In 1994 The Oklahoma legislature passed House Bill 1017 for the reform of elementary and secondary public schools. Part of the bill stipulated Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS) objectives that all graduating seniors must meet by Spring 1997. The PASS objectives contained fine arts requirements for all students. Only in the Spring of 1996 did most school districts realize that existing band and choir programs would not meet the PASS goals for all students. Without an authorized state exam as a springboard for determining exactly how the State Department of Education defined achievement, school principals began parceling out the objectives to instructors in core areas of the curriculum in the hope that teachers would be able to devise activities that would adequately prepare students for whatever competency test the state finally devised. For example, an American history teacher might be responsible for developing and implementing activities and experiences in music, art, and drama that students would need to meet state standards as defined by a given district. Some schools responded by offering "humanities" courses taught by the band director, choir director, an English teachers, or a social studies teacher. Very likely, most teachers did not experience an interdisciplinary course as a student, did not study any methods in teacher-preparation courses. and feel only minimally prepared to deliver such courses to students. In rural and IA-2A school districts this problem is aggravated further by the fact that the full complement of course offerings or the appropriate instructors are not available at the secondary level, thereby limiting the resources from which the designated instructor might gather information for the course. Even when schools are serious about meeting the fullest intent of the PASS objectives and strive to integrate the arts and humanities throughout the curriculum they have no official resource material or guides to assist them in planning.
    The investigators proposed to address this problem by creating an integrated multimedia web site where lessons and activities could be accessed electronically and integrated with textbased class assignments. By using the Internet and World Wide Web access, students and teachers have greater curricular flexibility. Teachers may use the web site to underscore or amplify activities or projects that they deem relevant to meeting PASS objectives or course objectives. Also, they may use the suggested assignments on the web site or assign related homework to be completed independently. The only expense for the schools is the connect costs to an Internet server.
    The proposed materials instruct students in the techniques of gathering information on selected aspects of art, architecture, history, literature, music, philosophy, and the culture of specific historical eras and ethnic groups. Students access information through Netscape which links the material to other sites on the Internet and World Wide Web. Specific projects teachers might assign require students to make qualitative decisions about information, download files, and construct portfolios on topics in each subject area. Since much of the work is computer based, students can proceed at their own rate and teachers become resource persons who oversee the students work. Since few teachers are well versed in all of the subject areas that come under the heading "Arts and Humanities," this project allows them to guide student work without having to be directly responsible for preparing lectures or class activities. Students are encouraged to work in groups and to assist their more "technologically challenged" class mates. Separate sections provide guidelines for teachers which, hopefully, will allow principals to select an appropriate instructor from a larger pool of applicants than present practice allows while minimizing the preparation time for that teacher.
    To our knowledge, this project is the first web-based "text" for instruction in integrated arts and humanities. The Internet allows one to supplement narrative explanations of artistic forms, historical eras, and ethnic cultures with images, sound clips, nonprint sources, and nonlinear explanations. For example, if a term or concept needs further elucidation, by clicking on the hot button, students can access additional files that provide definitions, illustrations, and examples. When students feel they understand a concept or term, they can go back to the narrative and continue. The narrative, itself, is not altered but linked to additional information that can clarify and deepen student understanding. Linear narrative need no longer confine arts textbooks. One can move to additional files, web sites, home pages, sound clips, digital images, references, etc. without cluttering the narrative with footnotes or breaking it up with digressions. While it is not possible to illustrate this potential in traditional print narrative form, the example below illustrates basically how this new technology allows for greater in-depth study and appreciation of the arts and humanities.

Sample of one topic area (music) in one subject era (The Renaissance)
    The text chapters are organized around these historical eras or cultures: 

• Greco-Roman 
• Romanesque 
• Gothic 
• Renaissance 
• Baroque 
• Classic 
• Romantic 
• Modem 
• African American 
• Pacific Rim 
• East Indian 
• Native American 
• Hispanic American 
• American Popular Culture

