History of the NAB Project: 1997 - 1998
A "Living Curriculum" on the World Wide Web
1997: The College of Design at Iowa State University made possible the most significant development in New Art Basics project history by providing the programming support for developing and completing a conversion of the UNIX database into a World Wide Web (WWW) based system. With this conversion, for the first time, we have been able to begin putting images of student art works, attached to every classroom tested NAB strategy. Art educators, being very visually oriented people, we believe, will find this giant leap in NAB services makes the NAB curriculum much more accessible and understandable. We call this new curriculum the "Living Curriculum" because it is based on organic rather than mechanical principles. The database also has two other unique and useful features: 1.) a strategy submission system that leads the teacher/researcher through a series of screens as they send in new teaching ideas for evaluation and consideration for inclusion in the database, and 2.) a teacher database that gives each teacher/research their own NAB homepage from which anyone else can reach them and explore their strategy ideas.
1998: To make initial NAB training more accessible and efficient in delivery, a WWW version of the graduate level education course ARTED 513: Introduction to New Art Basics has been developed. In May 1998, this course began educating a nation-wide group of art teachers in the discipline-specific, thinking skills approach to visual arts education. You can find the information for how to enroll in this course and buy a school share in NAB elsewhere on this web site. The course can be taken for 3 graduate credits or audited for 3 CEU credits.
1990 - 1996: Development of an electronic network
1997 - 1998: A Living Curriculum on the World Wide Web