After the excellent discussion with Liz Burge today in our SCoPE session, I'm compelled to move our conversation into what this beast can and should look like, and how we can move the project forward. So let's get down to it, put on our hardhats, and discuss some ideas about how this collection should come together.
To lubricate the discussion, I'd like to offer a table of ideas that I extracted from a conversation my graduate students had about the the design of the collection. Their observations are in a table that I've attached to this message. Smart people = excellent recommendations! They include consideration of site design, content, page design and audience engagement.
So what do you think? What should this thing look like and how should it be designed?
Caveat: Keep in mind that we have no budget and only limited volunteer time.
The table of design recommendations from Rick's graduate students is so thorough! What a great big head start to tackling the museum design. I took the liberty of copying the categories and lists into our wiki. I hope that's okay! That way we can view and continue to add to it easily.
Picking up on the suggestion on this list to use Flickr to exhibit photos (and potentially any service to store other media), I wonder if we should be thinking about the functionality of this museum website as a way to:
a) cleverly organize content that is stored in a variety of locations
b) allow anybody to contribute by tagging their content
rather than thinking about it in terms of a repository. I imagine we would need to also provide a way to upload content directly to the site, but perhaps a good deal of it can be located elsewhere. (Might help with the budget challenge!)
And within all of this we need some quality control mechanism (volunteers? committee?) Perhaps we need an "acquisitions room" which would be a place for people to contribute (links to) content. It would then get reviewed and sorted (a curator?). I see a number of volunteer roles emerging here!
Picking up on the suggestion on this list to use Flickr to exhibit photos (and potentially any service to store other media), I wonder if we should be thinking about the functionality of this museum website as a way to:
a) cleverly organize content that is stored in a variety of locations
b) allow anybody to contribute by tagging their content
rather than thinking about it in terms of a repository. I imagine we would need to also provide a way to upload content directly to the site, but perhaps a good deal of it can be located elsewhere. (Might help with the budget challenge!)
And within all of this we need some quality control mechanism (volunteers? committee?) Perhaps we need an "acquisitions room" which would be a place for people to contribute (links to) content. It would then get reviewed and sorted (a curator?). I see a number of volunteer roles emerging here!
This isn't exactly what Richard is looking for in terms of "look and feel - form and function" but it will hopefully be a way to keep us moving forward with the museum project. With some good designers to spruce it up who knows, it might just transform into something that serves us quite well!
The Learning Technologies Centre at University of Manitoba has generously set up this wiki for us: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/histedtech/ Thanks George!
I've added some content on the main page, and today created 2 pages:
Does this look like it could work for us?
The Learning Technologies Centre at University of Manitoba has generously set up this wiki for us: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/histedtech/ Thanks George!
I've added some content on the main page, and today created 2 pages:
- Acquisitions - A place to add your links to artefacts, stories, interviews, biographies, timelines, etc. I've mined a few tidbits from our SCoPE discussion.
- Volunteers - A place to add and sign up for jobs :-)
Does this look like it could work for us?
Way to go, Champ! I see you and George have been busy! I went into the page to add a couple of things, and I found that you beat me to it. Thanks! :-)
I do hope everyone will get comfortable adding material to this. By the way, I conducted a wonderful interview this weekend with Katy Campbell this weekend. Notice how I said "conducted" and not "recorded"? That's right. I found my settings in Wiretap Studio were fine for Skype, but not for iChat (which we used). Thank goodness Katy is a good sport. I'm going to re-do the interview, and maybe get her on video this time.:-)
I do hope everyone will get comfortable adding material to this. By the way, I conducted a wonderful interview this weekend with Katy Campbell this weekend. Notice how I said "conducted" and not "recorded"? That's right. I found my settings in Wiretap Studio were fine for Skype, but not for iChat (which we used). Thank goodness Katy is a good sport. I'm going to re-do the interview, and maybe get her on video this time.:-)
I had also hoped to do an interview or two but scheduling hasn't worked out. Picking up on Alice's earlier post...
I'm thinking it would be neat to start a series of blog posts -- narratives of individuals in the EdTech world that have influenced our lives. Of course some of these people will be "famous", too!
I added the tag: edtechmuseum in this seminar description. Perhaps we can agree to use that, and also to add a link to our blog posts from the Acquisitions wiki page.
From Re: Virtual Museum Project Live Sessions by alicemac on Thu Oct 2 09:07:00 2008:
I think that we each have our lists of influential people on the technology side. Mine is populated with people that you have probably never heard of, but who I work with and who have been pecking away at this for decades but do not write scholarly papers.
I'd like to see some narratives of these types of people, not just the "famous" ones.
The best parts of museums for me has always been the exhibits and re-enactments of ordinary life "back in the day".
I think that we each have our lists of influential people on the technology side. Mine is populated with people that you have probably never heard of, but who I work with and who have been pecking away at this for decades but do not write scholarly papers.
I'd like to see some narratives of these types of people, not just the "famous" ones.
The best parts of museums for me has always been the exhibits and re-enactments of ordinary life "back in the day".
I'm thinking it would be neat to start a series of blog posts -- narratives of individuals in the EdTech world that have influenced our lives. Of course some of these people will be "famous", too!
I added the tag: edtechmuseum in this seminar description. Perhaps we can agree to use that, and also to add a link to our blog posts from the Acquisitions wiki page.