To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

There was a time when I thought Twitter was worthless; something best left to those who follow celebrity gossip. However, after starting my own experimental Twitter page (@SCMuseumNews), I began to see it as a useful tool with many different uses. That led me to ponder ways Twitter could be used to enhance museum education programs. Here are some of the ideas I came up with.

1. Tweet about what goes on behind the scenes. Museum visitors are a curious bunch that wants to know more about the things they never see.

2. Conduct a scavenger hunt of historic sites in your area. Tweet clues daily for sites to visit and photograph. Award prizes to the first to complete.

3. Recreate a "news" report of an historical event one tweet at a time to describe the event as it unfolds. This could be fictionalized or could use authentic headlines and reports.

4. Showcase artifacts or archival materials by posting descriptions along with links to images of the objects.

5. Start a Teen Tweet Club. Tweet a question related to a new exhibit, a mystery object, or an interesting person once a week to stimulate conversation. Continue to drive the conversation with periodic tweets.

6. Curate an online oral history exhibit by inviting a group of people such as Viet Nam war vets to tweet about their experience.

7. Create and maintain a diary that captures the daily life of a person who would have lived or worked at your house or farm museum - or use excerpts from a real journal.

Follow this link www.twitter.com/SCMuseumNews to see my Twitter of museum events happening in South Carolina.

Hearing History Through Music

Hearing is one of the primary senses we rely upon when processing information, so using sound, especially music, can be an effective tool for teaching history. Music is an excellent primary source that gives us an intimate peek into the emotions, lives, and experiences of past generations in an unique, and often very emotional, way. However, music is often overlooked in the museum as well as the traditional classroom.

Here are some easy ways to integrate music into your museum education programs:
- Play period-appropriate music in the background of a house museum
- Include music in pre-recorded self-guided tours
- Schedule a live performance with historical music and/or instruments
- Incorporate music listening stations into exhibits
- Plan a sing-a-long time in children’s programs
- Integrate pre-recorded music or sheet music into lesson plans or traveling trunks
- Utilize musicians for living history events
- Host a period-correct dance party

More Professional Development and this time it’s FREE!

Since we’re on the topic of professional development....
The Archaeology Program of the National Park Service in conjunction with the University of Maryland offers a series of distance learning courses designed to aid archaeologists, cultural resource managers, and museum staff members in the creation of interpretative programs and the care of archaeological collections. All of the self-paced courses are free and available to everyone. The courses may be found at National Park Service Archaeology Program Distance Learning.

Here are some of the courses available:
Managing Archeological Collections
Archeology for Interpreters
Interpretation for Archeologists
Study Tour of Archeological Interpretation
Assessment of Archeology Interpretation
Caring for Your Historic Building -- Online Education

Inexpensive Professional Development

When I became a museum educator, I had very little knowledge of what it took to be an “educator”. Let’s face it, most of us museum educators are skilled in history or art but few of us have extensive training in education. Some of us even ended up with this job by default because no one else in the museum wanted the extra headache of creating programs based on rigid state or national academic standards. Because I want to be a better educator, I am constantly seeking ways to educate myself. Therefore, I was excited when I recently learned of an online professional development program provided by PBS called TeacherLine. The site hosts a variety of 6-week courses geared to K-12 schoolteachers; however, there are a number of “Instructional Strategies” and “Technology” courses that may benefit museum educators as well. Courses generally cost about $199 and you may receive graduate-level course credit from accredited universities for an additional fee.

Some of the courses to check out are:
*Connecting Family, Community, and Schools
*Developing Understanding with Dynamic Media and Digital Storytelling
*Differentiated Instruction
*Using Assessment and Evaluation
*Mastering the Skills of Online Teaching
*Publishing on the Web

A Short Attention Span Is.....What Was I Saying?

How many times have you been on a tour and the guide rambles on and on and on and…..? You find yourself zoning out, no longer hearing a word the guide says, and you wonder to yourself, “Will anyone notice if I move on to something else?” All of us have been there and, for guests with very short attention spans, a guided tour can be sheer torture.

