Connecting Social Media to Exhibits: From Not-So-Good to Good

Between November and December of 2013, I had the opportunity to visit a number of art and Smithsonian museums in Denver, Washington, DC, and New York.

While each of the items below show one way engagement, they are examples of curatorial techniques intended to increase viewer engagement and enjoyment through the provision of additional  digital content about the exhibit.

The use of social media to provide more information for the public is something I typically look for. Museums are connecting the public through Facebook and Websites, and then provide QR codes or recordings available from mobile phones.

Some experiences were better than others. For example, I was excited to see QR codes in the Western Art area of Denver Art Museum (DAM) at http://www.denverartmuseum.org, but could not get them to play after I scanned them. I thought, well maybe the network is overloaded, or maybe my phone can pull up the web inside the current architecture, but the QR’s would not play even when I tried them at home. More work/information/support is needed for these. In digging around on the web, I found an app for DAM QR, but the user commented that he or she was not able to read any of the QR’s either.

A really good experience with QR was at the National Botanical Gardens in DC, http://www.usbg.gov. I was able to clearly listen to a recording about plants before the development of flowers. It was short in duration, which probably indicates attention to the average attention span, and forwarding traffic flow through the particular exhibit.

Last in this set of observations was the Museum of Art and Design in NY. The signage for a special exhibit, Out of Hand (digital printing) was very good.  It included information on how to access audio remarks with mobile devices. Exhibits were numbered to correlate with the recordings on the mobile website: http://www.madmuseum.org/media/audio?t=Out%20of%20Hand

The museum site also included videos about the exhibit.

Hour of Code Week: Engaging Students in Coding

In addition to textual, numeric, and graphic literacies for today's world, technology is another. But it isn't just about playing with or using devices, it's about being able to design sequences to operate them.

Hour of Code is a December 9 - 15th campaign to encourage students to try coding, and a number of sites are available to coach students through coding processes. 

The Computer Science in Education site provides terrific resources for learners and teachers: http://csedweek.org

Khan Academy introduces learners to  tutorials with this brief intro:

Welcome to our Hour of Code!: 
Pamela welcomes you to our programming community here. If YouTube is blocked for you and this video doesn't load, just keep going!



In addition, startups like Play-i are hosting live events that allow students to program two of their toys, Bow andYana, two programmable toys very successfully funded by crowdsourcing: http://www.wired.com/design/2013/11/these-little-robots-teach-kids-to-code/

While the following brief video is a product promo, the method of embedding learning into play comes across, and it is a very old idea--in the past, children were often given toys to model activities they would do as adults.

Why I Have Not Been Blogging

I know there is a relationship between blog content and other social media. My excuse? I've been reading and writing offline this summer and fall.

To that end, I read and reviewed a book on scenario based e-learning, and am about to revise a co-authored chapter on competency-based instructional design. 

The review is out online (paper to follow) and is available here:

So glad to have had the chance to read and review Ruth Colvin Clark's Scenario-Based e-Learning: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08923647.2013.837639 …

Many Ways of Knowing, Connecting

Some days are overwhelming in the gifts and insights they provide. I have this life partner who serves and supports other people, and has a zany humor. I know great minds that work to serve learning, and I belong to such a creative arts group, that knits shawls to provide support and comfort to people undergoing medical treatment. I sense and cherish that there are many words in our universe that express gratitude and community. Thanks for all of this.

The Key to Models for Completion--Institutional Urgency

Back in the news is the national charge to support post-secondary degree completion, led by President Obama. And the post from the Chronicle of Higher Ed (http://chronicle.com/article/4-Key-Ideas-in-Obamas-Plan/141239/) reminds us these are existing efforts re-visited.

Reminders are not a bad thing, necessarily. Financial aid policy and tying institutional funding to awards are more carrot than stick incentives, though there is no shortage of arguments to be made for  cutting awards that don't move a student toward some meaningful learning achievement.

