Bard College Visual Resources Center

For more information on how to use remote teaching tools at Bard, please see Bard Information Technology’s Course Continuity page.

 

Presenting Images in Synchronous and Asynchronous Classes

For a synchronous meeting:

• You can share PowerPoint, Google Slides, or a PDF presentation from within Google Meet or Zoom. You could also share your browser screen and show images from a saved group in Artstor.
• Zoom has an annotation feature that allows you to draw or type live on the screen that could help engage close-looking or take the place of a laser pointer. (Note: The free Zoom basic plan has a 40 minute time limit on meetings with three or more participants).
• Known issue in Google Hangouts Meet: When sharing a window in Meet, if you play a PowerPoint presentation in the shared window, the slideshow appears blank to other viewers. This is because choosing ‘’Slide Show view’ shows the presentation in full screen mode, and you’re only sharing a window. Workaround: Share your whole screen before launching a presentation in Slide Show mode.

 For asynchronous course content:

• You could prepare corresponding PDFs of PowerPoint presentations for students to review before or in-between recorded course content. Some students may only have a mobile device available and PDFs are the most mobile-friendly format.
• If you have an image-heavy PowerPoint presentation, consider dividing your lecture into smaller sections so the files are not too large for students with slow internet access to download in a timely manner.

 

Make Presentations Do More Work For You

You may wish to have additional details such as adding captions to your PowerPoint or have your PowerPoint structured with additional didactic information so it does more heavy-lifting than you would do for a regular in-person class.

Provide Access to an Artstor Image Group

 

• Consider adding a link to an Artstor group into Moodle and ask students to familiarize themselves with the images and do some close-looking before watching a lecture or participating in an online group discussion.
• You can also share an Artstor image group link with your class via email or Google Hangout.

 

Mapping Exercises

 

• Students can create maps individually or collaboratively using platforms like Google’s My Maps to plot points or routes. Images, video, text and external links can be added.
• StoryMap JS from Northwestern University’s Knight Lab is a free platform that enables users to plot slide content on maps.
• Omeka is a collections-focused web publishing platform.  Omeka can be used to share primary source collections and collaborate with others in the creation of digital exhibitions.

 

Student Projects

Annotate Images in Google Docs: This can be done synchronously or asynchronously. If an image is provided for the class to annotate as a group, make sure everyone is added as an editor. Students can also use the google chat function to discuss the project or add additional analysis. 

 

Artsteps: Students can design virtual exhibition spaces and upload images, videos and 3D content. Here is a how-to created by by Victoria Jennings and Jackie Spafford, University of

California, Santa Barbara.

 

Image Scanning

Update 7/1/20: The Bard Visual Resources Center is resuming scanning services for Bard Faculty who need course related images. Contact Amy Herman to make an appointment.

 

Scanning Apps for iPhones and Androids

There are several mobile apps that allow you to make PDFs of paper documents. These are ideal for scanning readings but can also be used for images in a pinch. We’re listing a couple below, but there are many others. 

 

Multi platform:

Adobe Scan (requires you to create an adobe document Cloud account)

 

For iPhones:

Scanner Pro ($4)

Scannable

Turbo Scan (In addition to pdf you can save files as jpeg; color and photo modes are available)

 

For Androids:

Tiny Scanner

Simple Scan

 

Copyright Concerns?

If it was legal to show slide images in class, it is likely legal to show them to students via live video conferencing or in recorded videos.  This may be a surprise if you have heard that there is a big difference between class lecture slides and online conference slides – but the issue is usually less offline versus online, than a restricted versus an unrestricted audience. As long as your new course video is being shared through course websites limited to the same enrolled students, the legal issues are fairly similar.

 Online Multimedia Resources

• Smarthistory and Khan Academy videos: short videos for context and close-looking at objects.
• Google Arts and Culture: video tours through museum galleries, exhibitions, and architecture, as well as high-resolution images of objects.

 

Other Guides

CAA Resources for Teaching Remotely

MCN Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections

Resources on Copyright & Emergency Remote Teaching Research

Z.O.M.B.I.E. Survival Guide for VCU arts

 

Facebook Groups

 

Pandemic Pedagogy Facebook Group

Material Collective Facebook Group

Art History Teaching Resources Facebook Group

Online Art & Design Studio Instruction in the Age of “Social Distancing”

Adapted from VRC Notes on Shifting to Remote Teaching in Art History written by Cosette Bruhns, Cecilia Lo, Bridget Madden, and Allie Scholten, from the University of Chicago and “Rapidly Shifting Your Course from In-Person to Online“, by Nancy Sims, University of Minnesota Libraries, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License both made available to us by a CC-BY-NC-SA license.