    Each chapter follows this matrix:
        I. Historical Era or Culture
        II. Topic Areas: Art, Architecture, Culture, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy
        III. Specific Study Areas: Persons, Forms, Styles, Terms
    This text stresses three instructional elements: writing, interaction with Internet and the World Wide Web, and direct immersion in artistic forms. Students listen to music, view art, sculpture, and architecture read, reflect, and write about literature and philosophy. Rather than have the artifacts and theories of the period presented in linear narrative with terms to memorize and concepts to define, students are expected to search out topics that they find interesting and construct responses that teachers and students find meaningful. The student's final evaluation consists of a portfolio of images, article summaries, and personal reflections about the historical period as well as noted individuals and master works of the period.
Each era and culture unit is self-contained. Students may begin at any point. Each unit will contain the following information:

• Narrative summaries and explanations of all persons, forms, styles, and terms within each topic area with links to images, sound clips, museum sites, home pages, etc. that, in turn, provide links to additional web-sites.
• Specific projects to enhance study of a particular period or culture.
• Encyclopedia and article references for students to peruse if they desire.

The following example illustrates student activities and projects in one topic area within one historical era. Since this example is written out and does not use a web browser, all "hot" terms are italicized. Normally, such "hot" terms are underlined in blue and link to additional information sites. 

Renaissance music: While the exact beginning of the historical period is questionable, some scholars date the beginning of Renaissance musical style with the appearance of the composers and performers who accompanied the Duke of Bedford to his ambassadorial post in Southern France in 1375. These musicians brought a typically British style of singing in intervals of sixths which softened the harsher perfect intervals that were considered proper by European theorists and composers. By 1450 composers such as Guillaume Dufay and Johannes Ockegehm wrote triadic sonorities that a century earlier would have been considered inappropriate theoretically. Renaissance musical style, therefore, begins about 1375 and lasts until c. 1613, the death of the Venetian composer Carlo Gesualdo. While composers and performers continued to write and perform in Renaissance style well into the 1600s, historical tastes changed under the leadership of Claudio Monteverdi and the Renaissance style fell out of favor. 
    Renaissance music is linear, with three to six individual voice lines sounding at the same time. This style, known as polyphony, evolved from earlier Medieval styles and continues to the present. The typical Renaissance musical composition lasts from three to six minutes, is written for four voices which sing Latin texts adapted from the scriptures. The most common musical form is the motet, a sacred musical form usually performed in churches and the private chapel services of the nobility who kept resident choirs in their service. The madrigal is a secular equivalent of the motet. It, too, is in three to six voices.

    Most Renaissance music was composed for use in sacred services or for public events at court. The major cathedrals of Europe kept one or more composers and a resident choir supplemented with instrumentalists who composed and performed music for the church services during the week. Equally, the nobility of Europe served as music patrons by paying the living expenses and support of composers and performers who wrote music in their honor for banquets, dances, state ceremonies, etc. Today, the only music we know of this period comes from hand-written manuscripts that were preserved in private libraries. Music printing first began during the Renaissance. Pierre Attaignant published the first music books in 150 1. These same libraries preserved the first music books. Since many of the composers were associated with religious institutions, their music was preserved in church libraries as well.
    All musical forms evolve and over the two hundred years of the Renaissance era, several generations of motels and madrigals can be clearly defined. Here is a list of several major composers of the period with one of their works. By clicking on the highlighted title, you can hear the first sixty seconds of each work and by clicking on the composer's name you can receive more biographical information.

The Motet
Guillaume Dufay (c.1400-1474):                Motet. Ave maris stella
Johannes Ockegehm (1410-1497):             Mass Movement: Kyrie from the Missa
Prolationern
Josquin Des Pres (1440-1521):                  Motet. Ave maris stella
Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594):        Mass Movement: Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus
Mass
The Madrigal
Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594):
Cipriano de Rore (1515-1565):
Carlo Gesualdo: (1566-1613):
Renaissance music sounds different to our ears. Unlike contemporary music, Renaissance music does not use a strong rhythmic pulse. The instruments of the day were quite archaic by contemporary standards and their sound, called timbre, is very different that modem instruments.

For the button "Renaissance Music" the following connection is provided:

Historians often call Renaissance music by the term "early music," which means any music composed before c. 1600. While the term also includes music of historical eras prior to the Renaissance, recordings of and resources on early music often focus on Renaissance music. Renaissance music was vocal music primarily. Instruments only accompanied the voices or performed dance music separately. While a great amount of Renaissance music exists in performance editions today, most of it is no longer performed because the religious services for which it was composed no longer use Latin and because the music requires trained musicians who have the skill to perform the music stylistically. You can begin to explore the resources at this site: www.best.com/~mccomb/music/early/faq/beginst/renaiss. him.

