Museums and the Blogoshpere (homework)

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/gates/gates.html

I was initally drawn to this paper as it was about museums creating blogs and I just created a blog...so I felt a connection. Simple, but you've got to start somewhere.

It did get me to thinking about the role museums have in the blogosphere. It seems to me that their entry into the realm goes against the original mission of blogs - to enable a free stream of thought outside of corporate and media driven and controlled outlets. Do does a museum blog, which is a controlled entry that must pass through several layers of approvals and editing before being released, a true blog? It would seem to fly against the notion of spontaneous thought and reaction. If this is the case, where do museums fit into the blogosphere?

When Technololgy Beats You - Cheat

Well, I couldn't figure out how to make this photograph part of the page layout, so it is now loaded as a post.

"Rock" Stars

This website won the 2006 Museums on the Web conference's Educational Use Category. The information is not that different from any educational website - in the fact the judges considered the content inherently dull - no love for geology with this group. But the creators played with a theme and made the site pretty witty, enough that they wooed over the less than excited judges.

According to the committee: ""Life of a Rock Star" uses the metaphor of a rock band on tour to explore the stories and science behind Canada's first geological survey team, created in the mid- in the nineteenth century to explore and document the country's rich natural resources. "Life of a Rock Star" is a clever demonstration of how to animate learning by bringing brilliance and humor to what is sometimes viewed as a dull subject."

To access the site, go to
http://collectionscanada.ca/rock/index2-e.html.

Ramblings/Notes on Lab2 - Part 1

1) Nanozone.org
A button for museum professionals takes you to pdfs of reports of their front end study, exhibit catalog, lessons learned, and the summative report they conducted in conjunction with the exhibition. Not only does this help to validate the information presented, it is a great resource for other museum professionals who can use this to guide an evaluation project they are working on. And if time and budget is too tight, this assembled data can be extroplotated for use at a similar institution.

They also had pre- and post-visit lesson plans for teachers; however the pages didn't load, making them not quite as useful and they were intended to be.

I only tried a few games and they were very educational - yet not exactly thrilling. I didn't bother to find out which sick cow was producing the green milk, sorry Farmer John. I did like that they included pictures and interviews with scientists that work on this technology, as it is always cool to meet real people beyond the science. However, there was no sound to the site - it was literally a scary (to me, kids might think it looked funny) talking head reading the written interview that popped up.

2) lawrencehallofscience.org/kids
Wow, a lot of choices - but I don't like the layout, it seems overwhelming. I have to learn about paleontology for another class, so I went to FossWeb. As I know nothing about this subject, I went to the age old default of "talk to me like a two year old" and opted for the k-2 section of the FossWeb.

They had some interesting sections.
"Who lives here" is a matching game that focuses on the animals that live on/near a particular tree. Always a sucker for matching games, it was fun. The photo gallery includes pictures of different trees and then a sample of the wood that comes from that tree, interesting enough, but no interactive component to help you remember which wood is linked to which tree. Ask a scientist, again, a nice inclusion of real life jobs, but only written answers and definitely way above any K-2 year olds head/interest level. And in the movies section - there were no movies listed - that is totally lame - I don't think you should have any links that don't lead anywhere.

3) Virtual Museum of Canada
This had a promising component - create your personal museum, but only if you log in. I hate having to log in. I have more user names and passwords than one could possibly remember.

4) ology.amnh.org/paleontology
Again, exhibits class has been on my mind lately as I desparately look to find simple, easy to digest information about paleontology - and this is a great website for that purpose. I took the "What do you know" quiz and didn't do so well - obviously I need to spend more time on this website. This website is packed with information and tons for photographs, games, and collecting cards. It is pretty layered and does take time to get through - you would really have to be interested in paleontology to go all the way through the pages (or you would need to learn the information for class and therefore want to plow all the way through the pages). I wonder who this is designed for. It is a lot of information (almost too much information) for a general web-goer and yet it might be broken into too simple chunks for someone who has knowledge about the area. For me, it works.

In the Realm of Nothing to do with Museums

I and others played a nice three hour round of Guitar Hero last night, utilizing songs from both Guitar Hero I and Guitar Hero II. Three hours left us all with hand cramps and led to many silly rounds trying to score style points - we really should have just stuck to the business at hand -trying not to fail our songs, yes you can fail and it is humiliating. We had some newbies in the groups and one who despite not having played in four months rocked out on the expert level leaving the rest of us somewhat speechless. I knew it was time to stop when I failed Free Bird - really should have just let that one be.

AAM

I just (okay, not just - I submitted on Friday afternoon) completed my first session proposal for an AAM event. I've been wanting to participate in the national conference for years and always had a reason not to submit a proposal - didn't have the funding to go, didn't have an idea to submit, or just plain missed the deadline. But after I heard AAM was in Denver this year, I knew I had to pull myself together and send in a proposal. I was surfing the web last Tuesday and thought I should check out the deadline for submissions - that would be last Friday - as in I had three days to pull an idea, presenters, and a coherent session proposal together. I've been working on a project that involves exhibition and curriculum development with several colloborators - including a museum, an educational not-for-profit and four public school teachers from different states. Seemed easiest to try to use this project as a case study and luckily every one was on board for presenting. Trying to pull all of the descriptions and ideas into 100 word chunks (per AAM requirements) was a bit tricky; but ultimately a great exercise in being concise. So, now I guess I wait to hear from the AAM committee...

Which of these things is not like the other?

Well my first foray into the land of blogs was on wordpress. I know blogspot was listed on the sheet we all got in class but wordpress came up during conversation about blogsites and I thought I'd venture out and try something different. But as I'm new to this whole game and not sure how to actually navigate blogs, I realized this wasn't really the time to be different. This was the time to follow instructions. So my first blog has died after only being live for four hours - may it rest in peace.