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.

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

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

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

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.

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