Student Projects: Select any project as one of the seven to be completed in your study of the Renaissance.
1. Select one of the composers listed above and complete an Internet search of the composer, noting books, articles, recordings, and symposia on him or his work. Complete a ten item bibliography that uses an encyclopedia source, a book, a journal article, and a recording. Preface your bibliography with a one paragraph (minimum six sentences) biography of the composer. For example, several sites contain information on the composer, Guillaume Dufay. You can begin your search with his name or with a site such as the one listed above which is devoted to Renaissance music generally.
2. Locate, read, and summarize an article about Renaissance music and style (minimum 2-page report).
3. Conduct an Internet search to locate visual images of Renaissance musicians in performance. Download and print ten images noting the source of the image and the painter or sculptor.
4. Locate images and definitions of ten musical instruments unique to the Renaissance. If possible, add a sound clip of the instrument.
5. Select a person whose name appeared in your searches and reading. Develop a biography, selected images, and sound clips to illustrate that person's musical contribution to Renaissance era. You may select a form or a style instead of a person.
6. Consult with your teacher about a different project based on the music information you reviewed. You may wish to work with one or more classmates in a combined performance or lecture project.

    In constructing this web site the authors followed the model provided by William Fleming in his Arts and Ideas (Fleming, 1995). Naturally, Fleming's book contains much more detailed information that this web site but the intent was not to copy Fleming's book but to open his topic areas to student exploration and development. Also, some of the web site topic areas are not in Fleming's book. As guidelines the authors wrote the narrative before trying to locate specific sites. Without some sense of where one is headed with the narrative selecting the link options lacks any coherency. Naturally, the narrative had to be adapted because a web link to a specific painting, artist, or composer might not be available while a truly excellent web site was available on a similar work.
    The authors found several problems in selecting sites for secondary students. 1. Some sites are written at a level higher than secondary students might be expected to master or they are linked, in turn, to sites that parents and school boards might find objectionable. This requires that one review the entire site before selecting it and check out all the links in that site. 2. Depending on the software some images and sound clips do not transfer well. Trying to outfit a school computer with all of the plug-ins required to view every site can lengthen access time greatly. The most important reminder for constructing such a site efficiently is to make hard copies of all links in order to use them again without having to scroll back and complete the link before being able to copy the http pathway. The sample sites listed below contain information that can apply to many integrated topics.
    In conclusion, one might ask the simple question "What advantage does this project afford students?" Besides the time saving advantages listed above, this approach to integrated arts study has two basic advantages over print-based alternatives. First, students actively select the knowledge they wish to pursue. They can follow one or more topics as far as their time and interest allow. They are limited only by their curiosity. Second, the access to multimedia reinforcement of the topic at hand is more immediate and varied. Students studying T S. Eliot's The Waste Land, for example, can click to a copy of the text and read it while they listen to a recording of T. S. Eliot reading the poem. With new sites appearing daily, the number of options for students and the quality of those options increases almost exponentially and the information base in which students work is available at little or no cost to the student or the school district. Students have the opportunity to meet current interests in computer and Internet literacy under the supervision of teachers who can guide them in proper educational applications of these vast evolving resources of the Internet to meet identified educational objectives.

Reference and Recommended Sites
Fleming, W. (1995). Arts and Ideas, 9th Edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt & Brace College Publishers.
Architecture
http://www.tulane.edu/lester/text/lester.htmI
Art
http://www.christusrex.org (Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums)
http://sunsite.unc.edu/wm/
http://witcombe.bcpw.sbe.edu/ARTlLinks.htmI
Music
http://www.classicalmus.com/bmgclassics/comp-index/index.htmI (composer bios)
http://www.hnh.com/qcomp.htm
http://www.prs.net/midi/html (MIDI archives of classical works)
Philosophy
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/ (INTERNET Encyclopedia of Philosphy)
http://www.knuten.liu.se/-bjoch509/
Web Project Address
http://www.ou.edu/finearts/music/prideout/arthome.htm