museumsandtheweb.com - authoring tool

A “Do-It-Yourself” Approach to Heritage Education: Make Your Own Mobile Museum Game

Jolien Schroyen — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:09:22 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

do-it-yourself

Keywords:

mobile game

Keywords:

educational game

Keywords:

cultural heritage

Keywords:

authoring tool

Keywords:

social learning

Abstract:

For small specialised museums it can be quite hard to engage new audiences, especially those that are often not really interested in cultural heritage. We report on a “Do-It-Yourself” approach, in which youngsters create their own mobile game for two small city museums in Flanders (Belgium): the National Museum of Cycling and the City Museums of Izegem - covering local industrial history. The goal was to develop an engaging educational programme for school groups (aged 15+), specifically focusing on technical and vocational education. We offer these students the necessary technological tools (authoring tools), content and storylines to allow them to create their own mobile museum game and share that game with their fellow students. Our approach adheres to four basic guidelines that contribute to an engaging educational experience:

1. Vivid narrative with matching creative environment

The life story of Odiel Defraeye, the first Belgian ever to win the “Tour de France” in 1912, is used as the main storyline. As a local legend in cycling history and a former worker in a brushes factory, Odiel Defraeye acts as a key figure to explore local history in the first half of the 20th Century. Each group of students gets acquainted with one (historical) character from the entourage of Odiel Defraeye. By means of personal profiles of these characters (presented like a social network profile such as Facebook), students quickly gain insight in the day to day life, occupations and social relations of their character.

2. Do-It-Yourself approach

We hand the students the information and the tools they need, and let them use their inspiration and creativity to make their own mobile museum game. Based on the overall narrative and using the provided content (including profile pages, museum objects and background information), students invent a particular story about their character and shape that story as a museum game. This includes thinking about the goal of the game, other characters involved, game tasks or puzzles and a score system. The authoring tool enables them to build the game, using a wide variety of templates to integrate all sorts of different media and come up with different types of tasks and challenges for their fellow students.

3. Shared learning experience

The Do-It-Yourself approach results in games that can be shared with fellow students. Students create a game in groups of two or three and play each other’s games later on in the museum. In that way students feel both responsible for the game they create and curious for the other games, which stimulates interaction and discussion among them.

4. Combination of different learning environments

During the educational programme, students explore three different learning environments: the classroom, the virtual creative environment and the museum. Students start out in the familiar setting of their classroom and then set to work in the virtual environment, consisting of all the digital information regarding the storyline and the museum objects, the profile pages of the characters and of course the web-based authoring tool itself. In the final phase of the programme, youngsters visit the museum, where they can play the mobile games their fellow students prepared.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Authors:

Kris Luyten

Jolien Schroyen

A "Smart" Authoring and Delivery Tool for Multichannel Communication

michela.negrini — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:59:27 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

multimedia

Keywords:

Multimedia

Keywords:

multi-channel

Keywords:

cost-effective

Keywords:

adaptivity

Keywords:

mobile devices

Keywords:

authoring tool

Abstract:

The recent proliferation of technologies and devices (including iPhone, iPad and alike) provides new perspectives for the use of multimedia applications for cultural heritage. Users are no more just sitting in front of their PC at home, but they also access multimedia information walking in the galleries or in archeological parks, sitting in a cafeteria, driving a car, travelling on a train, etc.

In addition, and most important, all the different devices and technologies are important, and institutions can’t anymore decide which are preferable for their users, who are free to choose according to their (permanent or temporary) needs.

This demo features an innovative authoring-delivery environment (1001stories), available as web service, that allows creating multimedia multi-channel applications in an easy and cost-effective way. The applications produced with 1001stories can be delivered over the web, mobile devices (smart phones, iPhone, iPad), off-line (CD-rom, USB key, mp3 players, iPod) or on-line, over standard cell-phones (audio only), through social spaces, etc. basically one authoring effort (including some “adaptive adjustments”) and one technological effort are needed. The toolkit is quite easy to use and therefore can be managed even by a non technical staff (to create/adjust/update the application). The production process is streamlined and effective: one month on average is needed to create a full application.

The effectiveness of the toolkit will be illustrated by means of some concrete examples, among which the most prominent is “Nippon” (www.nipponlugano.ch), a set of applications supporting four exhibitions about Japanese culture that took place in Lugano (Switzerland) in winter 2010.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstrations III

Site:

http://www.nipponlugano.ch

Authors:

Michela Negrini

Nicoletta Di Blas

Paolo Paolini

Architecting the Elephant: Software Architecture and User Interface Design for Pachyderm 2.0

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

Archer, J., Hapgood T., LaMar M., Norman D. 'A., & Wang T. (2005). Architecting the Elephant: Software Architecture and User Interface Design for Pachyderm 2.0. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings.

Shaping Pachyderm 2.0 with User Requirements

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

Howes, D., Witchey H., Shapiro W., & Smith R. (2005). Shaping Pachyderm 2.0 with User Requirements. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings.

Taking Teaching by the Tusks: Introducing Pachyderm 2.0

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

Samis, P., & Johnson L. (2005). Taking Teaching by the Tusks: Introducing Pachyderm 2.0. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings.