Last week we held our first ever Digital Learning Discussion – a Twitter based event intended to encourage the sharing of ideas and good practice in using Twitter to support learning in the museum sector.

Over the course of the event, we tweeted 5 questions – one per hour. Using the hashtag #museDLD for reply collection, the Digital Learning Discussion included debates on the possibilities and benefits of using Twitter as a museum learning tool, and brought to light case studies of past use. Participants reflected on challenges and proposed ideas for future participation and application.

We had a great response to the questions, with over 175 tweets received and dozens of Twitter users from a wide variety of museum roles engaged with the event to discuss their views and experiences. Below are a selection of just some of the tweets we received and discussions that went on between tweeters on the day.

Q1 – What do you think are the benefits of using Twitter in museum learning?

Tweeters mentioned that Twitter can allow museums to communicate with a range of new audiences, making use of a technology which many already have access to. Tweeters suggested that Twitter offers the benefit of providing a virtual space in which debate and dialogue may be encouraged – online discussions need not necessarily necessitate an onsite visit.

I think it can get you direct to an audience (maybe not the usual audience of Learning departments…).
— Adrian (@acediscovery)

It enables you to talk to the audience in a medium they use on a daily bases – not ‘stuffy old museum labels’.
— MoDiP (@MoDiPAUB)

I think Twitter offers the ability to give immediate feedback and to extend engagement away from the physical museum.
— Claire Ross (@clairey_ross)

Direct responses from the public, dialogue between audiences, audiences inside and outside the gallery can create dialogue.
— melany rose (@melanosaurus)

Interesting Qs! Key benefits are engaging different audiences and encouraging debate.
— laura jane lannin (@l_lanni)

Many #museDLD participants mentioned that there is often a marketing tone to content tweeted by museums, with many sites tweeting about learning activities rather than using tweets as a learning activity in themselves:

Useful for promoting a one-off event.
— Emma Espley (@EmmaEspley)

We use it mainly as a signpost to other resources – so marketing really.
— MoDiP (@MoDiPAUB)

If learning dept use twitter to say what they’re doing, isn’t that actually just marketing?
— Adrian (@acediscovery)

Q2 – What examples do you know of Twitter being used by museums for effective learning?

Tweeters referenced a range of projects, hashtag activities and studies in which Twitter has been used effectively for learning:

I think https://www.mylifeasanobject.com was a really good use of twitter for learning. But that was a few years ago now.
- Claire Ross ‏@clairey_ross

Not sure if it’s learning per se, but I really like how @Your_Paintings are using twitter.
- Adrian ‏@acediscovery

I like @designmuseum‘s #fontsunday. Fun. Creative. Easy 4 every1 2 get involved w/their own unique take on the premise.
- Juno Rae ‏@junorae

I recently used twitter in a study w/ KS3 students at Museum of London. A paper discussing this study http://oro.open.ac.uk/33825/ .
- Koula Charitonos ‏@ch_koula

A number of museums that have specific learning Twitter accounts were also identified, a list of which can be found here: https://twitter.com/DLNET/cultural-learning-teams

Q3 – What challenges do you think face museums using Twitter for learning?

#museDLD participants identified a number of challenges impeding museums from using Twitter for learning, including difficulties agreeing on a museum-wide strategy, evaluation issues, virtual firewalls, and hesitant non-Twitter users – staff and audiences alike:

Working out the goals in a way that satisfies all stakeholders.
- Adrian ‏@acediscovery

How to measure learning and or engagement and or success are the biggest challenges.
- Claire Ross ‏@clairey_ross

Understanding that there are different audiences to engage with & being ‘allowed’ to do so.
- laura jane lannin ‏@l_lanni

Encouraging non-Twitter users to engage with & explore the medium – it can be daunting when you’re not a regular.
- laura jane lannin ‏@l_lanni

Actual barriers e.g. firewalls can be a challenge & I agree w/ @acediscovery working out a brand tone everyone’s ok with.
- Juno Rae ‏@junorae

Think there’s also a challenge for some learning staff to engage with tech. They like face-to-face interaction not phones.
- Adrian ‏@acediscovery

Q4 – How would you encourage participation in Twitter projects?

Tweeters made several suggestions for how museums could boost participation, including incorporating it into learning programmes and making good use of the Twitter hashtag function:

Target participation on-site within specific programmes. 
- Koula Charitonos ‏@ch_koula

I think hashtags such as #askacurator and #museummascot are great engagement tools to get institutions and public talking.
- Stuart D. Berry ‏@stuartdberry

Q5 – Going forward, how would you like to see Twitter used in museum learning?

#museDLD participants expressed their hopes for the future of Twitter use in museum learning, highlighting its use as a record of audience learning processes and its possibilities as a crowdsourcing tool to garner information audiences may have on objects from museum collections:

I would like more participants to share their on-site museum learning experiences and outputs on Twitter!
- Linzsay @linzsay

I’d love to see us using twitter to generate useful information about our objects from the whole tweeting world.
- Adrian ‏@acediscovery

This first Twitter event explored the social media’s learning potential and acknowledged challenges as a step to overcoming them. We’d like to thank everyone who took part for offering their unique opinions and experiences. We hope that the points raised will be of use to those involved in social media strategy planning, to encourage the application of Twitter in such ways that it effectively supports learning and engagement with museum audiences.

A full transcript from the event can be read and downloaded here: http://www.tweetarchivist.com/662fb95c/2

Have an idea for a topic you think we should cover in future #museDLDs? We’d love to hear your ideas – why not leave a comment on this post or tweet us your ideas @DLNET.

Join us for our first ever Twitter based Digital Learning Discussion - a day long online event to encourage the sharing of ideas and good practice in using digital technologies to support learning in the cultural heritage sector.

The topic for this inaugural social media event will be Twitter itself – we’ll be asking you questions relating to its current use by museums and its application as a learning tool. We’d love to hear how you approach Twitter use in your museums.

Keep an eye out for our tweets and join in the discussion 11am Tuesday 26 February. Direct your tweets to @DLNET and remember to use hashtag #museDLD so we can collect your responses!

We’ll be summarising the tweets so check back at our website www.digitallearningnetwork.net after the event for a round up of the day.

https://twitter.com/DLNET

With information overload now being a part of every day life, when is the ideal time to introduce the skills that can enable pupils to identify, analyse and make sense of the information they need to become successful learners? The National Library of Scotland sees such skills as vital to ensuring young people are equipped with the skills not only to become successful learners at school level but through their whole educational journey. It is currently developing an online resource which aims to introduce these vital skills to primary pupils.

Through six stages, primary teachers can work with their pupils to understand the basic research skills needed to create a classroom project.  From understanding primary and secondary sources to knowing where to loook for information, to checking and verifying facts, the site shows pupils how to critically evaluate the information they find from a variety of sources.

Allan Bennett, a popular children’s author in Scotland who specialises in writing history books for young people, guides teachers and pupils through each of the stages, providing fun, fact-filled activities for use both in the classroom or online in pairs/individually. Designed to meet Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence‘s  ‘Literacy across Learning’ element, the Project Blaster website  introduces the skills for building critical literacy. This states that:

‘Children and young people not only need to be able to read for information; they also need to be able to work out what trust they should place on the information and to identify when and how people are aiming to persuade and influence them.’

Information and critical literacy skills are vital 21^st century skills for young people to have so that they do not become mere passive consumers of information but are able to investigate, question, analyse, and become creators of information themselves.

digital.nls.uk/project-blaster

I recently read Nesta’s Decoding Learning: The Proof, Promise and Potential of Digital Education report. It makes interesting reading and has a lot of takes aways for digital learning in museums.

The report was written for Nesta by researchers at the IOE’sLondon Knowledge Lab (LKL) and Nottingham University’s Learning Sciences Research Institute (LSRI) and it pulls together evidence about the innovative use of technology to support learning and the impact this can have for students.

The report offers a range of examples of learning and teaching being supported by well-used technology and is organised around learning activities rather than by types of technology, producing 8 learning themes:  

• Learning from experts
• Learning with others
• Learning through Making
• Learning through exploring
• Learning through inquiry
• Learning through Practising
• Learning from assessment
• Learning in and across Settings

The report argues that we need to move towards a focus on learning and what works for learners.

The report identifies trends and opportunities grounded in effective practice and sets out what the authors believe are some of the most compelling opportunities to improve learning through technology.  

One of the things that the report discusses is to make better use of what we’ve got and to change the mindset amongst teachers and learners: from a “plug and play” approach where digital tools are used, often in isolation, for a single learning activity; to one of “think and link” where those tools are used in conjunction with other resources where appropriate, for a variety of learning activities.

The report highlights that in order for schools to explore the full potential of technologies they need time and support, something I think we in the museum community can help with.  

© IWM (D 11005)

On 15th October IWM (Imperial War Museums) hosted a Digital Learning Workshop for staff from across its five branches.  The Workshop was hosted by Charlie Keitch, the Digital Learning Officer, National & International Programmes & Projects, IWM.   Here he tells us about the reasons for putting on the workshop and what IWM is planning to do as a result.

First of all, let me give you a bit of background.  I am relatively new in post at IWM, having started in the summer and the post itself is also a new one.  A large focus is the upcoming centenary of the First World War and I was taken on to develop a range of online learning resources targeted primarily at secondary schools and young people.  These resources are not intended to be visit specific and should be just as relevant for someone who hasn’t visited one of our branches as someone who has.  We’re also designing them for an international audience so they need to be relevant for people based anywhere in the world, so I’ve done a  lot of work looking at how the First World War is taught in Commonwealth countries like India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.  These resources will be incorporated into a new online presence for IWM’s different learning departments, which we will be developing throughout 2013, and which will be available via iwm.org.uk.

That all sounds very exciting, but I had a lot of questions relating to our wider offer, particularly content that dealt with conflicts beyond the First World War.  For example, IWM currently has a range of online resources available via tpyf.com so we would have to consider these as well and think about how they could be updated and incorporated into the resources we would be creating.  We would also need to think about the resources IWM already offers online like our Collections in Context articles and material that has been made available via external sites like the Google Art Project.  How would these link up with our new resources? What about content for young people outside of school – what was that going to look like?  Basically, I wanted to ensure that our online learning offer made sense as a whole and that people could easily find the content that was useful and relevant to them.

Alongside that I was really keen that we think about ‘Digital Learning’ in a wider sense and what that meant for IWM beyond our online offer.  So, what should our digital learning offer be for schools visiting one of our sites and how does that relate to groups who take part in one of our learning sessions?   That’s not to say that people haven’t thought about this already.  For example, IWM North have already incorporated tablets into one of their learning sessions in a really interesting way.  I was keen to think about how we could ensure a consistent approach across all our branches, which would feel like part of the same offer as the online resources.   Again, everything had to make sense individually and as part of a greater whole.

Which leads me on to the workshop!  I was really keen that myself, as well as other key staff from across IWM, were able to learn from the brilliant work which other people are already doing, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. So I thought about colleagues who were doing things that seemed relevant to us. Thanks to a combination of calling in favours and bribing people with the offer of a free lunch, I put together a panel of colleagues from outside organisations including The British Museum, Museum of London, Royal Museums Greenwich, TATE, and Wellcome Collection.  Whilst wanting to make the most of their expertise, I didn’t want to give them too much work to do as I was very aware that they were already donating their time and they were all busy people.  I asked everyone to lead a 10 minute discussion covering subjects ranging from online provision for different audiences to digital workshops and mobile learning.  Happily, everyone seemed very enthusiastic to take part and spoke for at least twice as long as we’d scheduled, meaning that it was a struggle to fit everyone in before lunch!  It was a great morning and led to some very interesting conversations amongst the attendees from IWM in the afternoon, but everyone who attended seemed to appreciate the opportunity to meet and discuss what other organisations were doing so I’d really recommend it as an approach if you can find someone to foot the bill for lunch! 

