Aha! I'm finally inspired to actually post to the list rather than send
housekeeping messages.


Just to take a few quotes from Graeme's thought-provoking points, and it's
good to be challenged:

'The first of these sets of assumptions are those being made about the
'newness' of computer-mediated access. The technology is new. What it
delivers is just a fancy sort of illustrated book. Lots of text and a few
pictures. Big deal.'

Comment: absolutely not. The technology offers (among others)
non-linearity, personalisation, remote/moble engagement, feedback (personal
or automatic) and, critically, person-to-person communication and
collaboration opportunities. Delivery of text and pictures is the tip of
the iceberg (but it's quite good at that too!)

'Even more worrying are the assumptions that are made about education and
the educational use of computers. Museums are fast becoming commodified -
providing information to be downloaded. Whatever happened to all the work
that museum educators have done over the last few decades to get rid of
glass cases and to involve students directly with the material culture to
be found in museums?'
We are also faced with the fact that what goes onto the Internet is fixed,
just as text in a museum is fixed. Objects are taken out of context (even
if a museum's entire collection is virtually available, you cannot wander
round it as easily as you can in real space, making those serendipitous
connections that are what help make education).

Comment: yes, it's great for downloading (our educational resources site
gets 4-6000 pdf file downloads per month to enhance actual use of the
Museum) but it's a communication medium and it's user- or learner-driven.
Just what we want as educators. And what goes onto the Internet is not
fixed: not if you use bulletin boards/debates/voting systems, collaborative
learning environments, or involve your audiences in creating the content
with you: enhancing their engagements with the 'real'. People can be online
as well as things. An example is our involvement in notschool.net, the
virtual school for excluded pupils, which reaches them in their own homes.

'Even more serious than those and many other issues connected with the
nature of education are the even more insidious cultural biases that have
yet to be addressed. Computer hardware and software has grown out of the
thinking of a tiny minority of people on the planet. Their metaphysic
(which is linear, materialistic, analytical, and [they would have us
believe] rational) is that of wealthy, white, young men. This view of the
world is so basic to the idea of computers and the Internet that you cannot
have the latter without the former. It is cultural imperialism on a huge
scale.'

Comment: the solution to that is to build the online world with your
audiences and communities, not for them. There are a lot of models out
there and museums are the sorts of organisations that should be (and indeed
are) exploring them. The Internet is not going to go away, so let's indeed
use it to think 'collaboration' not just 'delivery'.

Roland






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