Tech in museums has been around for a while - welcome to our study of relevant and effective digital interactives.
A shift is taking place inside museums; how we educate and how people learn are becoming central to the operations and success of an institution. For centuries, museums operated from the tower of academia, collecting and disseminating knowledge from an ‘insider's’ perspective, viewing the public as empty heads in need of filling. However, we know that each person coming into a museum brings their own experiences, knowledge, biases, interests, relationships, and learning styles along with them. All this information affects how we learn in a museum environment. As our understanding evolves about the many ways people learn - from moving, to listening, to playing - museums must adapt to create spaces people want to embody.
Enter the digital age. For a while now we have had oodles of ways to engage any type of learner. Problem solved, right?! It turns out there are actually many ways to use technology ineffectively. Have you ever walked up excitedly to a screen in an exhibit, only to find it doesn’t work or takes 30 seconds to load each new page? Is mismanged or underfunded tech why museums are still largely label and text based? Or could it be the inability to imagine how creatively we can utilize technology?
There are a variety of ways to answer these questions, but this blog will focus on how digital interactive experiences can transform a museum, creating a more relevant and effective learning environment for all visitors. Here, we hope to explore cutting-edge digital museum practices and evaluate current exhibitions at the Smithsonian Instutition to see how one of the nation's leading cultural institutions is integrating the digital world into their museum practice.
