Photo credit: Forests, Fields and the Falls from Minnesota Historical Society
Last week we talked about how the Museum of London has created a staff position to focus exclusively on creating content for digital learners, and some of what they are doing. Today we thought we’d highlight some of the innovative samples of elearning for museums that is already out there. Perhaps these great sites will get your own creative juices flowing!
- The National Museum of Australia has a number of great interactive exhibits on their website, including this one about the family of a founder of Australia’s conservation movement in the 1930s. They also have an innovative mobile telepresence program which allows students from remote areas of Australia to visit museum galleries and interact with a museum facilitator through individually controlled robots.
- MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art in New York City) has an entire elearning website. They tweet, blog and have a Flickr slideshow. In addition to a mobile-friendly (for smart phones and tablets) portion of their website, they have mobile tours where visitors can select audio by number, browse by floor, or receive detailed visual descriptions of particular works of art if they have visual impairments.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City also has an extensive online learning space, with interactive online exhibits featuring objects from the museum. In addition to Twitter and Flickr, there are a number of other ways to interact with fellow enthusiasts, or you can check out their series of full-length video lectures through iTunesU.
- You don’t need access to a huge, expensive, well-endowed museum budget in order to have an innovative online presence. One smaller, creative example of museum quality elearning is the Minnesota Historical Society’s Forests, Fields and the Falls, which takes virtual visitors through stories of life in lumber camps, farms and flour mills.
Are you ready to explore the elearning possibilities for your own museum? Contact us today to discuss your museum website design or multimedia project with one of our consultants and help your museum stay relevant in this technological age.