Edited by Sue Stackhouse
Printed and distributed by the Canadian Heritage Information Network
Note:The contents of this publication are entirely the responsibility of the Museums and Electronic Distribution Special Interest Group.
Printed in Canada
! From the “Editor”
by Sue Stackhouse, PD Assistant and Membership,
BC Museums Association
Speaking of educational missions, my involvement with this project taught me something quite memorable and something I should have learned long ago. Don’t ever volunteer on behalf of someone else. That someone is likely to tell you, quite calmly and politely with a smile, that if you thought it was such a good idea why don’t you do it, after all, you are more than capable and obviously interested . . . So, after attending my first meeting of the Museums and Electronic Distribution Group, I became your editor for this issue!
At that meeting, it was decided that our topic for this newsletter would also be the theme for a panel presentation at the CMA conference. In preparation, Claude Camirand, Director of Technology Services, Musée de la civilisation, and Barbara Rottenberg, Policy Director, Canadian Heritage Information Network, planned several conference calls this Spring with other SIG newsletter editors and with proposed panel participants.
At the June conference in Ottawa, Claude Camirand chaired the session “The Educational Mission of Museums on the Electronic Highway.” He posed the question, “What challenges are linked to the use of new technology in relation to an educational application?” Maurice Landry, M.A. Museology, Reinwardt Academy of Amsterdam, was the first to speak, followed by Jennifer Iredale, Curator, Heritage Branch, BC Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture; Debra Burleson, Director, Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History; and Denis Cousineau, Teacher, Confederation High School, Nepean, Ontario.
Our BCMA President, April Ingham, made notes on my behalf. She reported that there was a full audience, the choice of speakers was well balanced, and thought it was one of the better sessions she attended. I hope we can convey a little of our success in the articles reproduced here.
To add two other perspectives, we have articles by Lee Boyko, Professional Development Coordinator, BC Museums Association and Deborah Griffiths, Director, Courtenay Museum and Paleontological Centre. Lee’s article is a brief examination of how a perfectly feasible project can be near death over a copyright issue, while Deborah outlines her museum’s ongoing technology development project.
Each of the people involved in producing this newsletter have volunteered their time. We hope you’ll contribute to future issues of the newsletter, either as editor or author. Come to the SIG meeting at the CMA conference next year and help select themes for our newsletters and presentations. The spirit might catch hold, your arm will start to rise, and before you know it . . .
F Pioneer Schooldays through the World Wide Web
by Jennifer Iredale, Curator, Heritage Branch, BC Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture
The educational mission of museums has always been a touchstone for my work, directing the focus of research and exhibition and providing the criteria for success of interpretation programs, period room exhibits and now, websites.
As a Curator and Interpreter of historic sites, I have been involved in the educational mission of museums since the early 1970's. As a Collections Manager, computers became integral to my work, as efficient tools to manage collections information. In the past five years, I began to see the Information Highway as a medium to 'exhibit' the collections research and information; to complement that with interpretive material, primary documents and visual images, and to place it all within an educational and interactive framework.
I am excited by the interactive and self-guided nature of Internet exhibits; by the possibility of providing access to primary documents to allow students to browse and make their own interpretations; by the possibility of telling more of the story on the web than I ever could within period room or didactic exhibits; by the greater possibility of collaboration with other agencies who own complementary material; and finally, by the possibility of having students provide relevant content, questions and dialogue to the web exhibit.
After a couple of pilot projects with the B.C. Museums Association and with the University of Victoria's Fine Arts Department, I graduated to SchoolNet where some of these ideas have been translated into 'virtual' reality. This is a work-in-progress, with many facets and on the brink of another incarnation.
Last summer, Industry Canada through their 'Digitizing Canadian Collections' SchoolNet program, provided funding under contract to two projects for which I was Content Provider . . . or, as I prefer to call it . . . Curator. The titles for the websites are:
Emily Carr; At Home and At Work
http://www.tbc.gov.bc.ca/culture/schoolnet/ca rr/ and Point Ellice Collection of Household Victoriana http://www.tbc.gov.bc.ca/culture/schoolnet/victoriana/
Each website has six components – a virtual tour of the buildings and grounds, collections database, biographical and archival information, scripted educational programs and historic site hours and events, current and controversial issues and website team biographies.
Website construction was done by Camosun College and University of Victoria students under my guidance. The project allowed the students to apply the graphic design and/or computer skills they were learning at college – some used this project as a required co-op or internship, with carefully defined learning outcomes, objectives and evaluation. Although the subject of this learning was not the history we were putting on-line, the students did learn the history, became excited by it and some have pursued this interest on their return to classroom studies. The graphic and technology learning was immense.
I was able to realize one of my main goals with the Point Ellice website – that of putting our collections database on-line. A 1994 MAP grant had allowed us to computerize the data and to add various fields of information. The SchoolNet project hired a U.Vic programmer to convert the database from MS Access to MiniSQL (to reside on our UNIX server) and to write the program interface to create an on-line searchable database. Concurrently, 150 artifact images were scanned into the database. We are adding another 600 - 1000 images and Manufacturer's Histories under this year's Phase 2 Point Ellice SchoolNet contract.
