Congratulations, Justine

Two roads diverged, as Robert Frost once wrote. And so it is now for Gyroscope. Our longtime colleague and friend Justine Roberts has come to a crossroads and will be moving on to an exciting new assignment as director of the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire. Justine has been with Gyroscope for…. well, let’s not count the years. Let’s just say that we have grown up together as museum professionals and as a firm. The Children’s Museum could hardly have made a better choice. Justine is a natural leader, a leading advocate for early childhood education, and deeply knowledgeable about museums and how they work. She will still assist Gyroscope from time to time as a senior advisor. We will miss her greatly, and wish her all the best with her new assignment.

Chuck Howarth and Maeryta Medrano

We've Come A Long Way, Baby

Justine Roberts, Principal


I have been going through old papers, as I occasionally do, and came across an internal memo from 2006 discussing museum use of emerging technology.  Its really a summary of research we were doing at the time to see what was starting to trend, and what might have staying power.  Of course, technology has changed since then and the ways museums are using it has too.  But in the day-to-day its easy to lose track of how far we have come.  Most of the talk is about how far we still need to go. And fair enough - the world doesn't stand still around us and it can seem like no matter how fast we move we can't keep up.  But its also useful to take a minute and reflect on what has changed, and how much more nimble we are compared with 5 years ago.  After all, in the lifespan of technology 5 years is old age.  And also to appreciate the continuity of issues despite this rapidly changing external environment.


So jump into the time machine with me and travel back to 2006.  A few important projects were just starting to be recognized as breaking new ground:


The first was launched by renegade media teacher David Gilbert from Marymount Manhatten College who had just created Artmobs, almost by accident.  It started as a class project in how to use ipod technology by producing reviews of artworks at MOMA.  In the end Artmobs published "tours" produced by the general public, and made them available for download via itunes.  In April 2006 they were getting thousands of hits a week on their site.  


David Gilbert described Artmobs as "a way for anyone to curate their own little corner of MOMA."  And what was so revolutionary about this project was that even after it was established, no one really understood how you could make and distribute audio tours without institutional approval.  This was a breakthrough which forced the question of audience participation and collaboration. In this case, technology really led the way on social change.


Very quickly SFMOMA realized the potential of producing material for the ipod and tweaked Gilbert's idea into an open call competition for high quality podcasts. These were more official guides than what Artmobs did because they had to meet certain criteria, had much more polish, and overall higher production values.  But they were still visitor contributed. Today we would say "crowdsourced".  Winning entries were selected by a jury and were featured in monthly SFMOMA Artcast installments.  The winner also received a one-year membership to SFMOMA.


SFMOMA also produced their own podcasts working with Antenna Audio and visitors who had one of these on their ipod could get a discount on admissions.


At the same time, technology innovators were already working on projects from outside museums.

• Guide by Cell was producing audio guides for cell phones, and had already determined that cell phones were not the best technology to use in hands-on museum settings like the Exploratorium.  
• Liberty Science Center was also in the process of launching a phone and mp3 audio tour which would allow visitors to call into a phone number printed on labels in one gallery to hear more detailed information about the exhibit.
• Ideum was already making ipod Vodcasts which plays video on the screen on an ipod, or on your computer through itunes.
• And those flash mobs? Well they had already been invented also, just under a different name.  A company called Improv Everywhere ("we cause scenes") was a serious and very silly organization which had already sponsored 50 events between 2001 and 2006.  These included a hilarious synchronized swimming in Washington Square Park event (the water is 6" deep) and another where people were invited to download Michael Jackson's Thriller to their ipod, then hang out anonymously in Central Park in NYC until noon. At the sound of a klaxon everyone was supposed to start the soundtrack and start walking like a zombie.  Over 200 people participated.  The only problem was the music was silent but imagine if you had been there what you would have thought! 

In every case the assumption was to rely on visitors' own devices. There was a sense that the technology visitors were carrying in their pockets were the right platforms to be delivering content on - the beginning of a shift away from those audio tour wands and toward acceptance of people seemingly on the phone in the Museum.  


The big questions of what content, by whom, and how it interacts with the exhibits are the same questions we are asking today.   Ipods were, at the time, uniquely portable devices and that made them particularly attractive.  The landscape has become more diverse and advances in technology make it possible to download content at the Museum, or for visitors to share content with other visitors in a way we couldn't 5 years ago.  So if anything it is more complex to answer these questions today than it used to be.  Peter Samis and Stephanie Pau wrote a paper at the time exploring their Artcast series as a case study and their analysis still resonates.


Here are some of the issues we flagged as important at the time.  All of which are still at the core of successful media integration today:

• Podcasts can be automatically updated via an aggregator so the power of this is as a subscription based relationship rather than just a one-time download.
• Technology is driving visitors' expectations about inclusion of multiple voices (including their own) and an ability to customize museum experiences.
• The relationship between museums and their audience goes in both directions - from the Museum out to the visitor, and from the visitor in to the Museum.
• The voice of our communication with audiences is changing - less formal and more discussion-oriented, more diverse and inclusive - but what does this mean for production values? This question is relevant to physical exhibits as well as digital elements.
• Podcasting, like audio tours, are not likely to be major revenue generators.
• How do you support older technology and still make your content work on the most up-to-date devices?

