Prepared for members of the Learning & Audiences Team at The British Museum as a way to explore innovative elearning activities for children and teenagers at the Museum's new Samsung Digital Discovery Centre.

1. Exploring E-Learning for the
Samsung Digital Discovery Centre
Shelley Mannion The British Museum
shelley.mannion@gmail.com 17th March 2009
Cicada Liu 2006

2. Where I’m from
I remember life before the Internet,
but my students don’t.

3. Four challenges

4. 1. The Cool factor
Image (1910-15) from Flickr Commons
Library of Congress B2240715

5. 2. Museum visit life cycle
Long-lasting memories and
relationships
The Museum Experience Maker of Dreams
By J. Falk and L. Dierking By Laura Burlton

6. 3. Museum as resource for
lifelong learning
Image from Flickr Commons. Library of Congress B2267110

7. 4. A different kind of experience
[Some] spaces look a lot
like the classrooms they
Alternative Alice
just left.
By Laura Burlton
From Civilizing the Museum
By Elaine Heumann Gurian

8. Alternate Routes:
Student created multimedia tours
• Full day session
• 15-20 secondary (KS3/KS4) students
• English, Design & Tech and ICT
• Enquiry-based learning model
• Multiple perspectives on works of art

9. Works of art have a capacity for
multiple readings.
Interpretation should make visitors
aware of the subjectivity of
interpretive texts.
From Multimedia Tour Programme at Tate Modern
Museums and the Web 2004
By Gillian Wilson

10. Stage One:
Initiating & Eliciting
• Visual bookmarking with digital cameras
• Individual, personal exploration
• Learners choose own paths of enquiry
• Insights from Lugano, Exploratorium

11. Stage Two:
Defining & Responding
• Group discussion aided by wall display
• Categorise images by overarching themes
• Groups of 2-3 reflect shared interests
• Decide what objects to include

12. Stage Three:
Doing and Making
• Return to galleries to collect media assets
• Research objects on laptops
• Script the tour
• Record audio with handheld microphones
• Create multimedia tour with VoiceThread

13. • Supports multiple voices
• Includes multiple forms of media
• Creates publicly accessible, living artefact
VoiceThread tour
of Chinese gallery
at The British Museum

14. Stage Four: Communicating,
Presenting, Evaluating
• Facilitator creates centralised web page
• Students follow tours on mobile PCs
• Explore gallery from another perspective
• Comment on tours using VoiceThread

15. Learning and technology
• Personalised visual exploration with digital cameras
• Online research on laptops
• Multimedia production on laptops
• Collaborative discussion with VoiceThread
• Just-in-time learning with mobile PCs

16. Extending the event
• Tours available for teacher in the classroom
• Tours available for parents and friends
• Exceptional tours published on museum website
• Other visitors can continue to comment

17. Talking Animals:
Adventures in Chinese Storytelling
• Full day session
• 15-20 primary (KS2) students
• English, Art & Design
• Child development theory (Yardsticks)

18. Hear the opera...hear the passover
…do you want to hear me yodel?
Hear the songs we sang against Genghis Khan...
Do you want to hear it?
From Tripmaster Monkey
by Maxine Hong Kingston

19. Step One:
Storytelling in China
• Talk-story oral tradition
• Journey to the West
• Videos of master storytellers, adaptations

20. Step Two:
Quest for animals
• Collect animal objects in gallery with mobile PCs
• Sort objects into categories
• Photograph favourite animal
with digital cameras

21. Step Three:
Digital storytelling
• Student pairs select a scene featuring their favourite
animal
• Retell the episode in their own way
• Draw, colour and scan a backdrop
• Act out and film the scene in front of green/blue
screen wall

22. Step Four:
Post-processing
• Scanned backdrops edited into films
• Students decide the order of scenes in final
narrative
• Students receive DVD of class story to take home

23. Learning and technology
• Storytelling videos ignite interest
• Real-time feedback on collecting/sorting on mobile PCs
• Personalisation through visual bookmarking with digital cameras
• Kinaesthetic learning through physical re-enactment and filming
• Completed collective story reflects
Chinese cultural practice

24. Extending the event
• Connections to musical (2008) and television series
• DVD allows family and friends to appreciate students’ work
• Films could be uploaded to video sharing websites
(clips.e2bn.org)
• Individual episodes can be remixed to create new stories
• Hollywood film adaptation planned for 2010

25. Four potential programmes
Pillows and iPods: Everyday Visual-spatial and
Objects in China Intrapersonal
Techniques, Toys and Logical-Mathematical
Gadgets: Building Things from
Scratch
Dancing on Hairpins and Linguistic and
Needles: Lives of Chinese Interpersonal
Women
Lands of Illusion: Spaces and Naturalist and
Places of China Bodily-Kinaesthetic

26. Potentialities
• Real-time communication potential of mobile
devices and social networks
• Leveraging students’ own digital devices
• Theatricality of the physical space
• Wacom-like tablets for natural interaction
• Connecting the Centre with galleries
• Connecting museum with classrooms

27. All monkey and cartoon illustrations by
Nancy Blume, Asia Society
Cicada Liu (Creative Commons)
Lisa Bruemmer, Milwaukee Public Museum
Holga photographs by Laura Burlton
Paul de Jong
(Creative Commons)
Claire Johnstone, The British Museum
Archive photographs from Flickr
Bridget McKenzie, Flow Associates
Commons, Library of Congress
Claudia Schallert, University of Vienna Collection
Kris Wetterlund, Sandbox Studios
Many thanks

28. References
• Enquiry-based learning (www.enquiringminds.org.uk)
• Exploratorium study described by Sherry Hsi in Designing for Mobile Visitor
Engagement (pages 125-146) in Digital Technologies and the Museum
Experience (Tallon and Walker, Eds. 2008)
• Multimedia Tour Programme at Tate Modern by Gillian Wilson in Bearman,
David and Jennifer Trant (Eds.), Papers, Museums and the Web 2004
• VoiceThread for Education (ed.voicethread.com). Example tour of the Chinese
gallery at The British Museum (tr.im/hqLa)
• Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14 : A Resource for Parents and
Teachers. Chip Wood. Northeast Foundation for Children, 1997.
This presentation is
licensed under Creative
• Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among
Commons Attribution-
Ghosts
Non-Commercial-
• Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences from the Museums, Libraries,
Share Alike 2.0
Archives Council (MLA)
• Bridget McKenzie’s blog Cultural Interpretation & Creative Education