Museums and Education

I found this recent article on museums and education while checking out Museums Australia's new 'ning' and thought you might be interested.

Living in the Seventies

Costume worn by Greg Macainsh on Skyhooks 1976 American Tour and designed by Greg Macainsh and Uschi Flett. Performing Arts Collection.

Without a doubt the highlight of the week has been trawling through the Performing Arts Collection's Skyhooks stash. The JUKE magazine archive itself has some 12 folder of photographs, then there are Kathleen O'Brien's amazing live performance shots, costume drawings, and the costumes themselves. We have also found some good through-lines and cross-references for sub-themes like the role of television and fandom in popular music.

We are still aiming to have models for our three levels of content (pop-ups, events and extension modules) by Christmas but the days seem to racing by! As you are probably aware, Julian has also been working on finishing the Ballets Russes doco and filming interviews for work we have been asked to do by UTS which all needs to be done by 20 December so time is very tight.

I'm hoping for at least one more post before Christmas but in case I don't get another chance thanks for making me feel so welcome. Next year is going to be awesome!

Caz

PS: Just a reminder that our new Communication Strategy can be found in the VCN Project folder on the L:drive.

Ballets Russes content for FUSE

Costume designby Leonard French for the Vizier, Nutcracker, Ballet Guild, 1953. The Arts Centre, Performing Arts Collection

As discussed at our last meeting DEECD have requested some 'hot content' for the ministerial launch of FUSE in January so Julian and I have been working on a short documentary piece inspired by our recent Ballets Russes exhibition. The exhibition is currently on tour in Shepparton and will be off to Hamilton in March so we thought that it was a good opportunity to provide regional teachers with some content they could use either in isolation or in conjunction with a visit to the exhibition.

The doco will run for about 8 minutes and includes excepts of curators Steve Tonkin and Margot Anderson giving floortalks in Gallery 1 interspersed with still images of the designs, photographs and artworks featured in the exhibition. The second part of the doco features the teachers and students from Bendigo Secondary College who attended a special costume design workshop following their visit to the exhibition. I've seen the rough cut and Julian has done a great job. Once it's finished I'll make sure to post it so you can all see it.

Next week we plan to start mapping out the 'event' module we are creating for Skyhooks - should be fun!

Caz

FUSE Project Update

Rock 'n' roll seems to be in the air! Along with our own AC/DC exhibition, two new rock exhibitions have opened overseas. Beatles to Bowie: the 60s Exposed is on at the National Portrait Gallery in London, while Who Shot Rock 'n' Roll? recently opened at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. Both tell the story of rock 'n' roll using the photographer as the chronicler and image maker. The Brooklyn Museum exhibition has an interesting 'Teacher Packet' you might want to take a look at while the NPG has an interactive that allows you to upload your photograph to a period music magazine cover.

On the homefront it's been a bit quiet for the past fortnight with Julian on the road with the DocU Project. We have, however, managed to start sourcing collection items for our 'pop up' and 'event' modules on our intereactive timeline. Our favourites so far have been the 'Women's Weekly' supplements 'Teenage Weekly' which are full of 1960s-style fashion, muisc and agony aunt advice!

Remember me?

Poster advertising 'Chain' at Bertie's nightclub, Melbourne, 1970. Performing Arts Collection.

Sorry about the shameful silence on the blog front! Julian and I have been very busy trying to wrestle the VCN monster to the ground. We have been trawling through the Performing Arts Collection for weeks now and have found some fantastic material to use in our Australian Music, Circus, and Creative Process resource packages. We have just started work on the first major element of the Australian music project, an intereactive timeline looking at popular music in Australia from 1955 to 2005. The images here are from KE EMu, our collection management system and show just some of the amazing material we have to work with.

 

The Future of Museums

Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame orinially uploaded to Flickr on July 10, 2006by ricardo.martins

Over the past two weeks ABC Radio National's 'Future Tense' have aired about 'The Future of Museums'. One of the things that came across strongly in both Part 1 and Part 2 was the need for greater collaboration between curatorial, education and public program staff in museums to ensure that we communicate the 'magic' of collections in a way that is accessible to every Tom, Dick and Harriet.

So props to us...we are on the right track!

Caz

The Learning Federation Pilot Project

Sorry there hasn't been a post for a while. I have been wading through The Learning Federation Museum & Educational Content Exchange Final Report. At 122 pages it is an detailed review of the TLF's pilot project between the Powerhouse, Museum Victoria, National Museum of Australia and 15 primary and secondary schools from Victoria, South Australa, New South Wales and Tasmania.