There is promise in freeing the tyranny of the credit hour with several mechanisms: competency-based course and degree models, the acceptance of ACE determined credit for successful MOOC completion, PLA (credit awarded for prior training or other learning as demonstrated by exam or portfolios submitted by learners). 

A colleague of mine remarked "that higher ed culture functions on urgency," such as at the beginning or the end of the term, or in the year before the accreditation review.

Like climate disbelievers, we seem to be in a state of denial about the urgency for shifting the model. Included in the shift is the need to advise and orient students to the expectations that go with the opportunity (study skills, and decision-making), to make the college experience more goal-oriented (which we as faculty might consider both limiting and painful). Required advising, "intrusive advising" and the development of degree-maps to help students move from point A to certificate or degree most efficiently, are example of those efforts. (The FIPSE Project Maps-to-Credentials is one such effort on behalf of US military.)

In order to become conversant in the models, and competent negotiators of alternative learning models, various contingents of institutions need training and need to move beyond, "if it isn't ours, it isn't worthy." I can remember sitting in meetings in the nineties where institutions proudly proclaimed they would not accept any credit in transfer for distance delivery. Also in evidence, is how scores on AP and IB exams can be used to limit or undermine the transfer of those credits by incoming students. And the same goes for ACE credit wards. Because though trained faculty come together from various institutions to evaluate the award for a training or military experience, for example, it is still up to the local institution to decide if and how many of the recommended credit will be accepted, and whether they will be applied to a particular degree requirement, or only as an elective.

Are fear of loss of control, lack of knowledge in other instructional models, loss of teaching opportunity some of the equation? Yes. Like other curricular changes in the past, addressing these are part of the way forward. 

Sessions for Another School Year and Life Generally

Tomorrow I’m going to visit Upward Bound students and share a couple strategies I’ve shared past in academic success courses. I was impressed with how many colleges listed one of the two, SQ4R on the web.

The Session Descriptions
SQ4R for Reading and Study: SQ4R is a reading and study method for informational or textbook reading. It can be expecially helpful when we are faced with reading in a topic we aren’t very excited about or find challenging to get through.

Making Decisions You Can Live With: Sometimes a person can have a tough time making a decision. We may know we have more than one choice, but still aren’t sure about it once we’ve made a choice. This model helps us see beyond the solution to the result of that choice. And that is where we might just see which choice is a better fit for us.

SQ4R Resources
This short video (less than 6 minutes) explains the elements of the SQ4R method.
                   
The link which immediately follows contains a text-based explanation of SQ4R, a worksheet to guide a learner through using the method, the link to the video, and an additional resource for note taking: https://delicious.com/constantlearningorg/sq4r/search?p=%2B

Resources for Making Decisions You Can Live With 
Here is the link for a worksheet for the decision-making model. I started using this model with academic success students after reading a technical writing article using this model many years ago. My apologies as I no longer have the source citation. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4XL3HNdjig6b0ZTZW14YldDakk/edit?usp=sharing

As the title of this post suggests, given our life-long learning challenges, both of these strategies have use well beyond the sessions for which they were prepared.

The Significance of Heritage Seeds and Questions about Genetically Modified Food

This is a cross-post from my food blog with some added thoughts. My friend Cherry has been giving me plants for my yard and garden for many years. In the past three years I've been thrilled to receive vegetables she has started from heirloom seeds. Heirloom or heritage plants bring back variety to our gardens in flavor and appearance.

Cherry has been gifting me with such cult tomato favorites as the Paul Robison and a plant from one of my favorite chile sources, Chimayo, NM. Here's the list of plants she provided for her local museum and garden at their plant sale: "https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4XL3HNdjig6QWpGNkE2MHViaWc/edit?usp=sharing"


Chimayo Chile Plant

My additional commentary here is the recommendation to examine the implications of genetic modifications to our food sources. To ask whether the engineering affects our food quality or safety in critical ways, and to know how companies might use these techniques to control food production.