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research intro
literature reviews
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A focus on the personal meanings and
histories of objects is the essential
element of a new Culture Online project:
Every Object Tells A Story
(www.cultureonline.gov.uk/
projects/object.asp).
Aiming to encourage visitors (both physical
and virtual) to create their own stories and
to share their interpretations of hundreds
of featured objects, the project offers a
rich multimedia menu. Very much a twoway
process, learners can upload their
own perceptions and perspectives – and
their own related objects – to the site via
PC or mobile phone. Culture Online
emphasises that Every Object Tells A Story
has specific relevance to the National
Curriculum for English. It is a comment
on the content constraints of other
subject areas that such a rich resource
cannot claim anything but a serendipitous
link elsewhere.
A second Culture Online project, The Dark
(www.cultureonline.gov.
uk/projects/dark.asp),
also integrates a real museum/gallery
experience with an online presence: the
website and (touring) installation
complement and support each other.
Designed to create a 3D soundscape “filled
with the virtual ghosts of our past”, it is
intended to challenge the ways in which
information is received and perceived.
The British Art Information Project (BAIP)
is being developed as an integral part of
the creation of the new Tate Britain,
complementing the new gallery spaces. It
is creating a fully indexed database of high
quality digital images for all 50,000 British
works and is “of extraordinary importance
for the study and appreciation of British
art” – incorporating the paintings,
sculptures, works on paper and prints,
and including a vast quantity of relatively
inaccessible material, such
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heritage
attractions and simple but effective search
procedures give access to the museums’
material, by place, date or subject. Internet
trails produced in partnership with
museums and galleries provide significant
opportunities for learning.
Show Me (www.show.me.uk) is the
children’s version of the 24 Hour Museum
and gives access to ‘cool’, ‘crazy’, ‘fun’,
‘scary’ and ‘wild stuff’ from UK museums,
some of it developed specially in
collaboration with educators and website
developers in the museums themselves.
(Call it anything but learning, seems to be
the message.) The learning opportunities,
however, range widely in both subject
matter and strategy, as indicated by the
examples in Table 4.1. (For a review of the
wider context of learning through
computer games, see Kirriemuir and
McFarlane (2004).)
Fathom (www.fathom.com) is a rather
different example of museums’ involvement in online learning and provides
something of a salutary case study.
Fathom was intended as a comprehensive
directory of related online courses offered
by universities and cultural institutions,
including four major UK museums. Indeed
it successfully offered a wealth of content,
including multimedia lectures, articles,
interviews, exhibits and seminars,
featuring prominent museum curators and
researchers. However, it failed for
essentially commercial reasons, not
because of its approach to learning –
although this could be questioned (rather
generally linear and reminiscent of a
series of textbooks). The site continues |
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| Title |
Invitation |
| Cabinet of Curiosity |
Here's your chance to be a museum curator |
| Digging Up The Romans |
History of Roman London - excellent
for homework |
| Mission: Explore |
Fancy being a scientist? Need a mission?
This is the game for you |
| Move It! In 1850 By Train, Wagon And Boat |
A Victorian race against time and money |
| Space Station |
Sweat and wee in outer space |
| The Dig |
Medieval? Victorian? Modern? You decide |
| The Story Of Trim The Cat |
A cheeky ship's cat is the star of this tale |
| Where's Monty? |
Lift the leaves to find Monty and his mates |
Table 4.1 Examples of web-based museum learning projects on Show.Me
(Taken from www.show.me.uk/games/games.html) |
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as watercolours and sketchbooks, including
the Turner Bequest. It forms the basis for
a range of new public information and
education services delivered both at the
Gallery and through the web. New images
without copyright restrictions are already
being fed through to the public via the Tate
website each day, with new search
mechanisms and other content generated
by the project (Smith 2000).
The 24 Hour Museum
(www.24hourmuseum.org
.uk/index.html) is the
UK’s national virtual museum and acts as
a portal to a rich range of resources. It
aims to encourage visitors out into real
sites by showcasing activities all over the
UK, as well as news and exhibition
information. Its database includes over
2,800 museums, galleries and
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to
be maintained by Columbia University as
an archive of online learning resources.
4.3 WEB STRATEGIES AND
LEARNING THEORIES
The Natural History Museum was the first
UK museum to establish a web presence
and remains one of the most frequently
visited of all museum websites. Table 4.2
compares excerpts from the museum’s
web strategy with key points from its
education policy. What follows explores
how these attributes manifest themselves
in the current set of learning resources
both on the NHM site and in the example
of the MOLLIS initiative.
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