The searchable database receives limited visitation, however I have found it a very useful educational and interpretive tool for working with museum students. During this past winter, I had 10 students from the University of Victoria's Introduction to Museum Studies course undertake research projects with the Point Ellice Collection. They were able to access the collections information from school or home and therefore be less dependent on me for information, and more effective in their research projects. The On- Line database, and I quote from Maurice Landry "put the information where the learners were and helped them to construct their learning from the networked material." Beyond that – it led them into researching the manufacturer's of the artifacts, and providing that – by e-mail- to the Curator, for inclusion in the database. They received some course credit for this as well as having a 'real museum work experience' with material culture research.
I chose to train them with our in-house MS Access database, with the thought that they might find it 1. easier to use, 2. provided more information 3. provided greater flexibility and accuracy for searching. However, they found the On-line database far easier to use than our Access database, and, at their level of training and use the On-line database provided greater flexibility, more information and greater accuracy. Access tended to not produce the information they were looking for because the learning curve to understand how to ask for the information was just too great. By working with the museum students I have been able to evaluate the On-Line Search tool and to determine how to improve it for better searchability.
The Emily Carr Site was a collaboration co-ordinated by the B.C. Heritage Branch and included the B.C. Archives and Records Service, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Vancouver Art Gallery and Emily Carr House. I call this our 'linked database' of images and information on Emily Carr's Art. I think we can claim there are more Emily Carr works exhibited on this website than can be seen in any other single place. The site includes many of her sketchbooks held by the B.C. Archives and usually unavailable for viewing. This is a large amount of primary information made available to students of Emily Carr's work the world over.
There have been over 116,000 hits to this website since we went on-line in September of 1996; good evidence of the strong interest in Carr's work. Combined stats for both sites is 140,000 hits. The stats reveal that the websites are accessed from computers all over the world, and have a high percentage of educational institution visitors. I have had e-mail from undergraduate and graduate level students studying Carr; and from primary students looking at the site. One of the concerns raised by colleagues in relation to putting museum information on-line and including e-mail access to the Curator, was that internet requests would be too time-consuming. This has not proved the case – and in fact, I have found the few e-mails to be stimulating and to add to my body of knowledge. If anything, I am concerned there have not been more e-mail questions as I hope the learning experience from the website is dynamic and encourages interactivity and dialogue. Maybe not.
Both the Emily Carr and Point Ellice websites were designed with school students in mind. Both websites contain components targetted to teachers and students – with curriculum focii and learning outcomes and strategies. On the Carr site, we included a list of research questions – one set for elementary students and one for secondary. The elementary questions allowed the students to link to the answers; the secondary level questions were more open-ended and encouraged the students to compare and contrast and evaluate with their own judgement. On the Point Ellice website, we adapted 'Mystery of the Old Suitcase' – a hands-on classroom program which I had written in 1990. This included instructional strategies, learning objectives and the ability to download all the props and materials the teacher would need to conduct the program. Essentially, this is an entertaining and educational classroom activity focussed on the O'Reilly family, Victorian Life and research skills.
Although these components were developed as curriculum-based learning, I have been disappointed at the lack of primary and secondary school feedback. To discover how the website is being used and to determine if I could make effective changes, I approached a local elementary school and asked if I might work with a class on an Internet project. Within the Museum community, the objective was to create a collaborative project with a school to evaluate the effectiveness of an internet exhibit and archives as a learning resource for elementary level students and to develop a prototype for other partnerships with schools to improve the delivery of education programs at our museum.
Since May, I have been working with the Information Technology/Librarian and a Grade 3/4 French Immersion class at Sir James Douglas Elementary School on a cross-curricular program integrating information technology and social studies. SJD is a school without an internet connection; in it's first year of including information technology as part of the curriculum, and with a lot of computer-shy teachers. My telephone survey of internet use at elementary schools in Victoria indicates that this is generally the case. In the classroom our focus was to have the students undertake research through various resources (library and the internet) on Art of the First Nations of the Northwest Coast. We
wanted the students to engage in historical inquiry – comparing, contrasting and being conscious of their new-found research skills and their applicability in various mediums. We wanted to introduce the students to the Internet as a research resource and to integrate Web resources effectively into the social studies curriculum.
In the school our objective was to create a pilot project at SJD to demonstrate to students and teachers that the Internet is an exciting and effective learning resource which can effectively be integrated into curriculum teaching.
How did we teach the internet without an internet connection? The teacher used whiteboard drawings of Netscape Screens and overhead projections of Search Engine screens. This allowed 'button by button' explanations, classroom questions and discussion unimpeded by flashing computer screens, tempting keyboards and buttons and pay-by- the- minute internet connections. Issues such as advertising, inappropriate material, and on- line games were discussed by the students. Search terminology was discussed using search examples such as the terms 'Bill Reid', 'Mungo Martin', 'Emily Carr' and 'T'sonaqua'. Through discussion and overhead examples, the students quickly realized that some terms would bring up lots of websites, but only some relevant to what they were looking for and other terms would bring up little or no information and would have to be rephrased to find anything. Between 'internet lessons' the students read an Emily Carr story called D'sonaqua and another N.W. coast tale, and did school library searches for the same artists we had ?found’ through the internet.
