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Thursday 29th May 2008 7:00 am
Anne Balsamo: Networked Learning Sites
What is the future of libraries and museums in the digital age? How can digital media help these institutions enhance informal learning? A professor at the University of Southern California describes her work on a new project.
One of the salient characteristics of the learning environment for many youth today is that it is no longer fixed to a specific physical location-the formal school classroom, or even the after school program. While this may have always been true to some extent, with the use of digital media (devices, tools, and applications), the “learning environment” is now better understood as a networked environment that can be accessed from within different physical locations including in the home, on-the-move (with mobile devices), and in informal cultural sites.
I am leading up a new project called “Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Libraries and Museums as Networked Learning Sites” that will investigate how these cultural institutions might incorporate new digital media for the purposes of enhancing their informal learning objectives. The aim of the project is to contribute to a collaborative exploration of the future of libraries and museums in a digital age. One of the key topics the research team will investigate concerns the role of tinkering in the learning process. The project will examine a range of tinkering practices, from those that involve the use of physical materials to those that involve digital tools and applications. Over time, the research team will design and prototype examples of evocative learning objects that meld the physical and the digital that could serve as creative platforms for informal learning experiences within museums and libraries. The broadest aim is to consider how these important cultural institutions contribute to the cultivation of the technological imagination as a 21st century literacy.
Category: Civic-Engagement, Credibility, Ecology-of-Games, Identity, Race-Ethnicity, Unexpected
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Kim Christen
WSU
http://www.kimberlychristen.com
Posted on June 4 2008 12:11 PM
Sounds like a great project. I recently returned from a symposium at UBC addressing issues of the role of the museum in relation to “new media” and the public (http://www.stanford.edu/~mja/fpi/index.html). The focus of the panel I was on was on engaging host indigenous communities using new technologies to question and rework the curatorial paradigm. We are also working on a project here at WSU that aims to create a portal for WSU special collections from the library and museum of anthropology that will engage Tribal nations to curate their cultural materials held by the university. The site will be a “learning” site where both academic and Tribal narratives will be juxtaposed with each piece of content. We will have a website up at the end of July. Does your project have a site? Thanks. Kim