To kick off the planning, each volunteer was allocated a character – a family member. We set the year at 1891 and started exploring the cottage room by room. Each volunteer was given half a dozen post-it’s with their characters name.  Their mission was to find objects that related to their character for the age they we at the time. I then took a quick snapshot of the item as ‘the character’ explained the connection. In a fairly short time We all gained a good sense of the potential of the objects to show everyday life for the family in the 1800s.  

The best thing though, was the volunteers really enjoyed themselves, and learnt a lot from each other about the collection. It’s not often museum volunteers get to explore their museum together as a group, and there’s a lot that can be shared. Their enthusiasm was infectious!

The post Discovering the museum ‘in character’ appeared first on Ed ProgramDesign.

Cath Gordon from Education Creations and myself teamed up to develop and present a workshop where attendees got to test out their skills in developing activities relevant for their own museums.  

The workshop included the latest Australian curriculum changes that combine History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship, Economics and Business into  ‘Humanities and Social Sciences’ for primary schools.  In terms of content and approaches for the museums, the changes don’t appear to be too great, and perhaps offer up more areas for tapping the learning potential of collections, through the combining of humanities, although themes for each year level have become a little less intuitive.

The workshop was in three parts, covering the following topics:

Part 1: Learners, Learning & Inquiry

• 21st Century Learners
• Learning in the museum
• Inquiry Learning

Part 2: Australian Curriculum

• Knowledge & Understanding
• Skills and Concepts
• Finding your way through the curriculum

Part 3: Bringing it Home to your museum

• Museum Learning Environment
• Tips for creating museum education activities
• Current Museum Trends

Workshop participants really enjoyed the hands-on nature of this workshop. The activities helped participants understand the curriculum structure, and working with curriculum documents. There were opportunities to analyse museum activities into the key elements, and to work through developing ideas for activities specific to their museum.

The key messages from the day are:

• Start with the stories and objects your museum offers
• Look for ways the curriculum can connect with your museum’s offerings
• Let your museum collection and skills & knowledge of volunteers guide the development of creative activities that engage young 21st century learners
• Allow for students to bring their own digital devices
• Make it fun for everyone

Community museums have so much to offer here because the personal connections to the collections.  That passion can really inspire students –  and all visitors.

Catherine and I plan to  run more of of these workshops in 2016. Please contact us if you are interested: email info@edprogramdesign, or contact Janis on 0412615483, or Catherine on 0410008030.

We thank the Sunshine Coast Council Heritage Unit for providing the opportunity to deliver this workshop to their community museums – and for the enthusiasm of the participants. the new facility at Bankfoot House is an excellent workshop venue.

Bankfoot House facility, Glasshouse Mountains

The post The Australian Curriculum in Your Museum appeared first on Ed ProgramDesign.

It seems iTeachers are tech savvy, drawing on students skills and curiosity. He says, ‘It’s about how do we stimulate that conversation so we are providing that stimulus and facilitate that collision of ideas so the kids do the learning you want.’

These times are great opportunities for museums to provoke those stimulating ideas. And, if students bring along their own devices, with a well structured education program, even small museums can be ‘iMuseums’. Tablet devices enable student to give voice to their own ideas and perceptions about what they are seeing. The beauty for the museums is that it’s the students that add the technology – they add the ‘i’ to the museum.

See also the previous blog on Digital Foreigners, Storytelling and the i-generation

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It was 2005 when Prensky coined the term ‘Digital Native’. Remember 2005?  You might remember – Facebook was born the year before.

The term Prensky also coined was ‘Digital Immigrants’ – that’s the rest of us. Even if we are digitally fluent, we speak ‘digital’ with an accent. It means technology isn’t as integrated into our lives much as it is for our kids or grandkids.  For instance, my lack of gaming skills, has my13 year old son seriously worried about my real driving abilities. I think my thumbs are digital immigrants – they just don’t to have the dexterity. Poor Princess Peach!

You’ll also know about digital immigrancy if you’ve ever made the move from Microsoft to Apple, or vice versa.  Five years since I did, and my Microsoft accent is still thick.

Here’s what Prensky said about digital natives and immigrants …

At the small, Gold Coast, volunteer run Mudgeeraba Light Horse Museum, where my research is focused I run digital story programs.  Students come, learn, create digital stories and showcase them at the end of the day. These days are very fast paced. Students can choose what to focus on, from a vast range, and they are using well practiced i-pad skills.

The average age of volunteers at the Mudgeeraba Light Horse museum where my research is focussed is 73.  The majority turn 80 next year.  Most have access to a computer, and email,  and even some of the senior volunteers are starting to get i-Pads or smart phones now.  But it wasn’t the case when we started the digital storytelling programs.

