KET's Arts Toolkit staff

The Visual Arts Toolkit

In January, the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) named KET's Visual Arts Toolkit the best instructional media in public television. The awards ceremony took place in Norfolk, Va., during NETA's annual conference.

Arts Toolkits are packages of multimedia resources designed to provide teachers with high-quality teaching tools that align to academic standards while bringing the excitement of dance, drama, music and the visual arts into the classroom. They were created in response to requests from Kentucky teachers for arts and humanities resources.

"The Arts Toolkits are a remarkable resource for teachers," said Philip Shepherd, arts and humanities consultant for the Kentucky Department of Education. "On state assessment for arts and humanities, high school scores have improved 29 points since the development and distribution of the toolkits, greater gains than any other content area. I truly believe that the Arts Toolkits are a big factor in that improvement."

The Visual Arts Toolkit includes video segments of artists at work, cultural art and museum tours; a binder with lesson plans, glossaries, responding-to guides and a listing of Kentucky visual arts resources; a set of idea cards; a "purposes of art" poster; and the Kentucky Virtual Art Museum--a CD-ROM with images of 250 art works from 20 Kentucky museums.

"The dedicated KET staff has received this prestigious national recognition for an educational tool designed for Kentucky teachers and students," said KET executive director Mac Wall.

More information about Arts Toolkits is available at www.ket.org/artstoolkit. The Kentucky Virtual Art Museum CD-ROM was made possible by funding from the W. Paul and Lucille Caudill Little Foundation, Inc.