So how do you keep your guests from getting bored? One technique is to incorporate artifacts into your tour. Rather than pointing to artifacts in exhibits along the way, try sporadically passing around a couple of small objects from your education collection. For example, let guests handle a boll of cotton or tufts of wool while talking about spinning wheels and clothing production. Not only will these unexpected hands-on encounters delight and entertain your guests, but they will enhance the learning experience as well. When visitors are allowed to interact with and connect physically to artifacts, it is often easier for them to make connections between people, events, and places of the past. Holding the artifact somehow makes “history” seem more tangible and authentic.

KWL tours, OMG!

KWL charts (pronounced “cool”) are often used by schoolteachers to introduce topics and then to reinforce learned information. Museum educators can utilize this nifty technique to enhance tours and encourage interaction with guests.

When used in the classroom, KWL charts are comprised of 3 columns labeled K, W, and L. Prior to a lesson, students are asked to list what they “know” about the topic in the K column and what they “want” to find out in the W column. The L column is used to write down what they have “learned” once the lesson is over.

The same concept can be used when conducting tours by asking guests to consider what they know about the topic as your tour begins. Encourage guests to express what they want to know as the tour progresses. Wrap up the tour by engaging guests in discussion about things they learned by asking a few questions such as “How do you think they got the idea to …” or “Why do you think he didn’t…”

KWL is a quick and easy tool and its, well, cool! Your guests will think it’s cool to be involved in your tour and it’s even more cool to see what info they take away from the tour. :-)

Examples of multi-modal learning in adult programs

Integrating multi-modal learning into your adult programs need not be an overwhelming or complicated undertaking. Where you could plan a number of programs spanning several days to individually address each learning style (visual, audio, manual), the easiest approach is to find a way to include each type in one program. Hands-on workshops are the most direct method in which to incorporate all three modes.

For example, your museum is hosting a traveling exhibit focusing on early 20th century hand-tinted postcards and you want to create a multi-modal program to tie in with the showing. A workshop teaching the art of hand-tinting photographs is a straightforward way to accomplish this. Participants draw upon their auditory and visual abilities during the demonstration aspect of the workshop and then upon their manual skills when practicing the tinting techniques. Displaying postcards from your collections during the workshop provides additional visual reinforcement and an opportunity for participants to compare their work with historically appropriate examples, which may lead to an informal discussion among participants regarding techniques, subject matter, or materials used. This type of discussion, not only boosts learning, but also creates a breeding ground for higher-level thinking and critical analysis about the topic.

In addition to being an effective way to address all three learning styles, workshops are also a relatively cost-efficient method. There is usually some expense involved in workshop materials, however, costs may be kept to a minimum through careful planning and recycling materials whenever possible. Despite the expense, adult workshops can actually produce income and almost always guarantee repeat visits to your museum by participants and their family members.

Improving Museum Programs Through Multi-Modal Learning

What is “multi-modal learning”, you ask? In a nutshell, it is the process of tapping into many learning styles based on auditory, visual, and kinesthetic/manual skills. Typically one style is stronger for each of us, but by utilizing more than one method we are more likely to acquire, process, and retain information

Instinctively, we usually make use of multi-modal learning with young children in educational programs. We tell children how to perform a task; we demonstrate how to perform the task; and then we allow children to perform the task. However, as our program participants increase in age, we tend to use fewer modes to instruct. Adult programs typically incorporate the least number of modes of instruction, with programs restricted mainly to lectures or demonstrations, and rarely is hands-on learning incorporated. Yet senior adults are most likely to benefit from multi-modal learning, especially activities that incorporate visual and kinesthetic skills since many older adults experience hearing difficulties.

Incorporating all three modes into museum education programs for adults, as well as children, not only insures that each participant has the opportunity to learn according to his or her own style, but guarantees enjoyable and successful programs.

