Democratization of knowledge- Google’s Art Project

   Google's Art Project is an online platform first introduced on February 2011 which offers to everyone free and open access in some of the most famous museums all over the world.

source of the picture CNN.com retrieved: 3/12/2012

   Google brought its street view tools indoors and it offers the opportunity of virtual tours in pattern museums and galleries. The online visitors are able to explore high resolution images from historical and art exhibits, read information about them, make comparisons with similar exhibitions and create their own virtual collection. They can “walk”  inside the preferable museum and  gain  access  to  valuable  educational and cultural knowledge something rather difficult for many people until now.

  The Google’s Art project has been characterized as a " tremendous potential educational tool " (Zucker, 2012) tool as it has opened its doors to the educational community creating the topic of "Education" within the platform. Relative resources for further research, additional information for each masterpiece and museum, as well as ways to utilize the project for educational reasons are available. Google has also created a number of videos on You Tube in order to provide anyone who is interested with easy accessible advice on how to use the Art project and take advantage of the numerous opportunities that it offers.

   The project is constantly extending and it is considered to be a major step towards the democratization of culture and knowledge (Knowles, 2012). However, Google faced a lot of critisism basically concerning the fact that many of the most significant museums are still not included (Sooke, 2011).

   However, it is a unique example of how technology could be an effective contributor in the education process as this innovative project reconstructs current educational environments from their foundations. 

For more general information you might want to see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Art_Project



references/sources links:

Knowles, J. (2012) Google's Art Project grows larger with 151 museums online across 40 countries. TNW The next web. Retrieved on 11/11/2012 from: http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/04/03/googles-art-project-grows-larger-with-151-museums-online-across-40-countries/

Sooke, A. (2011) The problem with Google's Art Project. Telegraph. Retrieved on 11/11/2012 from:    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8296251/The-problem-with-Googles-Art-Project.html

Zucker, S. (2012) Why the Google Art Project is important. E-literate. Retrieved on 11/11/2012 from:  http://mfeldstein.com/why-the-google-art-project-is-important/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Art_Project

http://www.googleartproject.com/

http://www.googleartproject.com/education/

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/02/02/google.streetview.art/index.html