The Pea Ridge Elementary School online art gallery has moved into the No. 1 ranking among the 6,000 schools participating in nationwide competition.
Hosted by the Artsonia Corporation of Illinois, the huge art gallery that began in 2000 now hosts over 29 million artworks from more than 4 million artists from around the world and all 50 states.
Though Pea Ridge first began involvement with the Artsonia program in 2009, the Pea Ridge artists have now produced more art for the web museum than any other school. Pea Ridge is the only school in the world with more than 100,000 exhibits, currently having more than 111,000 available for viewing. More than 417,000 visitors have viewed the gallery since its inception.
Pea Ridge is the top-ranked gallery just ahead of Wolford School of McKinney, Texas, and Gattis School of Round Rock, Texas, who rank second and third respectively.
School rankings come from points achieved in four areas: artwork uploaded, student remarks or comments on their own art, visitor comments on the individual artwork, and the number of fans that the artists attract. Visitors who sign up to be fans of a particular artist get emails of that student's art each time the art is uploaded onto the website.
"The reason we are ranked so high is a direct result of the high level of parental interest and involvement in our student's education here at Pea Ridge," John McGee, art teacher, said.
"The Pea Ridge community and school are known for their desire to be involved in the things that matter, in their kids education and activities. As any teacher can tell you, the more the parents get involved, the better the kids will do, and the art program is just one example of that," McGee said.
Pea Ridge has a national score of 13, derived from being first in art displayed, first in student commentary, fourth in student fans, and seventh in visitor commentary. In national tabulations, Wolford is one point behind Pea Ridge with a score of 14 with Gattis two points back with 17. The fourth and fifth best national scores by comparison are 40 and 97.
Several Benton County schools are in the Artsonia program with Rogers Bellview the next best school in the county with a 925th national ranking.
Fans or supporters who would like to utilize the school website to make a comment or become a fan should log onto www.artsonia.com/pearidge2.
Community on 11/12/2014