Social Networking and Web-Based Communities for Learning in Museums

Slide 1: Social Networking and Web-Based Communities for Learning Bryan Kennedy, bkennedy@smm.org Rose Sherman, rose.sherman@mnhs.org Senior Exhibit Developer, Dir of Enterprise Technology, Science Museum of Minnesota Minnesota Historical Society

Slide 2: Topics MN Historical Society Blogs ✦ MHS Collections Location no. FM6.183 r2 Flickr ✦ Podcasts ✦ Video ✦ 1952 Facebook ✦ Story Sharing ✦ Collaborative Content ✦ Online Exhibits ✦ Virtual Learning ✦ Always Connected ✦ Institutional Voice 2007 ✦ Radical Trust ✦ flickr.com/photos/marinacastillo/1865063539 Tools to Help You ✦

Slide 3: Science Museum of Minnesota Topics MHS Collections Location no. MR2.9 SP8 p72 Blogs ✦ MHS Collections Location no. MR2.9 SP8 p395 Flickr ✦ Podcasts ✦ Video ✦ 1938 Facebook ✦ Story Sharing ✦ Collaborative Content 1978 ✦ Online Exhibits ✦ Virtual Learning ✦ Always Connected ✦ Institutional Voice ✦ Radical Trust ✦ Tools to Help You 2005 ✦ flickr.com/photos/asp_/74659007/

Slide 4: Poll: Who’s Here? How Comfortable / Familiar With Web 2.0 Are You? Folksonomy Tag Wikis Social Clouds Networking RSS Geo- Coded Podcasts Blogs

Slide 5: Can you do this? asy rd ha e You create IT creates ✦ ✦ They host You host ✦ ✦ Huh? What’s HTML? <?php echo ‘Hello World’ ?> ✦ ✦ Do you know where your ✦ httpd.conf file is?

Slide 6: Blogs Quickly Post Thoughts & Images; Interact With the Public Institutional Information Smithsonian American Art Museum eyelevel.si.edu Museum Content Minnesota Historical Society discussions.mnhs.org/collections Community & Expert Science Museum of Minnesota sciencebuzz.org Personal Voice Walters Art Museum thewalters.org/blog

Slide 7: Museum blogs on blogs museumblogs.org museumtwo.blogspot.com/2007/03/institutional-blogs-different-voices.html

Slide 8: Blogs How can I create one? easy Blogger.com •They host your blog •Most popular tumblr.com •They host your blog •Super easy WordPress.com •They host or you can host your blog •Much more configurable hard Drupal and Plone •You host •Lots of setup •Super configurable

Slide 9: Blogs Science Buzz Quick and responsive ✦ Personal not institutional voice ✦ Visitors lead us in new ✦ directions When we are out of our depth ✦ we can invite in experts sciencebuzz.org

Slide 10: Blogs Science Buzz Showcase your blog on your exhibit floor People feel smart at our ✦ institutions They can get it online...but will ✦ they? Allow them to email links home ✦ and to friends People love to register ✦

Slide 11: User generated media Flickr, YouTube http://youtube.com/results?search_query=hugo+tornado&search_type= Others... •blip.tv •vimeo •photobucket http://flickr.com/photos/chadwho1ders/2523836732

Slide 12: Why use Flickr? easy Creative commons search Images of... your institutions ✦ your collections ✦ your websites ✦ your exhibits ✦ current ✦ topical ✦ free ✦

Slide 13: Why use Flickr? Showcase your visitor’s images Visitor images easy

Slide 14: Why use Flickr? People enrich your content Flickr Commons ✦ Reach flickr’s established community ✦ Release history to the people ✦ Enrich collection information ✦ More descriptive info ✦ Geo-tag ✦ Collective Intelligence http://flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2515741495

Slide 15: Why use YouTube? Reach new audiences ✦ ✦ Bring them to your site ✦ Share film trailers ✦ Promote upcoming events ✦ Archive events ✦ Video competitions ✦ Do training MN Historical Society youtube.com/user/MinnesotaHistory Ontario Science Centre eahyrd sa youtube.com/user/videochick770 Brooklyn Art Museum youtube.com/user/BrooklynMuseum

Slide 16: Social networking easy ...with Facebook Positives ✦ Reach new audiences ✦ Promote upcoming events ✦ Feeling of belonging ✦ Your institution can be part of your visitor’s identity Questions? ✦ MySpace, Orkut, etc.... ✦ What’s next? ✦ Diversity? Brooklyn Art Museum Minnesota Historical Society Science Museum of Minnesota and many more...