Creating Successful Museum Summer Camps

Summer is just around the corner and many of us have already planned this year’s summer camps. And some of us, who are part of understaffed and overworked museums, will wait until the last minute to put something together! But planning successful summer camps doesn’t have to be an overwhelming task if you follow a few simple guidelines.

Pick a theme or topic around which to structure activities.
Look for new, interesting ideas that may not initially seem to fit your museum. Almost any theme can be given an historical twist. Use popular movies, TV shows, and books as your inspiration. I once used the popular CSI shows as a theme for a camp. It proved to be a novel way to introduce kids to archaeology and museum techniques like site excavation, artifact handling and identification, cataloguing, and collections management.

Plan a variety of activities that include arts & crafts, playtime, physical activities, and intellectual challenges.
By varying the types of activities, children with different abilities and interests are sure to find something they enjoy. Also be sure to alternate sitting/quiet activities with physical/active ones to allow rambunctious bodies to move.

Schedule a specific time for each activity and try to stick to your plan.
Children generally have short attention spans and can easily get off track. Having a plan helps to keep things moving smoothly. Limit each activity to no more than 45 minutes and “lecture” time to 3-5 minutes.

Allow time for campers to meet and mingle.
One of the things kids like best about attending summer camp is the opportunity to meet new friends who share a common interest, so be sure to include some activities that encourage the use of buddies or teams.

Don’t be afraid to include worksheets or even quizzes in your plan.
Though you don’t want your campers to feel like they are in school, worksheets can greatly enhance your programs when presented as part of a fun activity. Worksheets not only reinforce ideas with campers, but parents see the educational value of your camp. Use websites such as EdHelper.com and Teach-nology.com to find pre-made worksheets or create your own.

Create a budget.
Planning and sticking to a budget is usually the least enjoyable activity of summer camp planning, but it is essential to the success (or failure) of your program. Activities and materials need not be expensive to be fun and you are not required to use fancy, expensive, ready-to-assemble kits to provide kids with a great experience. In fact, making a fishing pole with fresh-cut bamboo, dried corncobs, and pebbles was one of the most-liked activities of one of my camps. The materials were free and watching the kids “fish” in the goldfish pond was priceless. But, if you do want to use some inexpensive kits, check out www.OrientalTrading.com .

Show me the value!
Parents want to see that they are getting a good value for their money (especially in today’s economy), so be sure that campers take home something each camp day. It can be nothing more than an inexpensive plant in a decorated Styrofoam cup or painted salt-dough bead necklaces, but campers should have something to show for their time at your camp. What may seem like an insignificant art project to you may provide a young camper with a long-term mental connection to your museum each time they see or use the object. And, if parents think your camp was a good value, they will come back year after year.
A tactic I always utilize to increase value perception, is to provide each camper with an inexpensive tote bag on the first day of camp and request that they bring the bag each day to store their goodies. In addition to perceived value, bags preprinted with your museum’s logo provide long-term advertising for your organization for as little as $1.50 per bag.

Recruit extra volunteers.
It is always a good idea to have a number of volunteers on hand to help with large groups of children. Not only does it help to maintain control and lessen your stress level, but the ratio of volunteers to children can mean the difference between a child getting the help they need to complete a project and a bad camping experience. I find that a ratio of 1 adult to 3-4 children works best.
School teachers are good candidates for summer camp volunteers. Not only are they accustomed to working with large groups of children, they can also bring new ideas and teaching methods to your programs. Teachers benefit as well by taking new ideas back to their own classrooms.
College interns are another alternative. Consider creating a summer internship program to induce interns to assist with summer camps. Many interns consider the opportunity to gain useful work experience a fair trade for their time and work.

Have fun!
Chances are, if you aren’t having fun then your campers aren’t having a good time either. Relax and enjoy the pleasures of being a kid again. As adults, we so rarely have the opportunity to just have fun for the sake of fun. So jump in – finger-paint, play freeze-tag, or dress like a clown with your campers.

There you have it – in less than 10 steps you can create successful summer camps. Enjoy your summer; and happy camping!