Finally, we did a field trip to "The Underground On-Ramp CyberCafe" where they surfed the Net for two hours to find information for an assignment. The assignment asked them to find biographies on Bill Reid, Mungo Martin, Henry Hunt and Emily Carr; to write or find a chronology on Emily Carr's life; to find information on D'sonaqua and, importantly, to keep a log, journal or schematic of the steps they take in their Internet and library research (to be conscious of their research strategies and path and to be able to compare library and Internet research).
It worked! The students did learn from the classroom teaching how to effectively use netscape; how to search; to try different search engines and different phrases. They did find the internet a useful, information-filled, fast and fun research resource. And best of all for me, they came back to the Emily Carr website again and again to find information and finally, just to look through her pictures in the 'linked gallery'. They found information I knew about and information I didn't know about – all of it focussed on their assignments. In the end, they showed their Principal how to search for Henry Hunt and D'sonaqua, and engaged the Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator from the B.C. Ministry of Education in playing the Maltwood Gallery's N.W. Coast Printmakers educational game (another SchoolNet site).
We found they preferred 'non-linear' websites or exhibits – ones they could move around as they wished and not lose the thread of the information. This meant they did not tend to stay at game sites or sites with a linear path; they liked image-intense but fast-loading sites and had trouble with too many words or sites with big, slow-loading images. They became very involved in fulfilling their assignments – were happy and excited to do it, but did not pay close attention to how they got to the answers, and were often unable to repeat the path to find the right answer a second time.
The project did demonstrate to the students, the teachers and their school that the internet is a dynamic, information-laden and effective learning resource; did create a model for other 'non-internet' schools to use; and also created a prototype for future partnership projects between my museum and that school.
The college student team for the '97 SchoolNet/Heritage Branch contracts attended the Cybercafe field trip with the Grade 3/4 class, focussing them right away on the educational mission of the websites they will be building this summer. When I left they were interspersing their HTML and PaintshopPro training with reading the Ministry of Education Curriculum Outline for K-8 Social Studies and Information Technology.
F The Educative Mission of Museums on the Electronic Highway: Questions and Thoughts
by Maurice Landry, M.A. Museology, Reinwardt Academy of Amsterdam
Email: d352045@er.uqam.ca
Telecomputing and networking, which are new types of technologies in the museum world, are offering both hope and problems. However, as Mason (1995) notes in Surf's Up: “Those who are best placed to capitalise on the next educational technology are not those who have sat back and watched this one go by.”
Then, if we want to capitalize on this technology to enhance our educative mission, we must ask ourselves certain questions, including the following:
Does the utilization of this technology make sense in regard to our
educative mission?
With the use of new technologies in cultural heritage can we refine our
pedagogical mission?
Who will be the main audience?
Can the electronic utilization of our cultural resources really help the teachers and the students in their learning process?
What type of virtual museum experiences can help the learners to expand or change
their view on particular topics?
Internet, electronic superhighway, telecomputing, teleconferencing and networking are technologies that are here to stay. They are not a passing fad and many advantages appear to be within reach for museums. If we take the opportunities offered by these technologies to work together, and if each category of museum manages to create its own niche, then all museums connected to the electronic superhighway could become places of true learning and experimentation. This niche must be at first, and mainly, what we area and what we are doing, i.e. conserving and presenting the world’s cultural heritage. By favouring investigation and exploration of the collections in a way to answer the interests and preoccupations of the users, by developing closer links with schools, the museums could not only reinforce their educative mission but also extend their reach within a multiplicity of communities. Moreover, by developing virtual destinations which support exploration and value learning, the museums increase the visiting probabilities within their walls. This is the best direction, the best niche for the museums rather than merchandizing of goods or marketing without, however, excluding these two aspects.
With these technologies, as Ebersole writes (1995) in Media Determinism in Cyberspace, we could work from now on at changing the long-established "top-down, one-to-many model of communication to the new paradigm of bottom-up, many-to-many." This new paradigm calls for multidisciplinarity and collaboration. It takes the learners where they are and helps them to construct their learning from the networked material. This approach called inquiry-pedagogy, is considered by most of the experts [Bearman ( Getty Research Institute for History of Arts and Humanities), Helfrich (SLN), McKenzie (From Now On)] as the only key to succeed in the creation of virtual exhibits.
If we wish to put value in our educative mission with this technology, we must base it on three basic principles essential for the building of knowledge. The material presented on the Internet must value virtual visitors' questioning, it must encourage their research and, finally, it must facilitate experimentation. Moreover, interest must be maintained by this research and experimentation. The traditional approach of some museums, those that dictate, those that impose knowledge, cannot answer adequately the expectations and the interests of the Internet's users. You can go on Internet at the following addresses and check those criteria.
http://www.tbc.gov.bc.ca/culture/schoolnet/carr/
http://www.mvnf.musc.digital.ca/
http://www.ésci.mus.mn.us/sln
Are we ready to share our artifacts, our texts, our information in a way to support the role of museums within a networked society?