So, what next?  Well, I had a bit of an epiphany half way through the day when I realised that I couldn’t do everything, in fact it’s highlighted in bright yellow highlighter in my notes!  More accurately, I realised that I couldn’t do everything at once.  The priority has to be our online resources and content and ensuring that these are ready for the centenary.  Luckily, everyone else agreed with me so I’m currently working on getting the plans for these really firmed up and talking to people around IWM to ensure they draw on the highlights of IWM’s collections.  I’m also working closely with staff from across the learning teams at our different branches, as well as our Digital Media department, to make sure that our wider resources are developed in tandem with those for the centenary.

A major theme to come out of the day was the importance of having a vision / manifesto for our digital learning offer and this was something I was hoping we would be able to produce on the back of the workshop.  However, this will now be developed early in 2013 in conjunction with a new learning and engagement strategy for IWM.  This is fantastic, because it means digital learning isn’t being seen as separate to the rest of our offer and isn’t being retrofitted to an existing strategy, it’s being thought of as part of the whole, just as it should be.  As for digital learning beyond the website, it’s been put onto the backburner for the time being, but that’s not to say things aren’t happening.  For example, we’re currently waiting to find out about an exciting project which will involve us working with an outside organisation to trial some onsite activities in a new way.  Hopefully these will have the potential to roll out across different IWM branches in the future, so there’s still plenty going on!    

Keynote speeches

Keynote speech from Nick Winterbotham, Group for Education in Museums (GEM) Chair and Director, Winterbotham Associates at Thinktank.

For our joint conference with Museums Computer Group (MCG), we invited two bloggers to record the event – Nadja Ryzhakova used her iPad to capture the day in pictures and Laura Martin provided a written summary. Their work is shown below:

On July 11th 2012, under the title ‘Engaging Digital Audiences in Museums’, professionals from museums throughout the UK gathered to discuss and share experiences to bring two different worlds together – museums and technology.

“None of us is smart as all of us” – with this quotation and using a ‘Nail Puzzle’ challenge attempted by two willing volunteers to exemplify his points, Nick Winterbotham - Chair of Group for Education in Museums - asserted that dilemmas within museums should be met by professionals sharing experiences and observations. Only in these ways can results be achieved. We have important challenges knocking at our museum’s doors – we are living in fast changing society, with more and more different ways to digitally communicate and get engaged. Museums are having to find ways to beat the recession and the funding challenges it has brought, by demonstrating their importance in society.

As Nick quoted - “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”.

Nick’s speech highlighted the importance of people as the real source of heritage. Museums are not for things, museums are for people. And to reach people it is necessary more than ever to engage with them through new paths. To be connected. But, what is the better way to reach these audiences? How should we use museum resources to achieve this?

Matthew Cock - Head of Web at the British Museum  reflected about his Museum’s approach to audiences and mobile apps. He recognised that mobile technology has changed its patron and gone “from fun to fundamental” and only by understanding visitors needs can museums create suitable apps for them.

And not all visitors have the same needs to be fulfilled, they can be a mixture of social needs, intellectual, emotional, spiritual… Museums must use knowledge of their galleries and collections and explore different audience targets, considering how they can be connected through technology.

Until this point in the day we have talked about the ideas. About the spirit and the philosophy that leads the connection between these two not-so-separate worlds; museums and technology. But… What about the cases? What about the real practice?

Lucinda Blaser - Digital Projects Manager at Royal Museums Greenwich – told us about her experience with the 2009 project ‘Discovery sessions – new ways of learning’. Through a user generated tagging mobile device children were encouraged to create their own historical enquiries, and to learn more about topics which interested them. Lucinda noted that children behaved especially well in this scenario, showing more engagement with the galleries, being collaborative with other students and focusing well on the activity in hand. Teachers were crucially also included in the activity, by being provide with specially modified mobile devices which meant they could oversee student activities, send messages to them.

John Coburn - Project Coordinator ICT, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, Newcastle – discussed his recent app experiment which purposefully attempted a different approach from the norm. In his project, ‘Hidden Newcastle – failed inventors and body dredgers’, the focus was on people of Newcastle’s stories – 13 common people, not famous, not regularly commemorated ones. The criteria used to select these individual’s stories was that they displayed elements of failure, macabre, eccentricity…  John was not looking to teach a deep knowledge of Newcastle’s history with this app, but instead was looking to engage users in a sensation of wonderment. The combination of the app with its unique stories and visiting the physical sites where events happened was intended to create a bond of affectivity and empathy, which is the motor that stirs public imagination, encouraging them to explore, and engage themselves.

Isabel Benavides - Programme Manager (Family Outreach) at Museum of London – tackled one of the big concerns about the relationship between technologies and audiences: the impact. At the Museum they are trying to go beyond the traditional methods of enquiries, beyond the usual survey. By experimenting with technologies and a bit of imagination, they are focused on achieving something more valuable: subjective opinions.  Communication between parents and children has been collected through digital devices such as easy speak microphones and cameras, allowing visitors to record their experiences and thoughts. Tools like ‘talking mats’ have been introduced, on which visitors can express the things they have enjoyed or not.

Martha Henson -Multimedia Producer at Wellcome Trust – told us about their on-line game ‘High Tea’. This game, set during the Opium Wars, has proved very successful on the web, and allowed Martha to collect useful information about what users knew and felt about in this historical period. Rather than a game primarily intended to attract audiences to their collection and exhibitions, it was a fun and engaging way to spread knowledge about this phenomenon in history, raising empathy and comprehension about it.