Slide 17: Social networking hard ...with Facebook Applications Development platform Social tagging ✦ Collections and identity ✦ Let people interact with ✦ your content in Facebook But, maybe they never visit ✦ your site? Proprietary platform ✦ Steve.museum Art Share

Slide 18: User generated content Storytelling Story submitted by the public is incorporated into interpretative website. people.mnhs.org/mgg/story.cfm?storyid=385 stories.mnhs.org/stories/mgg/story.do?id=5

Slide 19: User generated content Storytelling Hurricane Digital Memory Bank hurricanearchive.org/object/2797

Slide 20: Collaborative content Placeography A wiki about any place anywhere that anyone can edit. Geo-coded data ✦ ✦Architectural info ✦History ✦Chronology ✦Memories & Stories ✦Citations ✦Related Content ✦Photos placeography.org

Slide 21: Collaborative content Crowdsourcing the MN150 Exhibit What person, place, or thing originating in MN has had a lasting impact in MN, the country, or the world? Exhibit was curated by the public ✦ 3700+ nominations submitted ✦ All nominations presented ✦ Each topic has a history section, on ✦ which the public can collaborate mnhs.org/mn150wiki

Slide 22: Collaborative content Community created object labels Museums don’t know everything ✦ Harness micro-experts ✦ Poems, stories, feelings ✦ Visitors can share ✦ their personal expertise on cultural objects

Slide 23: Online exhibit tools ha easy rd An open source museum movement Omeka Focused on historical collections and telling stories Open Collection Manage media collections Art interpretation Use templates to build multimedia kiosks for the museum floor

Slide 24: Virtual Exhibits Virtual reality with collections and interpretation Rome Reborn 1.0 Monticello Explorer Fort Snelling Perspectives Digital model of Rome in 320 AD University of Virginia IATH Goal: Expand to Bronze Age and Medieval Period using data from community of archeologists. http://romereborn.virginia.edu

Slide 25: Virtual Exhibits Population of... eahyrd sa > 5 mil. residents Second Life ✦ ✦ > 1.5 mil. logged-in the last 60 days ✦ 40k users in world at any time Demographics everyone over 18 * ✦ ✦ average age 33 ✦ 43% female users ✦ active users: 44%EU; 26% USA http://www.slideshare.net/ialja/virtual-worlds-introduction-second-life-and-beyond?src=related_normal&rel=80946

Slide 26: Changes on the horizon Guide by Cell Audio over your phone Walker Art Center Art on Call Science Buzz Voice XML Museum 411 ha easy rd

Slide 27: Changes on the horizon Web over the phone Mobile devices make content/interaction ubiquitous ha easy rd

Slide 28: A philosophy shift? These technologies suggest a radical trust “We can only build emergent systems if we have radical trust. With an emergent system, we build something without setting in stone what it will be or trying to control all that it will be. We allow and encourage participants to shape and sculpt and be co-creators of the system. We don't have a million customers/users/patrons ... we have a million participants and co-creators.“ Darlene Fichter University of Saskatchewan Libraries, 2 April 2006, “Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and Radical Trust: A First Take”

Slide 30: Tools for you Web 2.0 can help you do your job better Get more out of Find the cream of Free images conferences the content Follow trends Google, Yahoo, Netvibes, etc. Super read the news with RSS

Slide 31: Still bewildered? Simple, plain-english videos explain Web 2.0 concepts commoncraft.com

Slide 32: Thank you Please get in touch with questions and ideas: Bryan Kennedy Rose Sherman bkennedy@smm.org rose.sherman@mnhs.mnhs.org This presentation is available online: tinyurl.com/4jjexs