Are we ready to review our organizational structures in a way to facilitate the sharing of knowledge both within and outside our walls?
Telecomputing and networking offer vast possibilities of contextualisation. As the musealized objects carry more than one meaning, these could be easily contextualised according to their social, economic, political and cultural environments. It could help the museums to go global, beyond the traditional social boundaries. As Bearman (1995) writes in Museum Strategies for Success on the Internet "the real value of our collections, and their true uniqueness, derives from their connection with our institutions. Provenance, and local associations, are what makes them unique . . . If the museums are able to take advantage of these opportunities, they could well be transformed and find new sources of support and cultural authority. If not, their cultural mission could be endangered as other institutions interpret the past through virtual objects available over telecommunications links"
Telecomputing and networking could give museums the possibility of presenting collections in their primary context, with more relationships to time and space. Our traditional role of preserving, documenting and presenting evidences and reflections of the human being through time will be enhanced. Then our virtual destinations must be complementary to what we are doing already. They must bring forward our own personality and originality. On top of presenting our collections, these destinations can offer numerous options to the virtual visitors, like reference services, interactive activities as well as integrated resources coming from other collections or virtual destinations. Moreover, they can offer to the schools ideas on the ways they can integrate the material online to the curricula. Take a look at the following destinations to see how this can be done (http://mmfa.qc.ca - http://ushmm.org). The Internet destinations which are only duplicating the physical museum or being a facsimile of their programs or catalogs must be avoided. This type of destination is considered by many as a waste of time and money because they are not corresponding to the expectations of the Internet's users.
However, the utilisation of the electronic highway to enhance the educative mission of museums calls for a modification of organizational structures. From now on these must work in a more narrow way with the various departments. The development of interactive approaches and networking asks for a new type of collaboration between the educative, exhibition, publication and marketing departments.
Are we disposed to honour our electronic visitors as real visitors?
How can we generate the funds necessary to reach these new goals?
With telecomputing and networking offering all the possibilities of a multimedia approach, museums can devote themselves to expanding their educational mission. They now have the possibilities to become places of information for society and to guide the public toward taking advantage of something of worth and value. Bearman (1995) writes that in order to bring our virtual visitors to go through a real museum experience, our environment needs to be interactive and allows the users to construct this experience with personal meaning. Then we need to respond to these visitors rather than pump information at them. By using these technologies to get closer to the curiosity, interests and concerns of a broader public, museums can enhance what they are already doing, strengthen their outreach and at the same time increase their financial returns. The perspectives offered by these new technologies must bring us to work at the development of a new type of museum experience, one which will be an addition to what we are already doing. Under the lights of what is going on in the world of business, we must create consortiums of museums and develop commercially desirable networked services. This can be expressed by concession to utilize the collections for educative purposes and by close links with the education world.
Since 1995, all these issues and approaches have been applied by a consortium of American science museums. The Science Learning Network (SLN) group consists of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, the Boston Science Museum, the Museum of Science of St-Paul, Minnesota, the Museum of Science and Industry of Portland, Oregon, the Exploratorium of San Francisco and the Museum of Science of Miami. Each of these museums is closely linked to a school in its neighborhood. Furthermore, this experimental project was developed with the participation of the National Science Foundation and by Unisys Corporation.
The development of the SLN project has contributed to the creation of different organisational structures which have, on the whole, worked on the development of new types of learning tools. These structures must work more closely with various departments within the museums. They must also develop up-to-date interactive tools and network connections. A different type of collaboration between the departments involved is occurring as a result of these efforts. This has improved the sense of community as well as the creativity of the staff, which has helped each of the museums to define complementary approaches and styles of their educational material. It then appears that SLN influences and affects some of the ways museums operate.
SLN is fundamentally a project that uses telecomputing to teach science, mathematics, and technology at the elementary level. Its teaching and learning approach is established on inquiry-based pedagogy. However, as it is a relatively new method, all the SLN staff working on the development of these present-day techniques are confronted by new meanings and ways of learning. Much uncertainty exists with regards to the numerous problems that each team is confronted with in establishing this new pedagogical approach. However, at the same time, SLN staff feel great satisfaction because everyone is confronting the problems on a collective basis, while participating at the same time in transformation of the educational departments and of the mission of the museums. From the hands-on units they are now developing 'minds-on' components which force them to be more aware of the intrinsic motivation of learners and of their ability to interact with the ''edutainment' materials. By showing teachers how to use the information technology and the museums' collections as powerful tools of learning and by providing teachers and students ways of collaboration and exploration within their learning process, SLN contributes in shaping the classrooms of tomorrow.
However, what is more important, the implementation of the SLN project has contributed to enhancing the educational mission of the participating museums. Through knowledge they are gaining with the project, they are creating new ways to utilise their resources world-wide. If SLN is successful, it will be very interesting to study its influences on the museum community. It has an impact potential similar to the hands-on approach had in the 1970s. This experimental project is one of the most popular and referred to often on the Internet.