During the workshops in the afternoon there was time to talk about doubts, concerns, ideas and issues. Probably, one of the most repeated words during the workshops and the end of day ‘unconference’ was sustainability. Despite being a conference about technology use, everyone was very clear that it is very necessary to resist being technology driven. 

Some of the most applauded themes to come out of discussions was the need for experimentation – piloting little activities, sharing best practices, consulting visitors about their needs and working in partnership with other departments, museums and organisations.

As a final reflection, I would pick up one of the sentences used to describe the state of the current situation and the aim of the conference: an intricate explosion – something with a lot of pieces and layers mixed together, which have to work together, combining slowly and without leaving anything behind, to finally explode. To finally blossom.

Notes about the artist: Nadja Ryzhakova is a young Russian-born London-based artist, who despite her traditional arts background and education has chosen an innovative and 21st century medium to create her art – the iPad. Nadja’s art is part of what is known as net art, digital art that uses a network as its means of circulation and diffusion. Nadja defines her artworks as “iPaintings”, a term not used solely by her but one that is most appropriate to the nature of her works: traditional and representative in their style, but created using a progressive technological medium, they are truly digital paintings that simultaneously challenge both conventional fine art and net art.

In April 2012 she founded the iPainting Facebook Page – an open online art studio uniting people who draw on mobile devices from all over the world. It is also open for those who accept iPainting as a progressive form of art, for art historians grappling with new media art, for enthusiastic supporters of mobile devices, and for curious individuals. http://www.facebook.com/iPaintings

Portforlio: http://nadjaryzhakova.carbonmade.com/

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/79719914@N08/

Twitter: @Nadiart

We are pleased to announce the programme for Engaging digital audiences in museums, on 11 July 2012, at the University of Manchester.

Curated jointly by the Digital Learning Network and the Museums Computer Group, this event will bring together the two worlds of museum technology and museum learning and encourage them to talk and learn from each others’ skills and experience.

Book tickets now at: http://mcg-dlnet.eventbrite.com/.

Room G.107 in the Alan Turing building, University of Manchester.

Book now for what promises to be a popular day featuring best practice case studies, workshops around key digital challenges and an ‘unconference’ session where you suggest the themes ensuring we discuss the most pressing challenges that you’re currently facing.

Follow@dlnet  or @ukmcg on Twitter for updates.

Book tickets now at: http://mcg-dlnet.eventbrite.com/.

A conference focusing on Understanding aims, audiences and outcomes in work with difficult and sensitive heritages was held in February 2012 at City University and the Tower of London.

Amy Ryall and Martin Bazley helped deliver one of the sessions on the programme, dealing with the use of digital technology.  The session was highly subscribed and participants had access to computers on which they looked at a number of online examples, including http://www.lives-at-war.org.uk/.  Lives at War is the product of an intergenerational project in Brighton involving students from Longhill High School and a group of older Brighton residents. It uses a virtual reality world which is populated with the products of the project – films, stories and memories.

Screenprint of Lives at War

During discussion of this and several other online resources, a number of points arose regarding the effectiveness and appropriateness of the use of digital technology for learning about difficult histories. One advantage of using digital media is that it can help make material more engaging; but in dealing with difficult and sensitive subjects a game-style approach may not be appropriate. Making something ‘fun’ can distort the learning outcomes originally intended, and does not necessarily lead to an understanding of the subject. Making it engaging, interesting, challenging and immersive are all realistic aspirations when employing digital media, and can be achieved without reducing the impact or understanding of challenging subjects merely to a bit of fun.

Using digital ‘characters’ can make participants forget that history is about real people and turn it into a cartoon in which nothing is genuine. If we achieve one thing when teaching history, it is to convey the understanding that history happens to real people, the good things and the bad things.  It is also important for those using the digital media to feel that their input and interaction matter. We cannot expect young people to learn about history if they are invited to interact as if they have a say in the outcome, only to be told at the end that it didn’t happen like that: far better to engage young people with actual decisions that were made at the time and then explore why those decisions were taken.  Reflecting the consequences of such decisions is not always best done via the sort of game logic that is typically of digital learning activities, which tend to impose over- simplified models in order to make them workable in purely functional terms.  

For example, one game set in a military situation involved making decisions about logistics, which were tricky to engage with and also made no reference to the human side of conflict. The group found this lack of understanding frustrating and it led to them moving through the scenario quickly, without engaging with the history involved. It was a good example of digital methods not leading to historical understanding. Others, which involved a ‘reward’ style system – participants answering a question in order to make a character do something – caused similar issues. For both these two examples, interaction focused more on the digital interface, rather than learning about and understanding the subject material involved. This would not be considered helpful in any learning scenario, but with subjects involving difficult or sensitive histories it seems particularly problematic. In any situation, the key to dealing with subjects in history is to treat them with respect. By reducing them to a series of click-throughs to get to the end, we risk actually causing respect for the subject to be lost by learners using the resource.

In short, digital methods of engaging learners in challenging histories have to start with the history and keep the focus on it. As for any learning engagement method, a strong focus on intended learning outcomes should guide development of the resource.  Learning outcomes must be decided and agreed engagement at the outset and must also remain the driving force behind the resource throughout, informed by evaluation and testing with members of the target audience. Ultimately a digital learning resource is only effective if it fulfils the desired learning outcomes, and getting this right is an iterative process, as summarised in the diagram below.

 We would welcome any comments on the above or suggestions for other points to consider when planning use of digital technology to support learning around challenging histories.

Amy Ryall, Professional Development Manager, Imperial War Museums ARyall@iwm.org.uk

Martin Bazley, Digital Heritage Consultant, Martin Bazley & Associates martin@martinbazley.com

The Staffordshire Hoard poses a challenge  to tell the story and produce learning content because it is such a mystery, how can we tell the story of the Hoard when it is unknown? In case you don’t know the Staffordshire Hoard is the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found. It was discovered by a metal detector in field in Staffordshire in July 2009.  The story that the media has tended to focus on is about how it was discovered and how much it was worth. It was acquired by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (BMAG) and Stoke Museums in March 2010 at a cost of £3.285 million. 

