Week of October 12, 2003

Artistic Tools

Make an art connection with The Artist’s Toolkit: Visual Ele-ments and Principles at www.artsconnected.org/ toolkit. Tools of the trade, such as lines, color, balance and rhythm, are essential to artists. You’ll learn about the important roles each one plays when you watch an animated demonstration. Find examples of each concept in different artworks. Then create your own composition. Also you can watch artists Ta-Coumba Aiken and Judy Onofrio create original compositions.

Nominate a cool Web site at https://4Kids.org/nominations/

One With the Animals

Jump, crawl or slither your way into the Animal Nation at www.animalnation.com. The shark pages have bite-size facts about all kinds of cool sharks, including the angel shark and the bonnethead. You’ll find a creepy-crawly section featuring information about insects and spiders. Be an animal detective and identify the tracks of animals such as the whitetail deer or bobcat. Then fly with the birds. The barn owl can show you where to perch when you are finished. (This site is no longer available.)

Painting Cannot Tell
a Lie

Hidden symbols in a famous portrait reveal a lot about America’s first president at http://georgewashington.si.edu. George Washington: A National Treasure gives you a look at this Gilbert Stewart painting from an art sleuth’s perspective. In Kids, a virtual spyglass uncovers missing parts of the painting, such as Washington’s silver shoe buckles and sword. In The Portrait, you can analyze Washington’s clothes, stance and surroundings using three different filters in order to understand the significance of each element.

	Dear Amy: How do you use HTML to put music on a Web page? — Matthew, Burnaby, British Columbia Dear Matthew: One way that you can add music to your site is by creating a sound file link that people click to hear music. To create a link for people to click, simply insert the HTML tags <a href=”filename”> and </a>. This type of link is especially useful for short clips and long versions of songs. It allows users to listen to a sound file only if they desire to do so. If you want to add music that plays automatically, you can use an embed tag. An example is <embed src=”filename” autostart=true loop=true height=64 width=144 controls=”console”>. “Autostart” defines that the sound will be played automatically. “Loop” defines whether the sound will terminate; in this case, it would loop continuously. “Height” and “width” define the area of the control panel, and “console” defines the type of controls the user will have. Be sure to include controls because a looping sound file may annoy some users. Some other ways to add music to your site are found at www.techtv.com/callforhelp/webworkshop/jump/ 0,24331,2323598,00.html. (This site is no longer available.) Ask Amy a Question

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