The implementation of an Internet destination has numerous requirements, financial requirements being very important. The museums deciding to go in that direction must avoid improvisation. Their approach to these new technologies of communication must be based on multidisciplinarity. The wheel must not be reinvented here; while being original and creative, museums can definitely take their inspiration from the best examples created by Canadian and American institutions. If most of the experts of this field agree that the future of the Internet is in the content and this content must favour building of knowledge, then we must be inspired by this citation of Marshal McLuhan: "Anyone who thinks education and entertainment are different doesn't know much about either." If you wish to go in that direction, then consult the text by Paul Helfrich on the Internet. It is certainly one of the best guides on that topic for museums.
Bibliography:
Bearman, David, Museum strategies for Success on the Internet, The Museum Collections and the Information Superhighway Conference, Science Museum, London, 1995, [http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/infosh/bearman.htm]
Ebersole, Samuel, Media determinism in Cyberspace, 1995, [http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/rojc/mdic/md.html]
Helfrich, Paul M., Building Onramps to the Information Superhighway: Designing, Implementing, and Using Local Museum Infrastructure, Science Learning Network, June 1995, [http://sln.fi.edu/~helfrich/onramps.html]
Mason, Robert, Surf's Up, Museums Journal, August 1995, p. 22-23
Murray, Bruce, Society, Cyberspace and the Future, How can New Interactive Communication Technology Enhance Harmonious and Functional Communities at All Scales Worldwide? California Institute of Technology, February 1995 [http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~rich/aspen.html]
McKenzie, Jamie, Building a Virtual Museum Community, [http://fromnowon.org/museum/museweb.html]
Museums on the World Wide Web, Museum News, January/February, 1997, p. 34-40
Interesting Internet destinations in relation to education and information technologies.
The Web site of the Science Learning Network
http://www.sln.org
Considered as the best site of the Science Learning Network: The Thinking Fountain, Science Museum of St-Paul, Minnesota.
http://www.sci.mus.mn.us/sln
Educom, Transforming Education through Information Technology. Why use this technology? What can justify these costs? What value can it really bring to education?
http://educom.edu/
The Institute for the Learning Sciences ( ILS ), Northwestern University . This institute, with a large team, is working on the learning sciences and the development of information technology.
http://www.ils.nwu.edu/
Engines for Education: based on a structured hypermedia called "Ask Systems", déveloped by ILS. This is one of the best sitse to develop an approach based on inquiry pedagogy.
http://www.ils.nwu.edu/~e_for_e/index.html
From Now On, A Monthly Electronic Commentary on Educational Technology
http://fromnowon.org
EdWeb. Exploring Technology and School Reform: an intelligent guide, detailed, informed, practical, for issues related to education with the Internet.
http://edweb.cnidr.org/resource.cntnts.html
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: interactive and constantly up-to-date.
[ http://www.mmfa.qc.ca ]
Emily Carr: Interactive site allowing exploration in terms of multiple interests.
[ http://www.tbc.gov.bc.ca/culture/schoolnet/carr/ ]
United States Holocaust Museum, Washington: an excellent example of complementing what the museum is already, and an excellent example of the educational niche.
[ http://www.ushmm.org ]
F The Internet, Schools and Museums
by Denis Cousineau, Teacher, Confederation High School, Nepean, Ontario
Using the Internet to Teach Students
Over the past ten years, teachers’ perspectives in the classroom have changed greatly. Traditionally, teachers were asked to transmit knowledge, mainly in terms of subjects. Evaluating students mainly focused on their ability to retain information. Now the role of teachers is being completely transformed. Of course, they must transmit knowledge but, principally, they must guide and train learners by helping them develop a range of basic skills that will allow them to survive in a globally competitive environment: technological, communication, teamwork and research skills. The task of evaluating students thus involves evaluating their progress on a variety of scales. For the teacher, the Internet becomes a new tool that enables students to gain knowledge in a range of subjects as well as develop essential research and communication skills.
Museums’ Contribution to Student Learning
For schools, museums in their traditional guise have always been, and will remain, places to enrich the spirit where you can visualize and marvel at the world of knowledge. The Internet now allows museums to leave their physical presence behind and become virtual entities. Museums become more democratic and accessible since students can have access to them every day. Museums can now also reach out to students in places where museums do not exist. It is a wonderful world for teachers that offers daily possibilities in a variety of contexts.
The important thing will be to establish close cooperation between schools and museums. This adventure should allow teachers to design concrete learning activities in collaboration with museum professionals. Ideally, the activities should not only enable students to search out new information but also help them develop many other abilities as well as allow them to contribute to collective knowledge. This is why the Internet has become such a powerful tool.
The Virtual Museum
There are several ways in which museums and schools can join together and cooperate to their mutual benefit. In this part of the article, I will refer to real experiences with Internet projects at Confederation High School in Nepean, Ontario. It takes only a little imagination to see how museums could participate.