The thing is, they keenly participate in these Digital storytelling excursions. They intuitively know it’s important for the museum, and for the kids.

I’ve decided they are ‘Digital Foreigners’ or perhaps ‘Digital Tourists’. It’s like when you visit another country. You might learn a few words or phrases to get by – hello, please, thank-you,how much? But that’s it.  You are passing through, and not knowing the language isn’t  really going to effect your life too badly. And that’s perfectly fine. Digital foreigners speak a kind of ‘Pidgen digital’.  The metaphors could go on, but the point is the digital divide. And get used to it, it’s not just oldies.

There’s a digital divide between students in year 12 and those in prep. I suspect the buddy systems in K to 12 schools are as much about the littlies teaching the seniors digital fluency as socialising the younger ones. Its the young ones who have the iPads.

Don’t think that when the World War 2 generation have gone, the techno divide will cease. It will only get wider and more diverse. Grade 8s program ardurinos (controllers) to build robots, Grade 7’s create artefacts with 3D printers, primary schools have green rooms for media productions. This is all happening in state schools. I am so jealous! Even if you are as ancient  as 30 years old, school is quite different now.

When Prensky wrote of digital natives in 2005, he was writing about the undergraduates then, they’d be thirty something now.

Ten years has seen a lot of change.  Here’s a timeline of where the world has travelled  digitally…

And with us all being ‘Cultural workers’ we know, the big changes aren’t about the technology itself – the huge changes are socially.  It’s about what we do day to day, and about all our relationships.

So what can these Digital foreigners in museums teach these i-pad natives arriving at the door?  If the foreigners say, ‘welcome, please bring your iPads, let’s make some history’, very exciting things happen.

Excitement comes from being co-creators. ‘Kid, you handle the technology, I’ll tell the stories.  Got the sound levels right?’

Excitement comes from what my first research participant calls, enos theos – the god within.  She says, ‘If you teach from the God within,  if you teach from your love,   your enthusiasm will carry through’.

A story passionately told is a story remembered …

The seniors volunteering at the museum have this enthusiasm in spades.  They desperately want children to feel what they are feeling.  You can’t make a digital story about someone’s experience, without truly listening to their story.

And, great excitement also comes from a story remembered and retold.  The many truths that lie within those stories can then be absorbed, replayed and understood – over time.

Our federal opposition leader, Bill Shorten, was talking this week about kids learning programming from prep onwards. The sentiment is fine, but I’m not sure that’s what’s needed.  I think what kids really need from early on, is learning about  communicating digitally in multiple modes  – words, imagery, sound, music, gesture, touch. Most these things come naturally  before reading anyway.  They need to effectively communicate meaning and emotion, personally and digitally: to have these multiple literacies, and to discern the messages bombarding them each day as they swipe their iPads, headphones on – to be media savvy… This is what the new literacies are about.  Not passive, but active participants. Creators.

My formal research is just beginning, and first interviewee is Di, former teacher, current writer of stories, volunteer at a digital story day at the museum, now herself a creator of digital stories.

I leave you with a little of what she said  about Digital storytelling in the museum.

Reference: Prensky, M. 2005, “Digital natives, digital immigrants”, Gifted, no. 135, pp. 29-31.

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Janis Hanley At the National Trust Qld Awards

It’s official – a high commendation for our Digital Storytelling Program!  The National Trust Queensland awarded the High Commendation for the project ‘World War I Digital Stories – an education program for year nines’. We piloted the digital Digital Storytelling Program for Year Nines from Southport High School last year.  Janis Hanley  adapted the History in Place Kit for an excursion to the Mudgeeraba Light Horse Museum.  A big thank-you to the History in Place project for providing the inspiration, support and some key tools. And last, but not least, congratulations to Mudgeeraba Light Horse museum and all the volunteers there – what a fabulous day you provide with stories, live horseback tent pegging demonstrations, firing party, hands on activities, stories of battles, and even a sausage sizzle to feed the hungry students.

The students from Southport State High loved it and did great work –  and coincidently returned again just this week.  Congratulations to Southport High School, and teachers Jade Sleight and Greg Kenafake for taking the opportunity to trial the program last year. They both attended last night’s event as joint recipients of the award. Here’s what they say about the program …

Jade Sleight & Gregory Kenefake, Southport Hight School at the National Trust Qld Awards

“The interactive opportunities provided in the digital storytelling program have helped to reinvigorate student desire to learn about historical concepts as well as see in the work and relevance.” – Jade Sleight, Social Science Teacher, Southport High School.

“Teachers today need to explore ways of combining modern technology with real life history experiences.” – Gregory Kenafake, Social Science Head of Department|School Practicum Coordinator, Southport High School.

