experiment with them online.

Number two is MOMA’s Destination Modern Art. It has a series of activities where students can learn about and experiment with looking at specific pieces of art. There’s audio and image support for the simple text.

Before I share the four sites that tied for first, let me give a little background. Lots of art museums have created online applications where users can make their own online exhibitions of their favorite pieces of art and save them. It’s a neat idea.

However, most of them just allow you to pick the paintings and write a short description of the whole personalized collection. The four museums that have tied for first all have the option of users writing notes about each individual painting they choose to include in their collections. These are clearly superior writing opportunities for English Language Learners.

Though all four are very, very similar, if anyone gets a slight edge, it’s the Seattle Art Museum My Art Gallery because users have to answer specific questions about each piece of art they choose. In the others they write whatever they want. But the advantage is not significant enough to warrant ranking the Seattle Museum as number one on its own.

The other three museum sites that are tied with Seattle are the Art Institute of Chicago’s Art Explorer; Collection X from the Virtual Museum of Canada; and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Learning@Whitney.

(Note: I’m adding The Broth to this list)

Harcourt has an excellent Multimedia Art Glossary that provides audio support for the text in addition to visual images.

I’ve just added CoSketch to both The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration and The Best Art Websites For Learning English.

It’s an easy way for English Language Learners and anyone else to collaboratively draw a picture.  There’s no real registration necessary, either.  You just go to the site, are given a private “virtual room” in which to begin drawing, and then you email the link to whoever else you want to participate.  While you’re drawing there’s also a text chat feature to communicate.  You can then save the image and either link to it or embed it in a student/teacher blog or website. You can also upload a photo for sharing and discussing.

Doodle Wall is a similar web tool that lets you easily…doodle. You can draw on your own and keep it completely private, or provide the password to others to draw collaboratively. It also has a chat feature. It worked pretty easily for me, though once I saved the picture and went back to see it, it kept on moving around when I moved my mouse. I’m sure there’s an easy solution to this, though.

Students can develop their English skills by communicating via the chat room (for example, mine could do this project with other students in our International Sister Classes Project) and/or posting their image with a description.

The Broth is a similar application. The advantage with The Broth is that the chat messages remain permanently, while it appears with CoSketch that they disappear after you’re done. With CoSketch, though, since you don’t have to register it’s easier to use.

Flash Paint is an online art application. I have some other very good ones on my website under Student Paintings. However, what makes Flash Paint stand-out is that there is a place for the “painter” to write about their creation and you then can save the painting and the writing to the gallery. You’re given a url for both that can be posted on an online journal or blog.

Draw.to looks like a simple online drawing application. It’s easy to draw and then share your creation. Press the “c” on your keyboard to gain access to drawing in color.

Slimber is a very simple online drawing tool that requires no registration. Once you go to the website, you click on “painter” at the top, and you can begin creating. Once you’re finished, you can click “play” and it will “rerun” the artistic process you used. After clicking save, you can write a description of your image. Next, click on “gallery” where you can see your creation and get a url address or embed code.

Drips let you paint like Jackson Pollock, and you can save it online. Even cooler, it gives you a choice of painting it with either your mouse or your webcam and computer microphone. With your webcam, you can use your cellphone light or something else as a brush and your voice to change the color. After you save it, you’re given its url address. Students can post it on a student/teacher blog or website and describe it, as well as comment on others made by their classmates.

Little Bird Tales lets you easily make slideshows where you can add text and, more importantly for English Language Learners, provide an audio narration. On nice touch is that you can virtually paint/draw artwork in addition to uploading images (unfortunately, the site doesn’t have the ability to grab photos off the web by url addresses). It’s free to use, but I’m unclear on if there will be an eventual cost to use the site. It appears to have an upper limit on the number of shows you can produce.

AloofDoof is a useful drawing web app with a weird name. After registration, you can either upload an image, choose an image that someone has already uploaded, or start with a blank canvas — then draw away. Even though there are other sites on this list that have better drawing capabilities, AloofDoof has the added feature of being able to embed your image. I think it can be especially useful in illustrating student stories, like these.

Draw It Live lets you create virtual “rooms” where you can collaborate with people of your choices to draw. It also includes a chat window. You can save the image to your desktop, but it doesn’t appear to let you save it on the web. Thanks to The Center For Applied Second Language Studies for the tip.

AWW lets you draw with others or on your own, and does let you save the creation on the web. It doesn’t have a chatboard, however. You can read more about it at Richard Byrne’s blog.

As always, I’m open to suggestions and critique.

These sites, and others, can also be found among the 8,000 categorized links on my website.

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