museumsandtheweb.com - interactivity

Narrating Culture on the Web: Assisting Audience Participation through Reading Rhetoric and Innovating Online Forum Design

MaryPettice — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:46:30 +0000

MW2012

Mary Pettice, Lebanon Valley College, USA

Abstract

Program Item Reference:

Narrating Culture on the Web: Assisting Audience Participation through Reading Rhetoric and Innovating Online Forum Design

MyBatMitzvahStory and Living the Legacy

pdash — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:26:40 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

education

Keywords:

education

Keywords:

cultural education

Keywords:

community

Keywords:

Media

Keywords:

interactivity

Abstract:

We have recently launched a new site called MyBatMitzvahStory.org which is part of the Jewish Women’s Archive education program. The site targets girls who are of bat mitzvah age (11-13) and helps them explore and express their emerging identities as Jewish women. We are particularly excited about the interactive features of the site, such as quizzes that help related girls to other “Cool Jewish Women,” a journal to record their thoughts and feelings, and sections for describing their personal heroes and imagining what their future life as a Jewish woman will be. The site also includes a presentation tool which allows users to create slideshows using media either provided by JWA, available on YouTube, or uploaded by the user herself. MyBatMitzvahStory is a way to expand JWA’s audience to a new age group and provides an avenue for these girls to connect to the Jewish community, their heritage, and the women they are becoming. It also is a step towards thinking of our website not as solely content to be delivered to the user, but a way for the user to deliver and create her own content and story.

In conjunction with MyBatMitzvahStory, we would also like to demonstrate a section of jwa.org called “Living the Legacy” (http://jwa.org/livingthelegacy), which is targeted towards Jewish Educators. It is a new online curriculum that uses primary sources to explore the role of American Jews in the Civil Rights and Labor Movements. Educators working in both formal and informal settings can use the materials in their entirety or choose individual lessons to teach.

Living the Legacy pushes the envelope in terms of providing teachers with an intuitive set of tools to explore, edit, and build lesson plans incorporating some, or all, of the JWA-provided materials, while also including the teacher’s own materials. The goal was to create a media-rich website with a wealth of primary sources from the archive that works with the teacher, while also suggesting a variety of ways to approach each section, rather than force the teacher to use our materials our way, and rather than limit the teacher to materials from our site only.

Like “MyBatMitzvahStory.org,” the “Living the Legacy” curriculum emphasizes providing core tools and primary resources without limiting teachers or students to what happens to be available from our site only. It is our first step into a broader semantic web.

We are very excited about both of these new programs at JWA, and believe they are a step forward for JWA, Jewish education, and online archives in general.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

MW2012 Demonstrations I

Site:

http://mybatmitzvahstory.org

Authors:

Patrick Dash

Ari Davidow

Rules of Play: Design Elements of Addictive Online Learning Games

davidschaller — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:16:45 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

games

Keywords:

learning

Keywords:

design

Keywords:

interactivity

Keywords:

interpretation

Abstract:

Over the past decade, games have grown as both a commercial industry, as a field for scholarly research, and as a practical medium for teaching and learning. Inspired by a broad array of research emphasizing the effectiveness of problem-based, anchored instruction, developers have been creating games about subjects ranging from childhood obesity to electoral politics to personal finance. Even former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has embraced games as a way to teach civics to schoolchildren. Games have definitely come of age as tools for teaching and learning.

But we still need to understand how to make learning games fun. For that, we must learn about game design. Given the breadth and depth of this topic, this workshop focuses on a handful of game mechanics that help us move from the kinds of "game-like" interactives commonly found on museum Web sites into the realm of true games. With a firm understanding of these mechanics, we can design online games that incorporate our content and create compelling, even addicting learning experiences for our audiences.

This workshop focuses on a handful of game mechanics that help us move from the kinds of "game-like" interactives commonly found on museum Web sites into the realm of true games. With a firm understanding of these mechanics, we can design online games that incorporate our content and create compelling, even addicting learning experiences for our audiences.

Please note that this workshop will use paper prototyping methods to explore game elements and mechanics. Understanding these elements is essential to design an effective and engaging online games, so our focus will be on design principles, not on production aspects of online games.

Type:

Workshop - full or half day

Rules of Play: Design Elements of Addictive Online Learning Games

Site:

http://www.eduweb.com

Authors:

Dave Schaller

The Future of Interactivity

bwyman — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 05:45:14 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

user experience

Keywords:

interactivity

Keywords:

future

Abstract:

As storytellers that love content, Second Story is adept at implementing great technology to support engaging design. However, while we seek to push the limits of what's currently possible, we also look to the future of interactivity and what it means for user experience not only for museums but consumers in general. People are moving from traditional information consumption and in this paper / session, we'll look at a number of new trends and their implications for the future.

As we explore these trends, we'll use examples of our own work to demonstrate the scalability of content, new ways of using HTML5 for interactive installations, and changes in sensing technologies.