The conservation and research programmes at BMAG and Stoke Museums will gradually discover more about the Hoard. But how can we can convey this learning process – even better, how can we allow people to discover and learn with us? I should of course add – with no budget! The answer for us at BMAG has been to attempt to capture what is being discovered and learnt as it is happens via blogs, videos and recently a live web chat, using the free/cheap digital platforms at our disposal. The conservation team Deborah Cane (project leader), Deborah Magnoler and Cymbeline Story have been blogging about their conservation work and so have other people working on the project. You can see many of the blog posts on the Staffordshire Hoard website  (due to a web glitch older posts are not showing at the moment).

Conservation Team: Cymbeline Storey, Deborah Magnoler and Deborah Cane

The video work has been done with a cheap flip camera by the conservation team themselves. The flip camera was the perfect fit for doing something quickly and easily at low cost but that still produced good quality images in HD. I edit the film using the flip software and subtitle the videos using Universal Subtitles. We have produced 19 short Staffordshire Hoard themed videos since March 2011. The range of subject matters include conservation methods, new discoveries, the 2011 Mercian Trail tour, the 2011-12 Washington D.C. exhibition, behind the scene tours and a family Anglo-Saxon Day. They are available on the BMAG Youtube channel (all 19), Staffordshire Hoard Vimeo channel and the Staffordshire Hoard website.

The live web chat was the idea of Geoff Coleman, from birminghamnewsroom.com (Birmingham City Council’s online press office), who had previously used Cover it Live (a free live blogging tool) for other council work. Curators Dave Symons and Morn Capper were asked about 30 questions by the public from the UK, USA and Germany over one hour, and as many as possible were answered. You can see a captured version of the the Hoardchat on the Staffordshire Hoard website and new images of some of the Staffordshire Hoard objects that have been conserved were put on Flickr to tie in with the event . We are going to do it all again with the Conservation Team soon.

Live web chat: David Symons and Morn Capper answer questions about the Hoard

From people’s comments on our blog and their own blog posts it appears that many are enjoying the ability to learn with us, to ask questions – and make some calculated guesses! Museums attempt to tell the story of objects but we don’t know that story, we’re working on the pieces that will hopefully fit it together. And that means that people beyond the museum can be attempting to work it out at the same time as us. The most popular video and blog posts have been related to the Mystery Object. The interest in this started when we posted a video about how conservator Deborah Magnoler had noticed that two pieces of the Hoard fitted together.  

A third piece was discovered but the object remained equally mysterious and David Symons posed the question of what it might be in a post on the Staffordshire Hoard website. Since then we have been inundated with replies on the blog and via twitter and Facebook - many of them very good guesses. He then wrote another Mystery Object post looking at these suggestions – and as a result more guesses kept coming. He’s promising another post again very soon on the new suggestions!  The great thing about this process is that we are learning together with the public, and learning from the public. 

The mystery object is made up of three pieces that fit together

As plans for a new Staffordshire Hoard gallery come together and we learn more we will of course be able to develop a more sophisticated digital offer that attempts to interpret the Hoard and brings it to life both in the new gallery and via other platforms. We already have lots of exciting plans and building on what we have already achieved and learnt is going to be important – remaining open, sharing, listening, answering questions and admitting we don’t know all the answers! 

Linda Spurdle, Digital Manager, Birmingham Museums.

DLNET talked to Alex Flowers, the Digital Programmes Manager at the Victoria and Albert Museum, about the variety of digital events he offers to visitors, and the 3D printing event being run in conjunction with the upcoming “British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age” exhibition.

Hi Alex, welcome to the new look DLNET website. In your role as the V&A, what sort of events and resources are you responsible for planning?

One of the aspects that I love the most about my job is the variety of projects that I can involve myself in. The Digital Programmes team is based in the Learning and Interpretation department and we work across all audiences, combining on projects with other programmes and departments.

Throughout the year we run courses for adults in a variety of digital skills, crafts and media. As the programme manager I am responsible for finding tutors and working alongside them to develop the content of the course. Once they are up and running, I ensure that everything is going smoothly, answer the participants’ questions and more often than not, make emergency visits to the studio to manically update patches for our software, locate missing leads and reconnect printers to the network! 

There is also a digital learning strand of our family events programme which runs one Sunday a month and during the majority of the school holidays. We tie these into the current exhibitions on at the museum, giving us a chance to explore the collections through creative workshops and sometimes we have the pleasure of working with our artists in residence to get the public involved in their practice. (more…)

Great Escapes Moray – an app for iPhone/iPod touch

The Learning Team at the National Library of Scotland (myself and colleague Beverley Casebow) have been working with schools and community volunteers in Moray (north east Scotland) to create an insider’s guide to the area. Using the Library’s collection of 19th century ‘Handbooks for Travellers’ as inspiration, we wanted the app to reflect the unique voices and cultural heritage of the region as well as highlighting the area’s key historic industries – fishing, weaving and whisky.

Through the Library’s collections of archive film, historic maps, manuscripts and images, students and volunteers have chosen 20 “points of interest” to create an insider’s guide to this stunning area of Scotland proud of its historic associations with Macbeth, Vikings and the Picts.  From a lighthouse designed by Robert Louis Stevenson’s family to early dinosaur footprints on the Moray coast to the magnificent ruined cathedral in the centre of Elgin, it’s all brought to life by local students and community members.

It’s been a great outreach project for the wider community too as students have enlisted the help of older residents to recall the once bustling fishing port of Lossiemouth, the local Doric ‘Gaelic’ dialect and an interview with a Prime Minister’s granddaughter. We’ve also used the students’ own photography and artwork in the app so it’s a real example of a cross-generational, cross-curricular, multimedia project to coincide with the 2012 Year of Creative Scotland. We’ve been thrilled that it has also allowed the students & volunteers to discover their unique digital storytelling voice and provided the perfect platform to make our historic collections relevant to a 21st century audience. The app will be available free on the App store at the end of March 2012.

