 |
 |
Hmm, Sounds like they've taken some pretty standard findings about family groups in museums and put a bit of an "anti-technology" spin on it. Here's some of the stuff they're missing - I'm guessing that most of the questionnaires were filled in by parents rather than kids. Parents are understandably concerned that kids spend too much time in front of screens - this is why they take them to museums. I suspect that kids are a bit more ambivalent - sometimes they prefer the interactives sometimes the activities, it usually depends on the kids, the activities on offer, and the interactives. - Almost all institutions would also say they also prefer live staffed activities than interactives. However these are very labour intensive and expensive. Because we can't afford to provide enough staff to run fun and interesting activities for everything in the museum we provide interactives instead. - Almost all institutions would also say they prefer the "real" to the virtual as well. No one is disagreeing with Neil MacGregor about the power of the real Rosetta Stone over a virtual one. But, interactives can help interpret an object, particularly a "non-obvious" one like the Rosetta Stone. However, these days museums are also being asked to talk about lots of subjects which don't have many "powerful objects" like climate change, genetics, society and race. This is when they turn to AV and IT. Having said that almost all the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum aren't real - they're reproductions - but it seems very popular with families. So really they're not telling us anything we didn't really know. There's a possibility that it may lead to a knee-jerk "no touchscreens / mobile etc" reaction in some institutions which is unhelpful as a "everything must be screens/ mobile etc". At the end of the day it comes down to how can I make my content appeal to a particular audience using the resources I have available. Cheers Joe Joe Cutting Computer exhibits and installations www.joecutting.com 35 Hospital Fields Road, York, YO10 4DZ 01904 624681 **************************************************************** For mcg information visit the mcg website at http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/ To manage your subscription to this email list visit http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/ ****************************************************************