The History in Place project, the other element in this collaboration, was developed by the History Teachers Association of Victoria, Culture Victoria and the Heritage Council of Victoria.  It provides a Do-it-yourself kit enabling museums to run Digital Storytelling programs in their own museums.  You’ll find their link here at Culture Victoria.  Its a fabulous starting point for schools and museums – great resources.

If you are more local to Queensland, and would like to learn more about Digital Story Telling as a learning activity generally, as a teacher, or for extra help setting up a program for your museum, please send a message to info@edprogramdesign.com.au, fill in in the contact form below,  or contact Janis Hanley on 0412615483.

You may also be interested in this one day workshop for your museum or for your school excursions: Creating a Digital Story Learning program for your museum

Working on a digital story at Mudgeeraba Light Horse Museum

‘Showtime” – students show their digital stories at Mudgeeraba Light Horse Museum

[contact-form]

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These programs not only provide great learning opportunities, but are a fun activity for museum workers, students and teachers – everyone involved.  It’s great to see how creative the students can be, and to understand their perceptions of the museum.  Watching their digital stories you can see these things first hand..  And if students are encouraged to record interviews with people working at the museum, the person interaction further extends the learning.

The workshop being offered, lets your museum workers experience the process in their own environment, and starts from the beginning to tailor a program for your museum.

You will learn:

– how to use i-movie on your tablet device

– what running a digital story telling excursion at your museum involves

• Planning the excursion for the year level to fit with the curriculum
• Designing the program
• Introducing the students to what they need to do
• Logistics of running the day

– experience creating a simple digital story

Make an enquiry about our program by sending an email to info@edprogramdesign.com.au or completing the form below.

Cost of the program is $599 for up to 10 participants at your museum [contact-form] .  Travel costs may apply if outside the greater Brisbane area.

The post Digital Storytelling Learning Excursions for your museum appeared first on Ed ProgramDesign.

I
Resurection, Relevance
a new audience found
Finding relevance in a contemporary community
Standards ever increasing
Outlook
change
evidence
audience
Shrinking numbers of arts journalist
As audiences become creatively engaged
Half the audience are kids
Nearly everyone thinks indigenous is important
And private and public funds co-mingle

II

Slow media
Fast change
Museums as slow media
Climate Change impacting Pacific Islands
where fresh water systems are dying even before inundation.
And islanders flee to New York
Sensations of the future: awe, vertigo, excitement, disorientation

@Twitter hashtag confusion #
Disrupted media?

III
Learners and Learnings

Digital Labellings
Say one thing in 100 words not 100 things on one wordy label
Digitally can sort items according to themes
To see what other weapons grace the gallery
Turn the object around and zoom in
You can list people related who used the items
Then see everything about them
With just one click!

Click for history
Click for art
Click for curatorial

No click necessary for the paper label
But it’s only a sentence,
A line, maybe two.

Digital have as much as you want
But not more than a screen at a time
Digital titles can be creative,
Not like paper – boring and straight

Digital labels
Show the gun being used, barrage maps, paintings, the manual – anything else
even though you can put more stuff on need to be more disciplined
Know what you are talking about
know what you are going to tell
Just because you know something, it doesn’t mean you have to tell
Choose wisely, remember

You are not always teaching – you are entertaining
Digitally delve into dioramas

Is it really important, should I put it in?
Remember Voltaire – the secret to being boring is to leave nothing out.
Don’t bore visitors by giving too much of the wrong stuff

Digitally be clever

IV
I come for emotional issues?

Are museums just for learning or entertainment?
What does visiting mean?
Museums are theatres of memory
Heritage sites and museums are places where people go to feel
look at the emotional side
Feelings lead to insights
Meaning making is what visitors engage in.

Registers of engagement
Emotional and critical insights interact
Reinforcement too – reinforce what they already know and believe

Visitors only talked of learning experiences in relation to children,
or something they should be doing
They come for emotional reasons

Museums are not safe places for visitors who do not like being challenged by what what they see and feel.

Understand the emotional impact of heritage sites
Some people actively seek the emotional impact
like the black woman wanting the walk through the ‘coloured’ door so she could understand.