DLNET talked to Rhiannon Looseley, the Online Learning Manager at the Museum of London, about the new Picturebank.

Hi Rhiannon, welcome to the new look DLNET website.  Can you tell us about the Picturebank which has been introduced to Museum of London Website?

The new Picturebank at www.museumoflondon.org.uk/picturebank was built to replace a previous version which had loads of great content, but was beginning to show its age and had few key disadvantages that this new one corrects.  The Picturebank supports (and was developed alongside), the Pocket Histories – short introductions to areas of London’s history which use the Museum’s collections to tell their stories.  The Pocket Histories are intended to be for a general audience which includes school and college teachers/tutors and students but also generally interested adults, parents looking for homework resources etc.  The Picturebank, on the other hand, was developed specifically for schools and colleges.  It takes images from the Pocket Histories and explores each object further in an interface that was built with the needs of the classroom in mind.  Users can browse by period or by topic, or simply search by key word. Each object page can be viewed in a variety of different formats with just the enlarged image, or with a description and/or suggested discussion questions that can be turned on or off. (more…)

The Horizon report was officially launched at the Museum Computer Network Conference in Atlanta in November 2011, you can download it here.  It is an international report about leading museum technologies, with the main aim to identify and describe emerging technologies which will have a large impact on museums over the next five years. (more…)

The Digital Strategies in Heritage conference, or DISH for short, in Rotterdam was held at the begining of December 2011.  Where Wendy Earle from the BFI chaired a panel about digital learning strategies, or lack of, and asked everyone to start thinking really strategically about what digital learning means in the cultural sector and where exactly digital learning practitioners sit in cultural institutions.

The panel consisted of; Rhiannon Looseley from the Museum of London, Shelley Mannion from the British Museum, Wendy from BFI, Bridget McKenzie from Flow Associates,  Steven Stegers from EUROCLIO, and me (Claire Ross, chair of the Digital Learning Network).

It was a really interesting panel that raised more questions than answers, but I think that it was really quite telling that we all had questions about the jobs we do, the experiences we provide, and the roles we play in the wider institution, and how there really aren’t any best practice guides or key institutional guidelines of how digital learning should be approached.  Or in fact evaluated.

Despite Learning being increasingly acknowledged to be a core function of museums, and the multitude of digital and online museum learning resources being produced there is still a lot of confusion about what all of that really means. As we stated in our panel abstract museums ‘have embraced the transformative possibilities of the digital realm. However, introducing digital initiatives into learning raises interesting questions that have not yet been fully discussed.’

On a practical level there are questions about responsibility and job roles; for example who is responsible for creating digital learning content within heritage institutions, and where do they sit within organizations? Tech, learning, curatorial, marketing?

But we raised other interesting questions:

• How can non-technical educators manage digital projects successfully?
• What partnerships have been established? Do they work efficiently? Do these partnerships include non-heritage partners?
• What kind of learning is encouraged?
• How is the impact measured?
• Is a learning framework used?
• Which audiences are addressed and how?

Then we raised more  strategic questions, including ‘what do we mean by learning in a digital context?’, ‘what kind of learning do we want to encourage?’ and how do we know if learning is taking (or has taken) place?

I would love to hear from anyone who has some asnwers to these questions.

I was really interested in questions about digital learning and the institutional mission and where does digital learning fit in with senior management policy decisions? Also issues of how do you get institutional support for digital learning research projects, particularly if you are doing something really new? Does that fit with institutional aims?  Also talking about whether or not personalised digital learning can be implemented in siloed museum departments? Is there collaboration and transparency required to do so efficiently?

The big question for me looked at whether focusing on the user, and whether or not we can create meaningful digital learning experiences with the visitor rather than for the visitor.

Overall  the panel were talking around how museums are rethinking how we engage with our audiences, and there are shifting ideas about learning becoming about active production and participation, and now museums increasingly expect projects to include some kind of digital learning element.  But there are challenges in demonstrating the impact of these on audiences and learners.  But it is important to have a sensible discussion about how these are impacting on the educational practice of heritage organisations.  And really as a panel we came to the conclusion that this hasn’t really been done yet, and perhaps this can be the start of proper discussions about this, and how dealing with digital technology and learning can become more strategic in its approach.

you can see my presentation above, and Shelley’s is below.
Strategies for Digital Learning (#dish2011)

View more PowerPoint from Shelley Mannion

This weekend I had fun reading the Museum edition of the Horizon report.   It made for very interesting reading.  It is American centric however the issues and technology discussed do transcend regional boundaries.

The report focuses on key trends and examines emergent technologies for their potential impact on and use in museum learning and interpretation.   They also highlight some significant challenges to supporting digital technology in museums.  The most obvious being financial difficulties, which of course will have a massive bearing following the comprehensive spending review which sees funding for culture slashed.  Somewhat boldly the report suggests that “any museum that is not making reasoned continual investment in its technological future is putting the museum’s ability to engage with ever more networked audiences at significant risk”.  I like this about the report, it is bold, and it doesn’t apologise for it.  It makes clear statements about what needs to be achieved in order for museums to reflect the impact of technology in every other aspect of everyday life.

The Horizon report is very well laid out; stating that there are 6 key technologies to watch and the time scales to which museums should be adopting them.

The near term horizon: Mobiles and Social Media

The second adoption horizon: Augmented reality and Location based services

And long term horizon: Gesture based computing and the Semantic web.

It also provides examples the technologies in practice and then some suggested reading.  I have highlighted the examples which I love:

Mobiles in practice: TAP Indianapolis Museum of Art

Mobile Media For Cultural and Historical Heritage Guidelines and pilot projects

Social media in practice: ArtBabble (play art loud – yes I have the sticker!)