First of all, museums could use high-quality Web pages to attract the eye and interest of students when they are doing research or want to gain new knowledge. Ideally, they could suggest possible scenarios for museum experts to develop probable responses. The museum would thus become interactive.
As a second stage, it would be important to work on mega-projects (Weber-Malakhov, Rainbow-Revolution, Denali...).
At Confederation High School, students followed two explorers as they conquered the North Pole. Students had to play an essential escort role by checking a message received by radio and satellite every day and then communicating it to 300 schools around the world. This activity, in which everyone in the school took part, enabled a number of students to become Web experts. Learning, cooperation, text-writing, effective communication and direct exchanges with Russian students are only a few examples of the experience these students had. With Rainbow-Revolution, some classes will follow two historians as they try to trace the steps South Africa took towards democracy. Students involved with Denali will follow doctors who are climbing a mountain and studying the scientific effects. There is a common denominator in all these experiences: for the students, they represent real experiences that are actually taking place. In these situations, motivation reaches its highest peak. Museums would not find it difficult to do something similar.
Lastly, museums could benefit from coop work opportunity programs in which they would not only train young workers but also benefit from the technical expertise of young students (preparing Web pages, design, multimedia presentations...). Students can learn at the same time that they also contribute to the production of real materials.
Schools are continuing to evolve as is the educational relationship between teacher and student. Museums could assist in this process through the many opportunities provided by the Internet.
F Hitting the Brick Wall, or How Copyright Scuttled a Promising Project and SMIP got Snipped!
by Lee Boyko, Professional Development Co-ordinator, BC Museums Association
IBM, BC Tel, and the Ministry of Education were all considered good partners for a project bringing museum resources to students in the classroom.
For sometime, the British Columbia Museums Association has been working with the provincial Ministry of Education to promote the better integration of museums and schools. So, when in late 1995 the ministry suggested a potential project, we listened with interest.
The ministry had been approached by IBM to take a look at their Eduport System. In the development stage for some time, Eduport is IBM’s system to deliver educational resources online to the school system. The ministry was interested in the technology that would see wide bandwidth electronic material going directly into the classroom. The ministry liked the idea but they wanted the test material to have a BC focus. They asked us, the BC Museums Association, whether we wanted to be involved.
After meeting with the partners and teachers from the two high schools that were to be test sites, the general scope of the project was outlined. The overall objective was to have museums from around the province provide curriculum-based resources. For the pilot, we decided to focus on the goldrush period in BC’s development. Working with the teachers, we developed a wish list of materials that they would like their students to access. They wanted a combination of original documents, quality secondary material and access to experts.
As we were working on a limited timeline and budget, we decide to work with as much existing material as possible as opposed to generating a large amount of original material. The basis of the material was to be the questions already identified by the teachers and museum exhibits, publications, audiovisual and human resources that already existed. We hoped to identify 10 primary museums which would be willing to participate in the project. A team would be sent out to these museums to digitize exhibits that contributed to the resource needs. Additionally, selected museum staff would be identified to act as experts in real time interaction with the students. One of the major aspects of the Eduport system was the ability to have live action video., we wanted to take full advantage of this capability.
One of the early challenges was deciding who would develop the final product and in what format. The ministry had supported the development of a “Science Magazine” in electronic form. The early discussions suggested that this might be the template that would be developed for this project. The Eduport system had its own standards, but IBM was in the process of thinking about changing to a Web-based front end. The decision was made to have the BCMA develop the product using a web approach.
The real challenge soon became apparent. The ministry was willing to inject some money into the project, but only if they had complete copyright of the material. This presented the BCMA with a big problem. While we had no difficulty with giving the ministry copyright over the format and material we developed for the project, we did not believe that it was right to ask museums to give up their copyright to their exhibits. We suggested that this material be treated in the same manner as the ministry handles requests for materials to be used in their distance education product, a limited use license. After 14 months of negotiation, and many lawyers later, we are still trying to get this principle into the project.
F Mission or Monster?
Website Work at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History
by Debra Burleson, Director, Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History
My purpose at CMA was to talk about some of the web work we have done, but also to convey how we made the choices that moved us onto the web.
The context
NSMNH is one of 25 locations of the Nova Scotia Museum, the most decentralized Museum in Canada. We have 17 full-time staff, about 90,000 visits yearly, 350,000 specimens and a long tradition of total staff commitment to education and public service. As part of the Department of Education and Culture, we enjoy a close relationship with schools and also with the Information Technology support group of the Department, which maintains a large server.
On a personal level, most days when I return home one of my children is on the Internet. The 13 year old is self-taught, constructs game worlds and plays in them via modem with pals all over the world. The 6-year-old learns by watching him; the 4-year-old who cannot read can fire up the Mac from a cold start and draw a picture, play a game or CD-ROM without help. They are not unusual.
About face?
Some museums just want to “establish a presence” on the web. This is fine at first but with the pressure on money and staff time it is not fine for very long. Websites quickly become static, boring, unused. But putting a big emphasis on on-line interaction with Museum collections may at first seem a bit bizarre. We have built institutions, professions, careers on the premise that real things are important, that the interaction between people and objects, perhaps mediated by a museum professional, is worth paying for. We have built our organizations on real reality – do we now turn around and praise virtual reality? (Free virtual reality at that). Perhaps it is ideas that are most important, after all.
We have built large structures full of exhibits, increasingly expensive to operate, increasingly dependent on the revenue from visitor traffic through the doors. Is there really any convincing evidence that Websites significantly increase museum visitation or revenues?
So choosing to use the electronic highway is a question of both philosophy and resources. We don’t hear many examples – yet – of traditional museum vehicles such as exhibits and public programs being dropped and replaced by electronic work. There is some new money available – SchoolNet is a prime example – but what about expertise? The Internet is a means for communication of content and opinion. If museums choose the Internet to help fulfil educational objectives, our content must be authoritative. This means curatorial involvement. The communication must be engaging and effective. This means time from our interpreters and educators. Performance contracts such as SchoolNet projects must be well-run to succeed; it is not usually museum staff providing the leadership?
In my experience on the east coast, you can buy web programming inexpensively. Design costs more. But if “content rules”, people with the content and communications expertise to use this medium to help others to look, see and think are much rarer. A lot of them are already working for us in museums, but doing something else. If we are going to turn them towards producing Internet products, we need reasons that fit both the medium and our mandate.
So why do it?
For us at NSMNH, there were four reasons:
1.Reach – not global, but first provincial and perhaps national. With a realistic eye on statistics about the type of folks who use the Internet, we could get out cheaply this way. Nova Scotia has a major commitment to provide Internet access in schools and public libraries; we want to be there with authoritative, interesting Nova Scotia content.
2.The communications appeal of colour and learner-directed enquiry through hypertext links.
3.The idea of content plus communications together – that learners could E-mail us with questions or comments (the Website generates two or three E-mail questions per day).
4.The idea of audience-generated content and opinion. This is an area we explored through Frogwatch, a nature observation project. While there are validity issues of great concern, as teacher comments to the Journey North Website show and any listserv member will understand, the idea can be intoxicating.
How to keep the focus on real reality? I wanted the web site to encourage, help with and receive information from peoples’ direct personal experience with nature. Not just the dead nature in our collections, but living nature around them. In the perfect world, people would use the Website for self-directed learning and would make fewer, but more refined enquiries of Museum staff.
Just put it on the web?
To choose the content, we looked first where museum interest, public interest, and Internet – suitable resources intersected.
Taking an existing print document and doing a straight conversion to HTML works for content-heavy articles aimed at committed readers. People will print them out and treat them like any piece of text. Messages for wider audiences should be reformatted for this medium – that generally means breaking the content up into roughly screen-sized chunks, adding colour, writing bridging text, making links. Sometimes this means re-conceptualizing the content completely to allow users multiple ways of working through the content. For example, a four-page black and white information leaflet on
turtles was rebuilt as a web document of 21 pages and 15 image files, although the original text was scarcely touched. The original, quality colour images we mounted have brought lots of appreciative E-mail, and requests for re-use.
Copyright reality check
This is such a difficult issue. I have taken a simple approach: “If it’s on, it’s gone”.
User Feedback
In the last year or so, the E-mail rate has averaged at about two a day. Most of the mail is about our reptiles and amphibians pages. A rough breakdown:
Congratulations 20%
Fix this mistake 10%
I need information ... 40%
Here’s information for you ... 5%
Link to my site 10%
I want your image / I took your image 5%
Buy or sell 5%
Some of the exchanges have been nothing short of exhilarating – public servants and the public, talking about the natural world, exchanging observations and ideas. Sure, it happens on the telephone too, but the Website plus E-mail facilitates contacts with more distant clients. Too distant, perhaps. We love it when E-mail arrives from a small rural Nova Scotian community. But how much of the Nova Scotian taxpayer’s money should go towards satisfying the curiosity of nature enthusiasts in Scotland or California?
Maintenance mode
Any evolving site will always have sections in different “states of success” with regard to design, communication effectiveness, content accuracy, currency. Users like new information, or at least the appearance of new-ness. Staff, particularly surfers, will push to have outdated design upgraded, sometimes with insufficient regard for download times or communication effectiveness. Links need to be verified regularly, as other sites go up and down. We do not yet have a smooth system for finding dated material and getting edited pages to the server quickly. There is no technical problem, just a time problem. Yet we happily plan major new content pages.
Users can be very helpful in reporting problems. We have tried using a High School Cooperative Education student to test existing links and seek out useful new ones. There are bugs to be worked out in the relationship, to ensure both Museum and Coop Education program goals are met, but I think this approach holds promise. Lack of links
outward is the major weakness in our site now. I am a firm believer in annotated lists of links – providing brief critical or descriptive comments can save users much time and add enormous value to our sites.
Worthwhile?
