Google Art Project: A Museum of Museums

For anyone familiar with Google Maps street view, the Google Art Project takes the same navigational approach to select art museums.  Yes, you can cruise  through the Museum of Modern Art just as you can cruise a street in Google Maps using just your web browser.  Even better, you can zoom in on art works, too.  In some cases, you can zoom in so far that you’ll see cracks, brush strokes, and places where the canvas is showing through from damage.

The Google Art Project is completely online, completely free, and extremely simple to navigate.  Viewers can enjoy over 1,000 art works from over a dozen art galleries from around the world.  Viewers can even create their own collection of favorite works to share with others.  Google has included an informational panel for each work of art, making the virtual museum tour great for students.

The Google Art Project creator, Amit Sood, recently spoke about his project at TED. Watch the video to learn a bit about this cool project.

Google Breadcrumb

image of girl courtesy of apdk on Flickr

Google Breadcrumb is an interesting Google Labs application designed specifically for mobile devices.  The best things about Google Breadcrumb is that it is free, easy, and a powerful tool for kids.  Check out our article on GeekMom to get the inside scoop on Google Breadcrumb.

MoonBots 2.0: A Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Challenge

What a cool summer challenge!  Google has partnered with FIRST robotics and Wired magazine to create an X Prize challenge especially for kids.  Teams of young people ages nine through seventeen can register for this cool challenge.  Teams of between three to six people, including one adult mentor, design a Lego Mindstorms robot to explore the moon.  Registration opened on May 9th and continues through June 13th.  For phase I of the project, teams will complete a video. Participants will create a video based on four different categories.  Teams will also be asked to submit a written proposal of why their robot should be funded to go the Moon.  Read our write-up over at GeekMom for even more info.

Learn more about the challenge at the official MoonBots website.

A Doodle for Google

Google is hosting an interesting contest for k-12 students (I registered as a homeschool without a problem). For this contest, children are asked to design a google logo themed “what if . . .? and write a 50-words-or-less paragraph explaining their ‘what if?’ vision. I think this contest provides a fantastic opportunity for kids, still full of wonder and optimism, to share their ‘vision’ of what if . . .?

Google provides lesson plans to help integrate the google doodle project into existing lesson plans. Also, you will find the necessary entry forms, logos, consent forms, etc. on the site. Remember to register your school before March 28th!