A sample preliminary outline:

* HCI will increase in prevalence

- less reliance on physical screens for points of interaction (proximity, rfid, nfc)

- think in terms of stories of interactions

- design for verbs, not nouns

- Objects have meaning in the world (transition beyond QR codes)

* Mobile / Tablets are about *personal* experiences

- not a portable form factor, but a personal form factor

- the most intimate scale of experience

- incredibly rich market / opportunity

- know your audience, android vs iOS .... Metro* Specific devices matter less

- expectation that an experience immediately exists across multiple platforms

- destination of content vs utility of experience

- shared code base works primarily w/o system UI widgets

* Web Technologies aren't just for the web

- HTML5 to power screen layouts

- passing information through javascript

- scaling experiences across multiple devices* All data is transportable

- interconnected services and experiences *expect* that data is transportable

- design systems that make it easy to expose data

- aggressively address privacy issues

* Users deeply integrate w/ content & readily share

- participation lowers marketing cost

- users draw deeper ties to content

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Digital strategy

Authors:

Bruce Wyman

Narrating Culture on the Web: Assisting Audience Participation through Reading Rhetoric and Innovating Online Forum Design

MaryPettice — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:11:58 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

Narrating Culture on the Web: Assisting Audience Participation through Reading Rhetoric and Innovating Online Forum Design

Keywords:

co-creation

Keywords:

identity

Keywords:

cultural heritage

Keywords:

forum design

Keywords:

Aotearoa/New Zealand

Keywords:

interactivity

Abstract:

New Zealand’s Puke Ariki Museum, Library and Visitor Center in New Plymouth recently used two different formats for collecting and displaying visitor comments in recent (2010-2011) exhibits. Both formats challenge online visitors to weigh multiple perspectives on history and the future of New Zealand. Read together, these comment areas offer insight into visitor interaction with exhibition material. In addition, the comment areas—one unconventionally designed but not interactive between users, one conventional and interactive between users—point toward new possibilities for designing and hosting audience-generated material that builds on and interrogates museum exhibits.

The first, “Te Ahi Kā Roa, Te Ahi Kātoro: Taranaki War 1860–2010,” which described the war between the indigenous Māori and European settlers, retains an online presence through a non-interactive online comment area created from a broad variety of visitor reactions to the exhibit. The comments are displayed with attractive graphics that refuse to privilege one point of view over others; the comments page gives voice to the current state of the cultural conflict over colonial and indigenous versions of history examined in the exhibit while it creates a new narrative, one that tells a multi-voiced story of New Zealanders’ interaction with the past and the museum itself. The online comment presentation reveals visitors’ desire to join, contest, and parallel the trajectories of the narrative presented by the exhibit and current New Zealand historical scholarship.

The second, “What If? The Future of Taranaki,” presented on-site exhibitions and events designed to stimulate conversations on regional identity and environmental sustainability as well as an online forum space to facilitate those conversations. Subject headings included “Sea Levels,” “Energy,” “Economy,” and “Communities,” and separate threads within them asked questions such as “What kind of Taranki do you want to see in the future?”, “How are the changing patterns of agriculture affecting our region?”, and “What do you think or feel about Taranaki continuing to lose its native plants and wildlife?” The forum, which is now closed but archived, was built using traditional message board software; comments were moderated by an outside organization.

In a paper presented at the International Digital Media and Arts Association Conference in Vancouver, 4 November, 2010 (and currently under review at the New Zealand Journal of Media Studies), I argued that a close rhetorical analysis of the curated comments reveals an audience-generated chronological narrative of engagement and identity with the exhibit. I plan to analyze the second exhibit’s interactive forum in much the same way; I also will suggest that the graphic design of the first comment area offers a much more appropriate foundation for an interactive discussion of cultural matters than the traditional linear message board forum used as part of the second exhibit. While the second exhibit’s forum allowed visitor interaction with other visitors, it isolated comments within particular threads. Inspired by the nonlinear “stage” design of the first comment area, I envision a hyperlinked, easily tagged and nonlinear experience that combines interactivity with a more aesthetically and culturally satisfying user experience.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

After Gutenberg

Site:

http://www.pukeariki.com/have_your_say/virtual_stage/index.html

Authors:

Mary Pettice

Museums and the Web: a conference, a community, and a challenge

jtrant — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:03:08 +0000

Bearman, D., & Trant J. (1997). Museums and the Web: a conference, a community, and a challenge. Museums and the Web '97.

Interactivity Comes of Age: Museums and World Wide Web at Five

jtrant — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:03:08 +0000

Bearman, D., & Trant J. (1999). Interactivity Comes of Age: Museums and World Wide Web at Five. Museums and the Web '99.

Hands on: Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums: Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums (ICHIM '95 / MCN '95). Volume 2

jtrant — Thu, 31 May 2007 02:15:22 +0000

Bearman, D. (1995). Hands on: Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums: Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums (ICHIM '95 / MCN '95). Volume 2.

Hypermedia & Interactivity in Museums, Proceedings of an International Conference

jtrant — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:07:08 +0000

Bearman, D. (1991). Hypermedia & Interactivity in Museums, Proceedings of an International Conference. (David Bearman, Ed.). 340.

Multimedia in Public Space

jtrant — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:07:08 +0000

Semper, R., & Woolsey K. (1991). Multimedia in Public Space. (David Bearman, Ed.).Hypermedia & Interactivity in Museums.

Museums and Interactive Multimedia: Selected papers from the second International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums (ICHIM93)

jtrant — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:06:28 +0000

Lees, D. (1993). Museums and Interactive Multimedia: Selected papers from the second International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums (ICHIM93). 436.

Learning by Design: Teachers / Museums / Technology

jtrant — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:00:34 +0000

Trofanenko, B., & Korteweg L. (2002). Learning by Design: Teachers / Museums / Technology. (David Bearman, Trant, Jennifer, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2002: Proceedings.

Leveling the Playing Field: Empowering Learners with Primary Sources

jtrant — Wed, 02 May 2007 00:57:39 +0000

Copeland, C., Shah R., Bojkov P., Ellis D., & Foster G. L. (2005). Leveling the Playing Field: Empowering Learners with Primary Sources. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings.