Volume 6, Number 7
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Experience this interactive, resource rich, compelling and intellectually stimulating site - 'Learning About Leonardo.' This site features original music composed by Leonardo da Vinci and compares the theories of Dr. Lillian Schwartz and Rina de Firenze who wrote The Mystery of the Mona Lisa.Your hosts are students from John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx and Sweden - producing a multimedia learning environment as part of a ThinkQuest project to explore "Why is the Mona Lisa Smiling?" Some of the key components of this project were to create a site that was accessible to all, centered around Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The site is accessible to the hearing impaired and is viewable with any browser. Through their research, these students discovered that da Vinci wrote music, and were able to find the music and digitize the score to make it Internet compatible.They created an online interactive quiz viewable with any browser. | This meant they needed to learn how to incorporate java applets as well as CGI Scripts into the project.Permission was secured to use the copyrighted images they wanted to use. The students began coding using a text processor, while their Swedish collaborators, researched the web to find the best da Vinci resources available. They communicated with each other through email exchange. They included elements that would be fun to use, so that their project would be used by school children globally. As an example, random research, multilingual musical postcards in 17 different languages, a guestbook and a survey are available. The response to the project has been phenomenal. Guests have signed from nearly sixty coutries and over 48 states across America. The site is part of the Getty Museum Digital Experience, ArtsEdge and the Exploratorium, the Seattle Art Museum, the Franklin Institute, the Boston Museum, the National Museum of Science and Technology of Milan and the National Museum |
of Science and Technology of Israel. The site has recently become a WNET Selected Site and was selected as the Mac's Pick of the Week. /13681/data/museum/price.htm In addition the site became a GII US Award Education Semifinalist and has won a Webbie Award. The Site is currently featured on the Children's Commission of Queensland in Australia and is listed as a Cool School of the Week on MSNBC. As our project continues to evolve we continue to expand our site; recently the site has been updated to include information on Leonardo's Bronze Horse and a view of the Mona Lisa Bridge. Click on Vitruvian Hands to paths that lead to a dozen dynamic da Vinci diversions /13681/data/davin2.shtml | |
Steve Feld, ComputerSteve Feld Computer Graphics Instructor at John F. Kennedy High School can be reached by email at sjfeld@erols.com