Museum education: prototype
2011
Description
The proposed strategy describes how through digital storytelling the museum can create a more meaningful experience, enhance their current exhibits and revamp their programs for K12 schools.
Fields
Interaction Design
  • Spring 2011
    Instructor: Santiago Piedrafita

    The idea for the final prototype came from the assignment that graduate design students were given during the seminar "New Information Environments" with professor Amber Howard. The challenge was to propose an event for the North Carolina Museum of History to host that would redefine its relationship with the local community. 

    Our group, Whitney Pride, Sean Jalleh, Heidi Adams and I proposed a "Digital storytelling workshop", educational activity, that engages students in using digital media tools to create and record meaningful stories, based on NCMH collections, relate the stories to their individual experience and family history. Digital story is a short, first person video-narrative created by combining recorded voice, still and moving images, music or other sounds. The goal is to teach students interpretative skills, visual and media literacy through the process of creating digital work. Below is a short video presentation of our event proposal.
  • I continued working on digital storytelling for my final prototype for the studio class, where I proposed a framework for the activity: possible scenario, required tools to execute the activity (tablet application prototype), timeframe, expectations and learning outcomes.

    Prototype proposal: 

    Two specific areas that the museum could work to create a more meaningful experience is enhancing their current exhibits and revamping their programs for K12 schools. The proposed strategy describes how the museum can collect and create engaging historical content through the digital storytelling activity. The digital storytelling event is interchangeable. It can be scaled to different holidays or current exhibitions and allow the museum to expand its network. 

    In the proposed strategy students rent a tablet device from the Museum with an application installed that allows them to record the stories as they go through the current exhibition collecting the relevant information. Students work in groups and reenact historical figures creating a story on a particular subject matter. Besides, museum provides the students with props, costumes and all the necessary equipment, to make the story convincing. The students’ creations will exist after the event to be accessed on the museum’s web site, with the possibility of being linked to other museum’s across the state and nation. The students will learn media literacy, visual literacy, interpretive skills, life-skills such as teamwork and reinforce their self-esteem through the display of their work. The participating schools in the proposed event will learn useful skills in numerous fields and discuss pedagogical issues with other participating schools, local experts and museum staff.
  • Scenario description
  • Application demo