Use Assassin's Creed 2 to teach art history

If you've read my previous posts, you know I'm a fan of art history, and I'm always looking for a more fun way to teach it.

Assassin's Creed 2 is a sequel to a very popular, and somewhat violent game, that takes place in Renaissance Italy. I remember one of the hardest things to do in an art history classroom is to visualize space and architechture without actually being there. AC2 fixes that for a fairly large chunk of art history curriculum.

There's gonna be Da Vinci, Florence, and Piazza San Marco, I mean look at the screen shots. You can walk around, kill things, and appreciate the architechture. Sure beats Rick Steves (and I like Rick Steves). This is a much better teaching tool than old slides from architecture books.

Even better, Venice looks like what it should have looked like in the time period.

Shopucation

What's the best part about visiting a museum? The museum shop of course! This was a project I did for Shari Tishman's museum education class. We found out that a lot of the informal learning actually takes place in the museum shop, and visitors often takes something meaningful home with them.

Our group actually dipped our toes into retail, and mocked up a concept museum store where shopping and learning get together.

iCurator

This is a project I did for my HCI class back in the Berkeley days. We need to think back to 2001 before everyone had a smartphone.  The handheld computers back then did not have any connectivity without a very expensive WiFi card.  No Bluetooth, GPS, and very limited storage.

The project was aimed at making the museum experience more interactive.  Our solution for location based awareness was to bar code objects, and have content tied to that bar code.  We had videos, a central comments server (visitors can comment on a particular piece), and ability to send all the info and links to their personal email account. 

These are a couple of slides from the class presentation.

ArtBanc

Since my old HGSE blog was wiped out on SpyMac, I'm trying to recall what I posted.  

This is one of the projects I did for my software engineering class at Berkeley.  My project group got to use CS to solve an issue that has been plaguing art history profs and students alike for years.  For every lecture, the prof (or TA) has to go into the slide library and manually put slides into the Kodak Carousel (yes, I watched that episode of Mad Men), and then have to post whatever reproductions in the art history library so students can see them whenever they want.  

We created ArtBanc to move the entire process online.  A portal where instructors can upload, categorize, and generate PowerPoint presentations, and a student portal where they can see the art when and where ever. 

The first image is a UI prototype, the second is a screen shot from the working portal.  This was all back in 2001.