Freeze Tag! the Brooklyn Museum

World Beach Project at the V&A is brilliant.

Teens and social media: An overview

Augmented Reality in practice: Culture Clic

Augmented reality technology brings learning to life

Location based services in practice: MoMA – Museum of Modern Art on foursquare

7 Things You Should Know about Location-Aware Applications

And finally gesture based computing and the semantic web

Gesture based computing in practice:

New devices are appearing all the time which take advantage of movements that are easy and intuitive to make.  This is the section of the report which I am least familiar with.  The examples the report suggest are interesting, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what the world of computer vision has to offer museums in the future.

Mapping Application Magnifies California’s Rich History

The Natural History Museum Darwin Centre also has some nice examples of touchtables and gesture based computing along with Nature+

Towards Interactive Museum: Mapping Cultural Contexts to Historical Objects

The Semantic Web in Practice: CHIP Project at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and CultureSampo are good examples.

Geospatio-temporal Semantic Web for Cultural
Heritage

Does anyone have any more examples of the 6 technologies the Horizon report mentions?

Claire Ross, Sept 30 2010.

As the new chair of DLNet, I thought I better introduce myself.

I love museums, all things digital and what people think of them. I work as a researcher atUCL Centre for Digital Humanities where I look at user experience and digital museum content.  I have worked in and around Museums since I was 16, and I have boundless enthusiasm for cultural heritage.  I would like to be able to convey my own passion for the potential museums and digital content have to offer for everyone.

I am very excited and nervous about my new role in equal measure. It is a great honour and I cannot thank enough the previous chair Martin Bazley and the rest of the committee for their continuing support and hard work.  I hope I can do the role and the Network justice.

The idea behind DLNet is to go back to basics and get people talking about technology and learning in museums, archives and libraries. There are so many people whose job involve some kind of educational/digital role, but who don’t have a network and really depend on colleagues and informal relationships to share information about new developments. We want to be able to help, people in cultural heritage digital learning to Find people, build networks, share ideas and basically spread the word about digital learning, why it’s great, what you are working on, what do you want to know about other projects, how can you overcome some problems with digital learning in your area.

I see DLNet as being able to provide three key things:

• Support and advice on how technology can help deliver inspiring and creative learning in museums, libraries, archives
• Training events and case studies of good practice
• A discussion Network to share ideas

The committee and I are planning some really fantastic events over the coming months, taking on the feedback provided from previous events; we hope you will enjoy them. We also held our first themed Think Drink on the 16th September at the Weiner Library, which was a huge success.  The ThinkDrink focused on the issues and opportunities surrounding digital learning in relation to difficult or challenging subjects. We had a very engaging discussion which explored the specific responsibilities attached to providing sensitive online resources and information.  We hope to have many more themed ThinkDrink’s soon.

We have also been tinkering with the website to make it more streamlined and easier to use.  However we can’t do this alone, we would really like you thoughts and ideas about how we can make DLNet better for you.

You will be hearing more from me soon about what’s happening at DLNet but in the mean time please do tell us what you think, and together we can make the Digital Learning Network a great way to network and talk with people about technology and learning in museums, archives and libraries, so please use this opportunity. Enjoy. Claire.

Martin Bazley, Sept 20 2010.

Claire Ross has accepted an invitation to become the new Chair of DLNet, the Digital Learning Network.

Claire’s appointment was universally welcomed at a recent committee meeting, recognising her sustained active input and perceptive insights into the ongoing development of DLNet.

Claire is a researcher at the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. Her research focuses on the value and impact of digital cultural content by exploring user information seeking and interaction behaviour as well as focusing on user evaluation and user centric design of museum websites,  social media applications, and online collections.  Formerly, she held the position of E-Learning Development Project Manager, working on a collaborative project with the University of Exeter and Geevor Tin Mine Museum.

As Vice Chair, I look forward to continuing work with Claire, the rest of the committee, our members and others to raise levels of awareness and engagement in key issues relating to the use of digital technology to support learning in the cultural sector.

Claire Ross, March 22 2010.

In 2007 I found myself so far out of my comfort zone, in Cornwall, by myself, in a tin mine museum, with a lap top and wonky internet connection and a project plan entitled ‘e-learning’. I didn’t know where to start, and I didn’t know who to talk to, and at times I felt very isolated and out of my depth. I had no option other then to jump in head first, and it was brilliant, it was hard work, and very difficult at times, but some wonderful people helped me along the way, and I am very grateful for that. I had a head full of ideas, and I was very excited about the task and it was fantastic to talk to people who had been in the same situation as me, had similar ideas, and most importantly loved everything about museums and digital learning.

Fast forward a couple of years, I have a successful digital learning project under my belt, I’m now a researcher in Digital humanities, and loving every minute of it. I am also on the committee for the Digital Learning Network. And its fantastic. I really appreciated talking to people who know what I was going through and we want DLNet to be able to help with that, by helping you to find similar people, similar situations to what I was in to find and meet up with others to share experiences and ideas with other people working in digital learning.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about reigniting my passion for digital learning! This was mostly down to an DLNet committee meeting .What made it brilliant? Being able to bounce ideas around and talking to other people who just get it. Who are just as passionate about digital learning and what it has to offer. Talking to people matters.
Ive been looking around the DLNet site and its brilliant to see that there’s a Cornwall DLNet group! Its great to see new groups forming, and people starting to talk to each other. Thats what this is all about, getting people together to discuss all things digital learning!  I really hope everyone finds it useful.

This post was orginally posted by Rhiannon Looseley at 12:22 Wednesday, 10 March 2010 on http://rhiannonlooseley.blogspot.com

Digital Learning Network
I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while but keep forgetting, but now that I’m on a roll with blogging I thought I’d get round to it – have you heard about the changes to what used to be the e-Learning Group for Museums, Libraries and Archives?

