Artsonia

Artsonia is a digital art museum for kids that's available on the web as well as via iOS and Android apps. Teachers create a school page on Artsonia and use it to share what their students have created via galleries. Galleries can include a description of the project, materials used, and national standards addressed. Projects include drawings, paintings, ceramics, handicrafts, writings, yarn art, 3D papercrafts, and more. Teachers can ask students to complete artist statements, including specific prompts they set up. Students use the companion app to photograph, edit, and upload their work, and add the title and artist statement. Parents can easily upload their kids' artwork as well, through the app or on the website. There are options to crop, adjust, or edit the photo, as well as to blur areas of the image, such as personal information. Students can earn awards, be added to the hall of fame, and become the artist of the week. Parents see their children's work before it comes home, and are able to share it with loved ones all over the world. Students, teachers, and families can view the creations and leave comments for the artists. Artsonia is funded by sales from a gift shop that parents can use to buy items personalized with their children's art. A portion of the money goes back to the school; this can be used to buy much-needed supplies.

- Jenny Bristol

I do really like this app. Makes it very easy to keep student artwork organized. However, whenever I take photographs of work portrait style, the app automatically rotates it landscape. Same thing happens when I take them landscape; it rotates them portrait. Very annoying when I'm trying to upload 25 artworks in a short amount of time.

- Renée Douglas

I was instructed to sign up for Artsonia through my child's public elementary school. Unfortunately, Artsonia used this opportunity to start heavily spamming me to buy tchotchkes (low quality mugs, t-shirts, etc) custom-printed with my child's "artwork". These "reminders" go out multiple times a month and sometimes multiple times a week. There is no way to unsubscribe (I can unsubscribe from all email but of course that means I won't get notifications when my child's teacher uploads their artwork which is the sole purpose of Artsonia.) In addition, Artsonia collects sensitive personal information under the pretense of determining "age-appropriate website content". It is obvious that they intend to sell your information - if it were to determine appropriate content, they could just confirm that you are over 18 and not require the exact birth year and other personally identifying information.

- Michelle Mosher