On January 30, 2008, we had a special trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), but we never left our school. Instead, we used a videoconferencing unit to connect with Toni Guglielmo through the museum's Distance Learning Program. Toni Guglielmo is the LACMA program coordinator for their distance learning program, and she served as our guide on this day. We learned to look at paintings, and really focused on the various characteristics found in portraits such as emotion. For example, we looked closely at the English artist Thomas Lawrence's Portrait of Arthur Atherley as an Etonian (circa 1791) pictured on the right.We learned that the boy in the painting was showing how proud he was to be a student at his school. Far in the background you can see his school, Eton. His pride showed in his face as well as by the way he positioned his arms. We all wanted to show our pride in our school, Delevan Drive Elementary School, too. So we also stood up with Toni Guglielmo's guidance and tried to stand as proud as the boy in the portrait. Our arms were positioned just like the arms of Arthur Atherley.
We had a great virtual trip to LACMA, and Toni Guglielmo also provided each of us an Arts for NexGen LACMA free youth membership. We received our membership enrollment forms this past Thursday, February 14, 2008. What a wonderful Valentine's Day gift that the museum provided our class!Our next classroom videoconference will be just as exciting as we virtually attend a conference just for students called Megaconference Jr. That's this Thursday, February 21, 2008!