The report provides an overview of the processes and systems TLF used to procure, quality assure and deliver content made available by the museums for education users. It also analyses the ways in which teachers and students engaged with the TLF's interactive online environment, Scootle Sandbox.

The results at an upper level are very encouraging with over 92% of teachers and 82% of students agreeing that the 'online learning environment and its collaborative tools assisted students learning'. The finer detail, however, reveals the expected gaps between museum, educator and TLF understanding and expectations.

Reading this document alongside the VCN2 FUSE GOTME document it is clear that DEECD have taken on board and tried to remedy many of the stumbling blocks of the TLF Pilot. This should be very comforting for our VCN2 team! Improvements include the ability for contributor to provide greatly reduced metadata sets for learning object (which is much more in line with how museums do things) and a more self-regulatory quality assurance regime.

If you are interested in dipping into the document you I'd suggest reading the section entitled 'What the case studies tell us' and appendices 1-3 for specific examples on online collaborative activities created by the teachers. Appendix 5 also provides a good list of online references.

So there it is, another boring but strangely fascinating report summarised for you!

Caz

Australia's Cultural Portal

Glasses worn by Barry Humphries as Dame Edna, the Arts Centre's Performing Arts Collection

Do you guys know about this site? It was created by the federal government some years ago but it is quite a good one stop shop for leads on all kinds of performing arts including rock music, dance, circus, opera, theatre and comedy. The Arts Centre's collections are linked to some pages too which is always pleasing!

Some of the links are better than other (quite a few to Wikipedia) but it is definately worth keeping in mind. You can also search by audience (children, families and young people!) which can be handy.

Have a great weekend

Caz

Cool software

Hanna and Dan have forwarded on some great links to software we may be able to use to generate content for our VCN projects. They are:

• Kodu a new visual programming language used to create video games which are especially engaging for children as they use icon based language.
• Photosynth allows you to make a series of flat photographs into a immersive 3D experience.
• Google SketchUp7 kids have been using this one to create things on Dan's Indoor Laneway Project.

If you come across any other (or can think of some good uses for these ones) let me know!

Caz

Fast facts about teens and the Net

• According to a recent survey by America's Pew Research Centre close to 75% of teenagers see themselves not only as Web users but as content creators. There are lots of good facts and figures on this site about internet usage across the generations.
• Not long ago the Jewish Womens Archive in the US ran a program for a group of teenagers and this is what they noticed about their relationship with the Web.
• There is also lots of information online about the 'digital natives' and their preferred learning styles which makes interesting reading.

Enjoy!

Caz

Do you know TED?

If you don't you should introduce yourself! TED Ideas Worth Spreading centres around an annual conference which invites the world's most influential thinkers to speak on for 18 minutes on a topic of their choosing. Many of the resulting talks are available for viewing online including the always fascinating Clay Shirky on 'How Social Media Can Change History' and Tom Wujec on 3 ways the brain creates meaning.

Check it out.

Caz

Webquests

Day dress and jacket by Ungaro, 1966 Victoria & Albert Museum

I thought I'd start sending through some links to sites that are similar to FUSE. This one is the Webquests project set up nine British museums to provide greater access to their collections. The first thing that you will notice is that it is very SLOW. I have been on the site a few times and it is always the same. That being said, it provides some good ideas for presentation and layering of content.

I've checked out the V&A's 1960s design challenge (KS4 Art & Design), The Tate's Conceptual Art Debate (KS4 Art & Design) and The Wallace Collection Treasure Hunt (KS1 History). They all use the same template which makes things easy for the user and they all employ the same open ended qusetions requiring transformative and creative thinking.

If you have time check it out and I'll post any other examples I come across.

Caz

Welcome to the VCN Team blog!

Child with computer by water by MrsGooding originally uploaded to Flickr Creative Commons

I thought it might be a good idea to create a Web 2.0 environment where we can discuss and share ideas, interesting websites, blogs, videos etc as we come across them. This is a permission-based site so only our team can view and contribute to this blog.

I have already found some great sites to inspire us and have started a reading list for us bookish types (books are in the Performing Arts Collection library). If you have anything you would like to contribute please leave me a comment. If you want to be one of the blog authors just let me know and I will set you up with an author permission.

Let me know what you think!
Caz