So much has changed but the core questions are the same. As Samis writes in the case study on the SFMOMA project "iPods are a vector for injecting art ideas into the daily lives of people at home or on-the-go. The opposite is also true: iPods are a way of bringing voices from the community into the Museum."  

Replace "iPod" with any other technology channel we have access to today and the thought still resonates.

Parent Communication Strategies

Justine Roberts, Principal

I wrote recently about how some museums are using technology to extend their relationships with constituents beyond the space and time of a visit. This is a strategy in service of a bigger goal, which has to do with positioning the museum as an ongoing resource for its audience – not just a place to go but a trusted advisor, friend, and information base.  This is a big strategic idea, and one that holds a lot of appeal.  On the one hand, it differentiates museums from the leisure time activities we often think of as their natural competition – city parks and playgrounds, the movies, music lessons, computer games, play groups etc.  On the other, it differentiates museums from out of school time and social service organizations like the YMCA and Boys and Girls Clubs. 

This is not a new idea – The Boston Children’s Museum has always spent a lot of time and care on community relationships.  Take for example programs like Countdown to Kindergarten which is as much about creating an activity for local families to celebrate a major life transition (kindgergarten), as it is about weaving the Museum into the fabric of the learning community (see their success in bringing the Mayor and Superintendent of Schools together, literally). 

BCM is actually a good segue for what I’m thinking about which is that adults are one of the key audiences for these on-going relationships with Children's Museums in particular.  As a field we increasingly understand that there are good reasons to move adults to more involved roles with their kids.  Research has shown that adult participation leads to deeper inquiry and more durable learning for children, while at the same time enhancing adults’ understanding of and ability to support children’s informal science learning.   

But let’s be honest - adults come to museums for many reasons, including taking a break and socializing with peers, and have their own learning styles.  So I am really intrigued by the idea that museums can develop umbrella relationships with adults in which the moment of the visit is one touch point among many opportunities to engage with the organization.  This might give us more room to allow that the visit may not always be the best moment to reach adults, but it also suggests that that’s okay because we have many more opportunities to connect with those adults.  We don’t have to pack it all into 2 hours on a Saturday.

How about these as goals for adults?

• Help adult visitors understand their possible roles, and responsibilities, in the museum setting
• Scaffold adults’ learning
• Show caregivers what their children are doing, but also how and why they behave in particular ways
• Help staff and visitors understand and share the ways children construct knowledge

The key to achieving these goals is to increase adults’ understanding of the museum as about learning. 

To do this, museums need to accomplish three main things (1) make children’s learning evident, (2) offer adults opportunities to participate in children’s learning, and (3) give adults tools they can use to enhance children’s learning.  Some of these may lend themselves more to implementation in the exhibits but all of them can happen off-site as well.

What should parent communications sound and look like?

Parent message need to be a mix of didactic, intimate and informal communications. Some parent communication will be explicit for adults who are interested in learning why the museum looks the way it does, and what their kids are getting out of the visit.  These “decoders” may take the form of maps, labels and graphics in the galleries, “parent guides” and questionnaires, or verbal communication through staff interaction. Other communication is more discursive and needs to be structured so that adults can make connections between the messages and their children’s behavior.

Here are 3 examples of how this might translate into graphics.

Staff at MCM carry these cards.

Pittsburgh Children's Museum projected graphics are in adults' immediate line of sight and provide a quick prompt.

An "exemplar" graphic from Skyline at CCM features photos of real visitors and first person quotes - the graphics stand in for staff by modeling adult roles in the gallery.

Strategies for use in the Museum 

These three examples of actual printed graphics get at some of the key strategies for adult communications during the museum visit.  They are designed to help adults see what their kids are doing and learning.  And they offer interpretation and explanation of the Museum's philosophy and intentions.

There are other strategies museums can use to facilitate adult outcomes including:

• Engage adults in collaborative work with their children and offer multiple possible roles for adults throughout the museum so that sometimes they are leading and other times they are supporting the primary inquiry.
• Train staff to articulate children’s learning to model interactions that support the expression of learning.
• Train staff to recognize adult learning in the museum setting and in how to support adults in gaining confidence and skill as partners in their children’s learning.     

More specifically, museums can: 

·      Design for the diverse needs of the adult audience, including participatory activity, quiet observation, and socializing with other adults.

·     Offer expert perspectives on informal science learning through partnerships with researchers and teachers in training.  Such as they do at MOS and BCM.  

·      Offer opportunities for adults to create documentation projects that facilitate children’s reflection on their own activity. 

·      Provide ideas for how adults might continue the inquiry and projects started in the Museum at home, and support visitors’ efforts to implement these suggestions through web-based, newsletter, and other resources.

Extending communication with parents beyond the visit

This last point takes me to the off-site long-term relationship piece.  One tenet of museum education is that a visit will continue to resonate in people’s lives long after they leave. Being a place to go when museum users have follow-up questions or comments is a piece of the way museums can extend their work beyond the walls of the building.  This support also allows adults to articulate and reflect on the connections they make between their lives and their Museum visit. Following are some ideas that are tuned to adults - easy to access, relevant, and helpful, fun, playful and participatory. So bridging this need with the right set of materials is a win-win.