People who close down emotional engagement
close down intellectual engagement too

V

AIATSIS
biggest collection of aboriginal collections of photos, recordings, papers and the rest
Great personal and cultural significance
Diversification of historic record
Schools visits, dignitaries, researchers, go out to places
Online presence but no direct access online to materials
Problematic to put materials online – community permissions and copyright
Community owns expressions of culture
Difficult to describe
Meaning making happens elsewhere

VI
Future Paradigms
Museums: Cultural broadcaster, communicator, co-creator
Cultural communicator
Museum of curiosity BBC
Posts Kingdoms of South America
Curatorial scholarship is central
Jensen – museums as institutions to think with
It’s scholarship that make museums different
Cultural Broadcaster
Vikings live from British museum
Connections between different spaces – Swedish Ice hotel with British Museam Viking artefacts outside in a cabinet
Simultaneous live streaming to cinemas to watch Viking Doco
plus game online ‘Viking yourself’
Cultural Co-Curator
Strong graphics to get people through the door
How do people engage
Shop fronts as exhibits???
Engaging with what the library has to offer in terms of infrastructure.
New-Inc – first museum led incubator
Partner to make resources available – physical and digital
Can we bring people back in new and interesting ways?

VII
Futurist manifesto 1908 futurists excited about cars
Worlds E.L. Doctrow
US Mums got duped by the car
While -Amsterdam mums protested that kids needed to be able to take themselves to soccer,
Us mums got a licence! They were duped!
Problems of highrise housing commission was demographic not architectural
Design buildings and communities specially for bikes
Buildings with long ramps up to each floor

VIII
Our aboriginal and Torres Straight islander history is what makes Australia unique.
We haven’t done very well in acknowledging that
If this is so significant why is it not more visible?
Most people have had no contact with aboriginal people
Very poor at telling these stories in ways people will bump into incidentally.
Give people pathways into the stories for new immigrants
The earnings from cultural activities in Australia isn’t far behind mining
and the arts employes/engages? many more people.
Aus politics is almost always a 5050 split and the argument is shaped by the 49% – it’s not just the winners
Cultural impact must be measured
just as environmental impact has leant to be measured)
50th anniversary of ‘the lucky country’ – the irony has been lost and it’s become a slogan instead – more irony?
ANZACs long shadows
Someone said when Alan Bond won the Americas cup, it was Australia’s greatest victory since Gallipoli!
We must not forget to remember

IX
Cliche we are in a digital revolution
MA 1993 Internet 1993 FB 2003. Twitter 2004
Trove – mechanism to get us up there as discoverable
More people are discovering what we are about from the virtual rather than in the real world
It’s a digital evolution rather than revolution
Connection to history, place, story … It’s the ecology of museums
Virtual is just another tool to add
Art, culture, museums, galleries – words Australia has difficulty with
Unresolved tensions around the term culture
Culture is the biggest term.

‘As war begins in the minds of men, it must be in the minds of men that we build peace’

Thanks to the speakers below whose sessions I attended. Not sure I ‘got’ your messages properly, but I enjoyed them all.

I. Tony Grybowski
II. Libby Robin
III. Robert Nichols
IV. LauraJane Smith
V. Evelyn Whitelaw
VI. Prof Angelina Russo
VII. Dr Stephen Flemming
VIII. Dr Julianne Shulz AM
IX. Final panel

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The Year Three Anzac Commemoration Education program is an exciting day out at the Mudgeeraba Light HorseMuseum.  It covers a ranges of pre and post excursion resources, as well as the activity sheets for the visit.  The excursion is planned to align with Australian History Curriculum requirements.

The Excursion is a day of adventure and new experiences for the students, and includes a combination of different activities, including:

• Searching out symbols of the Anzacs
• Anzac Commemoration of Heroes – men, women, indigenous, locals, pioneers
• Group training sessions for students on:
  • How to raise the flag
  • WWI Weapons handling
  • How to care for a War Horse
• Live horseback tent-pegging demonstration
• Live flag raising ceremony  – with firing party – very Loud!

The following are links to resources that accompany the excursion.

01 Commemorations Program Package V1.0

Pre-Excursion Resources

02 Suggested Activites Worksheets V1.0

A range of worksheets for suggested classroom activities

03 Villers Brettoneaux V1.0

For on the Excursion Day

 Post Excursion Resources

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What lessons can museums, or history classes glean from the process here?

What activity could you investigate over a period of time.  Could a period of a  couple of weeks become a timeline that might be acted out and videoed?   What daily measurements might be taken? Could a current issue be tracked day by day – measured, plotted?  Perhaps it could be a walk down a street through time.

Magnifying glasses are a must have. I reckon a good old fashioned Sherlock homes mystery in a museum might be the go.  Many things can be investigated with a magnifying glass in a museum …

The post Decomposing Inquiry appeared first on Ed ProgramDesign.

Its a great experiment for students to try and figure out what is inside the mystery boxes.  A great process too for investigation and discussion – low tech – just post-it nots and worksheets.

What ways could this process be applied to non science museums – how might you run this? What objects might you use?

Great ending – I won’t give it away, but did the students go home satisfied?

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