Probably. Maintenance is tough. Some days I have a very strong feeling of having created a monster of dubious impact. Other days, the E-mail brings a thrilling response. Recently, to my surprise, one of our web pages popped up on the TV screen in a Sympatico ad, as a mother assures us “There’s even Nova Scotia content!” and her son beams about showing his friends the snake pictures. That, after all, was the primary goal – authoritative, interesting Nova Scotia content. If Sympatico says we’ve done it, why am I still uneasy?
F MAKING THE MOST OF A UNIQUE RESOURCE
by Deborah Griffiths, Director, Courtenay and District Museum and Paleontological Centre
Creating vital and ongoing learning environments in museums can change the way we perceive ourselves and, in turn, change the way we are perceived.
The Courtenay and District Museum and Paleontological Centre is a regional museum on Vancouver Island with a mandate to preserve and reflect the natural and cultural heritage of the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. Started in the 1960’s by a group of enthusiastic volunteers, the museum has grown considerably since that time. In 1986, 1,200 people visited the museum. The total in 1996 was over 38,000.
Over the last ten years, the museum has had the fortune of being steward of a number of internationally significant paleontological finds. The most notable find has been the Puntledge elasmosaur, an eighty million year old aquatic reptile measuring 13 meters in length, discovered by Michael and Heather Trask in 1988.
Subsequent finds of various late cretaceous vertebrates necessitated stepped up research and programming, partnering with museums such as Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum, and increased overall operational responsibilities. Attendance figures tripled in a short span of time.
The flip side to the fortuitous position of the Courtenay Museum, has been the accelerated change that needed to take place in order to ensure that the Courtenay Museum could maintain, preserve, and interpret this type of material while juggling all other areas of operation and development of community partnerships.
Special projects have been continuous with support from the provincial Partners In Science Programme, the Vancouver Foundation, B.C. Heritage Trust and support from the Courtenay office of Human Resource Development Canada. The staff has grown, as have programmes and revenues. Nonetheless, one fundamental component has remained relatively untended- the development of an ongoing learning environment for the permanent staff who experience constant and dramatic change.
Over the past eight years, the museum has employed over three hundred individuals on special projects, normally six months or more in length. While many of the projects have provided training for the project participants, some of this training knowledge leaves the museum when participants move on to other jobs in the community. Throughout the year the number of employees will range from eight full time employees to 20-23 depending on special projects. The unique resource of paleontological material with its accompanying demands for accelerated operation has also placed us in a “unique” situation of having to identify operating practices that will serve as cornerstones for success in a fluctuating environment.
It has become apparent through this process that one of the most important cornerstones for success is the creation of a learning environment, or ongoing learning philosophy, that enables employees to grow and change as demands for skill sets change.
More importantly, ongoing learning can generate optimism, professional confidence, and a sense of participation in the direction of the organization. This, in turn can be reflected in the way we provide services to the public and in the way we are perceived. Finally, development of ongoing learning environments can open up opportunities to become more collaborative with fellow community organizations and with colleagues in other parts of the province, Canada and the world. Technology, distance learning, and the web have finally opened up this world for us. How can we make pragmatic and progressive decisions about technology to make changes in our organizations and communities?
Increasingly, as in the case of the Courtenay Museum, there is a need for community and regional museums to develop learning environments that keep us informed, and that encourage professional confidence and optimism for healthy sustenance of museums and galleries.
In the fall of 1996, working within the context described, the museum began to create and design a technology training project that would build partnerships and address a number of needs in cultural organizations in the Comox Valley . With collaborative input from Lonni Baker of the Courtenay H.R.D.C. office, Doug Preston, Director of the Campbell River Employment Foundation Society, and technology consultant Susan Gardner, a technology development project was created. Some of the formative goals were as follows:
To enhance the operational capacities of each organization through technological training and formation of partnerships in the community and museum and gallery sector
To increase the capacity of cultural organizations to promote cultural and heritage tourism province- and nation-wide
To research and implement innovations in information access and programming
To remove some of the isolation experienced by cultural organizations by increasing awareness of the potential of on-line information exchange through umbrella organizations and information services such as listserves, discussion groups, special interest groups, etc.
To develop multimedia projects that would enhance cultural awareness and be of benefit to each organization on an ongoing basis
To explore the potential of creating an ongoing learning environment by improving information access for the staff and, in turn, for the public
To explore partnerships with other museums and cultural organizations to inform the project and develop collaborative ideas
The Courtenay Museum has completed six months of this project and all organizations involved: the Comox Valley Art Gallery, the Cumberland and Courtenay Museums and the Sid Williams Theatre have completed multimedia projects that enhance their operating abilities. As well, all organizations have increased on line and information access skills and have new or upgraded web pages.
During the next six months of this project, we will continue to develop multimedia projects. We will also focus on benchmarking community and regional museum technology projects to find cost effective and innovative solutions to developing ongoing learning environments and improving services to the public through increased use of technology. We will also look at a more approachable way of exchanging information as opposed to the more formal listserve style through creation of cohort groups or informal discussion groups. If you have any suggestions about projects that we can look to for more information or if you would like to exchange ideas on this project please contact us at museum@island.net.