Well an interesting day at the British Museum on Friday with contributors and delegates from a wide range of organisations. I found many of the talks useful but really liked the breakout “unconference” session in the afternoon – a good opportunity to talk over interesting issues with colleagues.

If I took one think away from the day it really was that digital technology can’t be used for its own sake. There has to be a clear focussed learning intention for its use.

Digital Learning Adventures in Museums #DLAM11

Friday 4^th February 2011

9.30 – 4.00

Digital Learning Adventures in Museums (#DLAM11) focuses on case studies from museums who are using digital technology in innovative ways to support learning onsite, offsite and online.   There will also be an excellent opportunity to get your hands on using digital technology using the British Museum galleries and the state of the art Samsung Digital Discovery Centre in the Hands on Session’s in the afternoon.    This will be followed by an Unconference, giving everyone the opportunity to discuss, share ideas, and actively contribute to the best of what is happening with Digital learning inside museums and in outreach.

Programme

The conference is taking place in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, which is in the Clore centre.  You will need to arrive at the Main Museum entrance, go straight through to the Great Court, and the Clore Centre is down the stairs on your left-hand side.

Directions

http://www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/getting_here.aspx

Please go to the front entrance, through the first reception room to the Great Court. Immediately turn left and down the stairs to the Clore Centre. The event is in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre.

Booking information

Members £55, non members £80 (includes lunch, refreshments and delegate pack).  Concessionary places may be available.

Membership of DLNet costs just £12 (individual) or £40 (corporate).

To book your place on the Event and/or join DLNet contact:

info@digitallearningnetwork.net

or telephone    07889 590255

17.30-19.30 TeachMeet Museums

Following on from that on the same day, we are also holding a TeachMeet Museums!

Join DLNet and the British Museum schools team for an evening of teachers and museum educators sharing best practice for learning in museums.

Do you have tips on bringing students to museums or connecting them to cultural organisations through technology? Share your expertise in a quick, relaxed presentation. Network with teachers from all disciplines who want to make the most of museum resources. The focus will be on use of technology to enhance cultural learning, but non-digital examples are welcome. Anyone is welcome to present. Refreshments will be provided.

If you are interesting is presenting, there is an extra perk! The first 12 speakers to sign up will receive two free tickets to Journey through the afterlife – Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead exhibition (worth £24).

To find out more and to sign up please visit: TeachMeetMuseums

TeachMeet Museums is kindly sponsored by Promethean

DLNet is now on Facebook.  You can find us at Digital Learning Network: for Museums, Libraries and Archives

The National Galleries of Scotland recently hosted a fantastic event entitled Social Media for Scottish Cultural Heritage and guest speakers Claire Durbin from the V&A and Carolyn Royston from the IWM left everyone inspired with the fantastic work they’re doing. The National Library of Scotland learning team has been inspired to take up the mantle and are planning the first Edinburgh ‘Think Drink’ at the end of November and posting the details here so…colleagues in Scotland watch this space!

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

ThNatural 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 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.

Martin

————————————-
Martin Bazley
Vice Chair, Digital Learning Network (DLnet)
15 Margin Drive
Wimbledon
SW19 5HA
0780 3580 727
info@ digitallearningnetwork.net
www.digitallearningnetwork.net

I’m about to start working on an online learning project in Northern Ireland. The resource for year 10 students(yr 9UK) will be based around the subject on the Home Rule crisis 1911 – 1914. The project will be drawing extensively on a UVF archive held by Mid Antrim project. We’re working closely with a consortium of schools in a Learning Partnership and I think it is going to be a fascinating experience.  I’d be really interested to hear from others you have worked on projects using sensitive material. I’m particularly interested to hear how to encourage or ensure students to get a balanced view of material which tells one side of the story. If anyone knows of examples of good online resources please pass them on.

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.

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)