Personalized LearningHow to discover the tools that will enable teachers, students, and everyone to find, understand, and adapt museum resources (…or how to accept your responsibility in a digitally-enabled world)

Darren Milligan @darrenmilliganSmithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies

Museum Computer Network ConferenceSeattle, WashingtonNovember 9, 2012#mcn2012cl21

What Can the Smithsonian Do to Help Young People Be Successful in Their Lives?

What Can My Museum Do to Help Young People Be Successful in Their Lives?

What Can My Resources Do to Help Young People Be Successful in Their Lives?

Photo by Flickr user Herr_Bert, used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license

What Do Our Users Need?

Photo by Flickr user felix388, used under a CC BY-ND 2.0 license

Photo by Flickr user Angela de Março, used under a CC BY-NC- 2.0 license

“We have ambitious plans to use new technologies to reach new audiences. … We have much to offer students and teachers in art, science, history, education, and culture. We want to give learners of all ages access to America’s treasures and our creative experts who bring them to life”

–G. Wayne CloughLearning Registry Launch, July 22, 2010

“We have ambitious plans to use new technologies to reach new audiences. … We have much to offer students and teachers in art, science, history, education, and culture. We want to give learners of all ages access to America’s treasures, our creative experts who bring them to life,” and enable these audiences to use our content to improve their lives.

–G. Wayne Clough and Darren Milligan

So? What Do We Do?

1. create digital inquiry opportunities for learners

2. operate more ubiquitously within the digital space

3. Make/allow/empower them do the work: expose collections alongside tools that foster 21st century learning skills

# One:Redefining Our Publishing Model

“WHAT IS THE INTERNET?Today's Internet, in a physical sense, is a collection of sixty thousand linked computer networks that connect more than thirty million people. This system provides a platform for people worldwide to share information. When you connect to the Internet, you become part of a diverse electronic community rich in educational resources.”

http://smithsonianeducation.org/idealabs/universe/index.html

# Two:Metadata (and Sometimes Content) Here, There, Everywhere

# Three:Digital Learning Resources Project

Developing a Digital Toolset

Long-term Outcome:

enable online users to become active creators of digital resources, personalized for learning in their own classroom

Phase 1 Teacher engagement (recruiting) and research

Phase 2 Assessment, inquiry, and prototype development

Photo by Joe Hobson

http://prezi.com/rpivswlr1jus/scems-prototypes/?auth_key=930463102e3bacd7be8a1ce8c33bf08c284ed167

Phase 3 Prototype testing and iteration

Photos by Joe Hobson

scems.navnorth.com

http://scems.navnorth.com

What Did We Learn?

Search and Visualization (Identification)Teachers Prefer:• To search broadly first followed by specifics, • Visual search results: Gallery view, and• Intelligence in searches and results

(auto-complete typing, auto-correct spelling, and correlate similar items to user profile)

Teacher Behavior:• Use a diversity of web resources/little

loyalty(although they go to educational sites more frequently than non-educational sites),

• Sharing by emailing link to themselves or a colleague

Authentication, Saving, and Storing (Analyzing)

Teachers Prefer:• To save resources that they find useful and will use whatever

means available to them to do it, even if the site does not provide this function,

• Flexibility to organize and annotate resources according to their own schemas,

• Flexibility in the types of viewing methods available: one for whole-class interaction, and one for individual interaction,

• The ability to have students use the site and its tools as much as the teacher, and

• Content that is aligned, or close-to-aligned with Common Core State Standards

• Ability to upload resources from other sources to augment their collections

Instructional Tools (Extracting)

Teachers Prefer:• variety of tools,• better visibility of the tools, including

prompts and explanations for their use, and• intuitive design and flow between tools and

facets of the prototype. • Which tools: all of them ;)

What’s Next?

“…it is our responsibility to care for the art. I think we do that best by allowing users to find, share and build upon our images…”

-Merete Sanderhoff, Statens Museum for Kunst

smithsonian-digital-learning.wikispaces.com

Thank youDarren Milligan

milligand@si.edu@darrenmilligan

smithsonianeducation.org@smithsonianedu