Museum Websites

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the AAM annual conference recently (thanks, Nat!) and I wanted to blog some of the interesting websites I saw for kids, and, in fact DID but I was an idiot and started it as a text file without saving and I'm having battery issues and lost it all. So if this entry is a little lack-luster, blame the fact that I'm writing it twice. The version I lost was totally awesome.

Anyway, in spite of all the talk about "Web 2.0" which I find kind of silly and so, well, late 2006 or something, I did see and hear about some interesting projects, and I definitely learned a lot. It's funny because at the time, I wasn't all that impressed -- I think this is partly a hangover from being in graduate school where, despite myself, I was more impressed by things that were hard to understand initially than things that were immediately transparent. Whereas in this case, I wasn't all that impressed initially but then the more I think about things, the more interesting I find them.

Anyhoo --

For the parents looking for something with more educational content than Star Wars Legos, it might be worth noting that museums are eager to get your online business for their own nefarious educational purposes. Also, I'd love to know what kids find interesting. Katy made a good point that we should set up a focus group of kids for any games and stuff we develop.

Learning at Whitney has a dealio where kids can go and "curate" their own online exhibits, and it's interesting looking at what other groups have put together. I'm not sure how inspired I'd be to do it if I was just a kid on my own, but for a classroom project, it has some potential, especially if you're actually going to visit the Whitney.

The Living Museum (part of the Museum of Jewish Heritage) makes it more Web 2.0-esque by allowing kids to create their own online exhibits using material culture from their own lives. I thought this was neat and was extra happy to see that one of the three exhibits was from a Portland classroom! Note that I don't think the interface is the greatest -- it's kind of unintuitive to me that you click around the bottom of the page to view the gallery. Like a lot of sites, users are missing from the equation.

Someone from the Getty talked about Whyville, and in particular how some museums have partnered with Whyville to create a museum neighborhood in Whyville, which is apparently a very popular site with the kids. So the Getty has a lounge in Whyville where you can go and play Art Set -- which is actually a pretty great idea, I think, for a game. (Set, if you don't know, is a game with a very simple premise but can be challenging and is, I think, fun.) Anyway, you have to register to use Whyville, but it seems like it might be worth it for some kids. I thought the Set game was a lot more interesting than the games they have on their regular education website, but some younger kids might like those games, too, and at least they'd be looking at art.

The guy from Eduweb gave two presentations. He was interesting and made some points that some people may find really obvious, but were new to me about games in which the mode of play itself helps model the learning and games that don't -- hangman is in the latter category, and I guess role-playing games are in the former. I'm not explaining very well. Hopefully you already knew this point so my explaining coherently isn't important.

Kids might want to check out Eduweb's games and adventures. If you do, and you enjoy any of them in particular, let me know!

By far the best project he spoke about was on Wolfquest -- I can't wait to play!! (and be sure to check out the awesome and hilarious preview. (I smell elk!!!) And the developor's blog is interesting, too (and very popular) -- great if you want to read about why, "As exciting as a wolf MMO might be, that’s just not what we’re up to with this game."

Romans in Sussex was described by one presenter as a "great website" and maybe it is, but it seems awfully Web 1.0.

Some of these award-winning games might be interesting to some kids. The mapping game looks cool, and I met the folks from Bean Creative (briefly, over drinks and dessert next to a ginormous submarine) and they seemed like nice people.

OK -- here's some stuff not for the kids, but I found it interesting.

Steve Museum is the art museum social tagging project, intended to reduce the gap between curator language and regular old human language. Initially I thought this wouldn't have much application for history projects, because historical records are less subjective (if you tag something as "Oregon" when in fact it's based in Maine, you're not really helping anyone). But the more I think of it, the more I think it might make sense in some settings.

Collection X is a Canadian project that, like the Living Museum project for kids, allows people to upload their own content and stuff. Pretty cool, I guess, although I'm not completely sure what makes it different from something like flickr.

The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning has some tools that are, quite frankly, beyond me. Maybe they are cool? I don't know.

I do think the Open Courseware Finder seems like a good idea. You know, that reminds me: the very first webpage I ever made was to post my preliminary exam reading list -- I was so damn proud of that thing. I wonder if they have an "open prelims list" finder? Well, if not, they should!

The Eduweb guy talked about using a program called Unity 3-D to develop games -- and I think I mis-quoted the price of the software to someone earlier -- it turns out it was $10,000 to create a simple game total, but only $1,500 for the software itself. I really think it would be awesome to be able to design 3-D games at the drop of a hat!

My colleagues may want to check out Musematic blog of the Museum Computer Network and AAM's Media & Technology Committee.

And I think I'll be clicking around on the MUSE award winning websites.

Or maybe you'd like to listen to some museum podcasts?

OK -- I'm tired, and this is getting to be less of a blog entry and more of a run-on note type up, which is okay, I suppose, but not very readable, is it?

I'll post more if I find more in my notes.