Well, the e-Learning Group has now changed its identity and become The Digital Learning Network (DLNet for short). You can read their announcement about the changes, but basically it seems the drive behind it is to continue to provide all the training and events that they used to provide, but to shift the focus back to just providing a network for people to talk about using technology in heritage learning.

I think it’s a great idea! When I started my current job I became very aware that I was in quite an unusual role that doesn’t exist in a lot of organisations. I was fresh from a year of being the Web Officer at The British Postal Museum & Archive and during that year I’d built up a great network of contacts to do with museums and the web which I’d found really useful.

Suddenly, faced with a job which also used some of the skills I’d previously developed to do with museum learning as well as my web skills and was subtlely different to my previous role, I found I suddenly felt quite isolated again as I felt my way around my new role. I had found my network of contacts and all their blogs etc really invaluable in helping me get a sense of what key issues and debates in the sector were and I really missed this in my new role.

Anyway, a few months into my job, I met with Wendy Earle at the BFI and discovered that her role is, in many ways similar to mine. It was great talking to her about my job and the challenges and opportunities it provided and we both agreed that we needed more opportunties to network in this way. We petitioned Martin Bazley, the chair of the e-Learning Group, to help us in this endeavour and he organised what is now considered to have been the first London ThinkDrink (a key aspect of this new DLNet – basically digital learning people, meeting in an informal setting – a pub in this case – to chat about their work). I discovered other people in similar roles to me and it was great to talk through ideas with them.

A few months after that, at Museums and the Web 2009, I met the lovely Claire Ross, then an e-Learning Project Manager at Geevor Tin Mine Museum in Cornwall and we discovered that we had loads in common – both of us had come to e-Learning through a non-technical route and were both finding our way and trying to establish ourselves in a museum/web world which often feels a bit daunting for us non-geeks/semi-geeks.
Claire is now on the committee of the Digital Learning Network (I nominated her so I’m quite proud!) and is one of the driving forces behind these current changes which they hope will help people like us find and meet up with others to share experiences and ideas with other people working in digital learning. Incidentally, Claire has also blogged about these recent changes.

If any of this rings true to you, if you work in a museum, library or archive in e-Learning/digital learning, I urge you to do one or all of the following:

• sign up to the Digital Learning Network’s website, look to see if a network group has been set up for your area, and if not, set one up!
• Attend a ThinkDrink in your area, or organise one if one isn’t already happening – it’s a great way to meet people
• Follow @DLNet on Twitter
• Sign up to the email list which will now be using DLNET@JISCMAIL.AC.UK instead of the old e-Learning Group address

One last thing to point out – I’ve put loads of references to DLNet in my AMA plan. A big part of the AMA is about networking and building a network of contacts. You’re also supposed to demonstrate what you’ve learnt in a number of ways including sometimes giving presentations/papers etc. I plan to discuss things with members of the London Network group at ThinkDrinks and in blog posts either here or on the DLNet site. If you’re doing an AMA and have any aspect of digital learning in your job role then please consider using the Digital Learning Network to help you!

DLNET Committee, 14th February 2010.

It really is up to you ! The key point is to meet up with a few other people interested in talking about using digital technology for learning, and do a brief summary: blog, video, tweet, etc.
Here are some ideas:

Tea and cakes ThinkDrink
Needless to say, you will need cakes for this one – a surefire way of getting people along. Or biscuits…

After work ThinkDrink
At a nearby pub or cafe, or even in a meeting room at work, if you must!

At the zoo ThinkDrink
This is rather a silly idea – but you never know… Thermos flasks, by the penguins, anyone?

Any particular structure or format?
Up to you, but you could start off by ask everyone to say a few words on what they are really enjoying about their current job (relating to Digital Learning), and what they are currently finding most frustrating – there is bound to be something!
Then you could just carry on talking and see what emerges, or structure it around a given topic.

Topics – what do we talk about?
Again, entirely up to you, but in case you are stuck for ideas:

• Creating online learning resources
• Getting funding for digital projects
• Making the case for digital learning projects
• Measuring impact, online audience research and analysis
• Using social media / Web 2.0 for learning
• Mobile learning (handhelds etc)

Tell other people about your ThinkDrink
Just summarise the topic you discussed for a wider audience. This can be very short, but decide in advance who will report on the ThinkDrink, and how, e.g.

• Short blog post
• Tweets
• 1 minute video on YouTube / Vimeo (See if you you can outdo the “superb production values” and “high level discussion” at DLnet London’s first ever ThinkDrink.)

Ask us if you need help! Contact us via the  DLNet Mailing List, Facebook, Twitter or the contact form on this website.

Martin Bazley, 30th November, 2009

This event offered a pragmatic overview of the issues involved in online exhibitions. Key topics included:

1. an introduction to planning and managing successful online exhibitions
2. top tips for presentation and creating a “buzz”
3. maximizing the potential of the media
4. case studies
5. how to make the most of learning opportunities

Welcome and introduction: Martin Bazley, E-Learning Group
Planning and managing a successful online exhibition – what to consider – Grace Kimble, Schools Programme Manager, Natural History Museum Grace Kimble slides

Case Study 1: British Postal Museum and Archive – Alison Bean – why the BPMA do online exhibitions and top tips for presentation and creating the “buzz” Alison Bean slides

Case Study 2: National Archives – Clare Horrie – Offering flexibility and an enquiry based approach for students Clare Horrie slides

Databurst – CETLD – Jane Devine Mejia – creating a virtual exhibition drawn to encourage students to use archives for practice-based inquiry and in historical/theoretical research.  Jane Devine Mejia slides

Case study 3: – Fitzwilliam Museum – David Scruton – maximising the potential of online exhibitions to make connections and give access to material not possible in physical exhibitions David Scruton slides

Databurst – Surface Impression – Peter Pavement – building online exhibitions around user-generated content: including call for entries, submission handling, criteria, curating, display and ongoing usage. Peter Pavement slides

Case study 4: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery – Linda Spurdle Linda Spurdle slides