5 THE FUTURE
Museums have already achieved many of
their aims in developing digital exhibitions
and learning resources. In this limited
sense, the aspirations of A Netful of
Jewels and Building the Digital Museum
have largely been exceeded.
A new set of relationships is emerging,
between objects, learners and digital
technology, in which museums are, above
all, places of exploration and discovery. In
the museum of the future, distinctions
between real and virtual, already blurred,
will matter even less as both museums
and learners better understand the
processes of inquiry and of learning itself.
The real key to future development is likely
to be personalisation: of interpretation to
significantly enhance social and
intellectual inclusion; of technology to free
both museums and learners from many of
the current constraints; of learning to
finally facilitate an escape from the deficit
models so prevalent in educational
institutions and release untold potential,
as the individual learner is able to use
technologies to exercise choice and to take
responsibility for his/her own learning.
1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
Does learning in museums have a real
future – or only a virtual one? Should a
museum spend its limited resources on
providing expensive exhibitions and
handling collections (together with
appropriate staff) to reach only the limited
number of people who are able to – and
who choose to – visit its galleries? Or
should it utilise the power of digital
technologies to reach out to communities
well beyond its walls, who, for historical,
geographical, or social reasons, will never
enter the hallowed halls?
This review aims to address these
questions by:
• introducing theories of museum
learning and the way these have
changed in recent years
• highlighting key trends in the adoption
of digital technologies for learning
within and beyond the walls of
museums
• providing pointers for potential future
developments for curators and
developers of digital technologies for
museum learning.
Before addressing these overarching
questions, it is useful first to remind
ourselves of the nature of museums,
recent developments in museum education
and the potential impact of digital
technologies, and to gain some notion of
the scope and scale of the three-way
interface between museums, learning and
digital technologies.
1.1 A BRIEF HISTORY
The British Museum recently celebrated
the 250th anniversary of its foundation in
1753. The three major national museums
in South Kensington – of the physical
sciences and technology (Science
Museum), the life and earth sciences
(The Natural History Museum) and of the decorative arts (Victoria and Albert |
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Museum) – were established there in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is
worth noting in the context of this long
history that it was only in the late Victorian
period that school attendance became
compulsory, primary in 1870 and
secondary in 1902, and that it is merely
a decade since UK museums first
established a presence on the worldwide
web. Our current understandings of both
education and of learning with digital
technologies can therefore be seen to have
emerged long after the original conception
of the museum in our society was
formulated, and these have had to be
incorporated within complex structures
that perhaps owe more to history than
to logic. This means that the various
functions of the museum, collections
management, exhibitions, education and
website, may well be the responsibility of
completely separate departments, with
little inter-communication and, possibly,
conflicting philosophies.
Once, all was straightforward. Museums
collected and conserved artefacts.
They exhibited (behind glass) some of
these (dusty) objects for the inspiration
and edification of the visiting public,
accompanied by text labels expressing the
antediluvian opinions of expert curators
written in an obscure language. This may
well indeed remain the popular perception
of a museum (Hawkey 2001). Museum
educators taught groups of (predominantly)
schoolchildren in a classroom space
attached to the museum, occasionally
borrowing items from the museum’s
reserve collection – or establishing their
own handling collection. The more daring
may have occasionally ventured to facilitate
some kind of practical learning activity in
the hallowed halls of the museum itself.
Eventually, exhibitions began to change.
Visitors could not, after all, be expected to
learn for themselves, to see the world
from the curator’s perspective, without
support and guidance. A new generation of
exhibits – ‘with the visitor in mind’ (Miles
at al 1982) – emerged, in which specialist
interpretative devices were utilised to
make clear the message that the visitor
was expected to heed. Objects became
secondary to the message, especially in
those museums where concepts can
dominate – museums of science, of
natural history, of archaeology, of history,
perhaps – if not in art galleries. With
interpretation predominant, the educator’s
role became one of compensation,
reaching audiences for whom the
exhibition offer was inappropriate, such
as children (whether in school parties or
family groups) or university students and
adult education classes.
The widespread development of digital
technologies in all aspects of museum
operations during the latter part of the
1990s coincided with the start of a different
perception of the museum educator. As
lifelong learning and access became key
targets, so the role of learning specialists
began to change. Their audience was seen
as very much more than schoolchildren.
They were increasingly invited to
participate in exhibition development,
and this included (often rather more
reluctantly) exhibits and activities founded
upon digital technologies. In many ways,
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as lifelong
learning and
access became
key targets,
so the role
of learning
specialists
began to change |
