Museums are finding more and more ways to use digital technologies to enhance their learning and public engagement programmes. Technology has tremendous potential to engage, excite and inspire people, to make learning more flexible and to cater for different learning styles and abilities.  In many museums, however, the work of learning departments and technology teams is still quite separate.

This conference, curated jointly by the Museums Computer Group and the Digital Learning Network, will bring together the two worlds of museum technology and museum learning and encourage them to talk and learn from each others’ skills and experience.

Museum technologists will learn about tried and tested techniques used by colleagues in Learning departments to measure the impact of digital projects on audiences. Learning teams will be inspired by the potential of digital technologies to achieve learning outcomes, audience engagement and reach.

Programme

Download full programme (PDF, 92KB)

Programme: engaging digital audiences in museums

.

 Time Session title Speakers

.

 10.00-10.30 Registration

.

 10:30-10:40 Welcome Mia Ridge, MCG Chair and Claire Ross, DLNET Chair

.

 10.40-11.15 Keynote speeches

.

 Keynote 1: ‘None of us is as smart as all of us…’: How networking and multiple intelligences will shape our futures Nick Winterbotham, Group for Education in Museums (GEM) Chair and Director, Winterbotham Associates at Thinktank

.

 Keynote 2: Museums and technology Matthew Cock, Head of Web, The British Museum

.

 11.15-11.30 Discussion Chairs: Mia Ridge and Claire Ross

.

 11.30-12.00 Break

.

 12.00-12.30 Mobile learning case studies Chair: Martin Bazley, DLNET

.

 ‘Discover Sessions – new ways of working.’

Taking what they learnt from an off the shelf system the National Maritime Museum developed a bespoke mobile learning system where the user drives the learning process.

 Lucinda Blaser, Digital Projects Manager, Royal Museums Greenwich

.

 ‘Hidden Newcastle- failed inventors and body dredgers’

This case study will look at the successes and challenges in creating compelling content for Hidden Newcastle, an app revealing strange and forgetten stories in Newcastle upon Tyne.

 John Coburn, Project Coordinator ICT, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, Newcastle

.

 12.30-1.00 Evaluation and measuring engagement case studies Chair: Rhiannon Looseley, MCG

.

 ‘Beyond the survey: effective and fun ways to measure engagement and learning’

Find out how Museum of London has been piloting new methods for measuring engagement and learning with Foundation Stage pupils and Family audiences.

 Isabel Benavides, Programme Manager (Family Outreach), Museum of London

.

 ‘The opium of the masses: Evaluating ‘High Tea’

Through our evaluation of a risky but highly successful casual web game, we discovered more than we expected to about new audiences and how people play games, as well as reaching towards best practice in evaluation itself.

 Martha Henson, Multimedia Producer, Wellcome Trust

.

 1.00-2.00 Lunch

.

 2.00-2.45 Parallel workshops

.

 Engaging audiences digitally – on a budget

It’s not easy to identify and implement technologies that are a good match for
your audiences, content and organisational context. This session will provide some inspiration and help you get started.

 Greg Povey, Mudlark and Shona Carnall

.

 ‘Mobile Apps: Shiny new distraction or useful learning tool?’

The buzz around apps seems to be getting stronger – but what does this mean for cultural heritage organisations? Should we all be developing them? Do they deliver the new audiences they promise? Can we really use them to deliver learning objectives or are they just the latest new shiny distraction?

This workshop session will look not only look at mobile apps but also the mobile alternative to apps – when is it a good idea to use mobile? What are it’s strengths and weaknesses in the context of learning? Using these as starting points, we’ll explore how to go about creating mobile experiences that support learning, where to start, how much they might cost and whether they are worth the money. This is a chance to find the answers to the specific questions for you and your organisation have about using mobile to support learning.

 Alyson Webb and Lindsey Green
Frankly Green + Webb

.

 ‘How can we re-align museum practices to make more of changing technologies?’
Technology moves fast, but museums move slowly. This session features case studies from MOSI and York Museums Trust and group discussions about ways forward in this area.		 Pauline Webb, Collections Manager, Museum of Science and Industry

Michael Woodward, Commercial Director, York Museums Trust

.

 2.45-3.00 Unconference ideas

.

 3.00-3.30 Break

.

 3.30-4.15 Unconference

.

 The unconference is your chance to start up-to-the-minute conversations about the hottest topics in the digital museum field. Find out how others are managing the issues that affect you.

.

 4.15-4.30 Unconference wrap up Chairs:
Mia Ridge, Juno Rae and Linda Spurdle

.

 4.30-5.00 Closing plenary/round up Mia Ridge and Claire Ross

Follow @ukmcg or @dlnet on Twitter for updates.

DLNET logo