1. Have an “Ask an Expert” email system that puts adults in touch with education and child development Graduate Students
2. Set up an email newsletter with a monthly Hot Tip that goes to visitors’ email, is displayed on the museum's home page, and is also included in the “hold” soundtrack on the phone.
3. Create a screen saver that people can download at home featuring images from around the Museum.
4. Create an interactive timeline that encourages adults and children to talk about events in their lives and to compare where they were and how they felt at those moments.  The timeline might be seeded with some starter ideas that span the generations and include both large global events as well as local, personal experiences.  Imagine The Mint Museum interactive site framed this way.

What has your museum tried? 

Time-lapse Video: From Birth To 10 Years Old

Justine Roberts, Principal

Normally I would post a video like this one on our facebook page rather than into the blog but there is something so charming about this that I wanted to share it here as well.

One of the issues for anyone working with children is being able to understand how they understand the world around them.  It goes without saying that kids don't have the same perspective - much less the cognitive framework and technical knowledge - as adults.  But it can be hard to hold the context in our own minds of what a child really means when they say or do a particular thing.  

Emily Beckstrom, who does museum evaluation and who worked on the Standards of Excellence project as a graduate student at the Erikson Institute, once told me about a "continuum of questioning" which puts that phase of the constant "why?" in a broader context of children's wondering and testing of the world and of our explanations.  It was an important insight to see how kids' ability to formulate questions changes together with their persistence in finding answers, and their willingness to insist that adults help them.

As a museum professional this video also fosters a sense of appreciation and awe for the process of growing.  Each moment in this video is a reminder of the constant change, development, and increasing competence of children.  Something that I think we need to hold in our minds as educators, social service workers, and mentors - all roles we take on daily in our field.

This tension between remembering what the naif world view of children really is like and celebrating their achievements and capacities is at the heart of the experience we strive for in designing for families.

Great WebSpectations and other adventures in the digital and non-digital domains Part 1

 Janet Petitpas, Senior Associate, London


In thinking about interesting current happenings in museums here in the U.K., I noticed I was reading about museums using innovative social media and the internet to inspire participation and extend the museum experience. In particular an exhibition at the Cuming Museum in South London appealed to me as someone who loves shoes. The Cuming Museum is currently hosting an exhibition called “Stories of the World: Walking in my Shoes,” funded by the Cultural Olympiad project.

The exhibition features shoes from around the world and the journeys we make in them.  It features designs by area young people alongside displays of historic shoes from the Museum’s collection. The exhibition is augmented by a program in which young people in the Southwark neighborhood have been asked to send in photos of their own shoes and describe their everyday journeys.

Also, the Museum is building up a map of the area, based on favorite places, routes, and methods of travel as well as favorite footwear. Visitors are invited to post photos of their favorite shoes to the exhibition’s Flickr group.

In reading this description, I assumed that the journeys submitted and mapped would be done digitally and posted on the web, which I found quite interesting and was curious to see how museum visitors mapped a neighborhood. I searched around on-line, but was unable to find any maps in conjunction with the exhibition. Since I had never been to the Cuming Museum, I decided to go there in person to check it out and gather more information.

The Cuming Museum is a small Museum located within the Old Walworth Town Hall. It features the collections of the Cuming family, who collected almost anything for over 100 years. In addition to their interesting and pleasantly jumbled collections (ranging from ethnographic and natural history objects - the collection includes both real and fake items), the Museum presents the history of the Southwark neighborhood all the way back to Roman times.

The Museum’s permanent galleries show that great care has been taken to involve the current community, which includes many immigrants and houses people from all over the world. While the galleries were unstaffed, there were many opportunities for interaction with real objects, exploration sheets to pick up and fill out, areas for visitors to leave personal comments, and items you could make within the galleries. The Shoes exhibition was located in the one room temporary exhibition hall.

When I walked in and saw the map I actually laughed out loud at the difference between its physicality and my expectation that it would be digital. The map is a physical table top blow up of a Google map and visitors are provided with little Google map pink paper bubbles on which they write their favorite places in the neighborhood and then mount in Lucite photo clips. I loved concrete-ness of the map and appreciated the irony of the times we live in – that it would never occur to me that the map would be a three-dimensional object that sits in one spot on the planet. (Much less one inspired by the internet and made into a physical object!)

The exhibition simple and well executed. One wall contained a display of shoes designed by neighborhood young people along with explanations about why they created their designs. The artists were identified by their shoes (not the ones they created but the ones they wear) and it appeared to me that the shoes they did create were done through Converse. If you are inspired, you can design your own shoes through the Converse website.

There were ample opportunities to participate by trying on shoes, contributing a graffiti map of how you came to the Museum that day, and of course, interesting displays from the Cuming shoe collection.

The exhibition design was comprehensive and the exhibit furniture was all created out of stiff cardboard. A lovely and enjoyable exhibition, even if I wasn’t able to access people’s favorite neighborhood places and trips from the comfort of my home computer.