Digital Learning Network

What an interesting day we had at the LMA yesterday; a real diversity of people attending and I thought an excellent lunch! There were elements of all the talks I found useful especially as they focussed on really practical tips and lessons learnt. Rhiannon Looseley from the Museum of London gave me food for thought describing her “consensus” led approach to project management, with clear working group rules established from the outset. Clare Horrie from the TNA and Martin Bazley I thought presented really well emphasing the iterative process and also giving key tips on incentives for teachers to take part in classroom testing – money works quite well apparently!!! All in all a worthwhile day.

Thanks to all who attended the event on 25th June at the London Metropolitan Archives – it was great to see so many people there, and thanks also to all the contributors.

As it was such a packed day there wasn’t much time for questions and follow-up, so if anyone has any points or questions following on from any of the sessions please feel free to share them here. We’ll put links to the various presentations and resources mentioned during the day, and if anyone has any suggestiuons for other useful resources please feel free to add them.

To start the ball rolling, below is a copy of my ‘Databurst’ presentation in the first afternoon session – and apologies again for over-running my allotted time and making it more of a datadeluge than a databurst!

Beneficial Partnerships

Dulwich Picture Gallery is looking for volunteers to assist in the Press and Marketing department. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn more about museum marketing and administration.

Duties will include overseeing Front of House displays, poster distribution, marketing database administration and administration of the gallery’s social networking and blogging sites: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the blog Dulwich OnView.

Please apply explaining the reasons for your interest in the position together with a CV and any relevant experience by email to:

Ellie Manwell,

Press and Marketing Officer

e.manwell@dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

The John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland has just launched a free App that takes users on a virtual tour of the 240 year history of the John Murray publishing house whose archive is now part of the collections at the NLS.  Authors represented include Jane Austen, David Livingstone, Charles Darwin, Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott and many more.  We’d love to hear what  DLNet colleagues think of it.  You can download it free here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/national-library-scotland/id368209244?mt=8

A Post on behalf of Rebecca Gardner

Are you willing to help a postgraduate in her dissertation research?

I am contacting museum and heritage professionals to request that they complete a short, nine question survey in order to gather existing information and resources about the role of museums within the world heritage agenda of UNESCO. In particular, museums’ potential role in advocating both the value heritage and the importance of preserving it, at the local and national level.

If you are willing to help, the link to complete the survey is as follows: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YTH3RPF

Responses will be collected until 20th June 2010.

Creating and evaluating online resources

15^th June 2010 at the London Metropolitan Archives

The aim of the day is to give an overview for those involved in or considering development of online resources, with introductions to key topics and case studies.

Can you suggest a case study or databurst?  If you can, let us know! (info@digitallearningnetwork.net)

Draft programme

10.00 – 10.25            Registration and coffee

1025 – 1030              Welcome and introduction: Martin Bazley, DLNet Chair

1030 – 11.10             Project managing an online resources project – what to consider: Rhiannon Looseley,

Museum of London

11.10 – 11.50            Getting it right from the start! Choosing the most appropriate resource for your audience:

Martin Bazley, consultant and DLNet Chair

11.50 – 12.30            Evaluating and testing online resources – a range of case studies: Clare Horrie, The National

Archives

12.30 – 12.40            DLNet AGM

12.40 – 13.30           Lunch

13.30 – 13.50            Databurst – Identifying and making the best use of consultants and service providers –

creating a beneficial partnership : Richard Gray, Footmark Media

13.50 – 14.35            Case study: Quilt of Quilts user generated content online resource – from initial concept to

final feature : Andrew Lewis, V&A Museum (tbc)

14.35 – 14.55 Databurst -

14.55 – 15.20          Tea and cakes

15.20 – 16.00            Case study:

16.00 – 16.30            Plenary session – opportunity for discussion and Q & A and close.

A short introduction to DLnet

I’ve just posted what we hope will be the first in a series of short ‘video blog’ creations from the DLnet committee members – and indeed from anyone else who would like to contribute!

Over the coming weeks we’ll be adding news and views from around the country on topics which will hopefully be of interest to many.

The videos are deliberately quick and simple, made with freely available video capture and editing software. So don’t expect great production values – but similarly don’t think that it’s out of your reach to put together a contribution. We’re hoping to see video submissions from meetings and ThinkDrinks too, so get out your director’s chair and megaphone and have a go!

This first effort is a short introduction to DLnet and what it has to offer, so please do pass the link around to any contacts who you think may be interested.

> Link to the video

Richard

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! especially as Rebecca my old manager at Geevor Tine Mine Museum is on there too! 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.

A Wonderful post by Rhiannon Looseley about why she thinks DLNet is a good thing

Rhiannon is the e-Learning Officer (Web) at Museum of London, you can access her blog here

This post was orginially 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!

A few people have suggested adding a bit to the profile set up.   We now have an ‘Interested in’ field, and a ‘Websites and projects’ field.

So the fields are now as below.    If you haven’t already, why not go in and add some stuff so others can see what you are about.

Name (required)

Your role
(Help other users find out about you and your work by describing what you do and how you are making use of technology to enable learning!)

Interested in
(You can change this at any time)

Websites, projects…

(Use this field to add links to (or notes on) any projects you are working on, or sites you find useful)