Museums and mobile media

Mobile Learning Institute
On Friday, July 16, 2010 the Smithsonian, in conjunction with the Pearson Foundation, Nokia, and the Mobile Learning Institute, sponsored "The Leadership Summit on Digital Media" at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The main topic of conversation was the present and future use of mobile phones in learning. Stephanie Norby, Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies, opened the session by asking, "How do we create a sense of purpose to make people feel comfortable in coming back?". Each presenter answered her question with a variation on the same theme. Mobile technology is ubiquitous. Young people especially are connected to the world through their phones, and using mobile technology to learn is a natural extension of the current technology. The phone is not a tool; it is a window into the user's world.

Smithsonian Initiatives
Nancy Proctor, Head of Mobile Strategy & Initiatives for the Smithsonian, set the stage by discussing the Smithsonian's mobile strategy. Over time the Smithsonian has learned to think outside the audio tour box. The Smithsonian has determined that the phone is not the best device for delivering long form audio tour content; however, the phone's advantage is in it's encouragement of two way conversation. The Smithsonian has developed mobile web sites to work with specific exhibits and museums. The "Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers" exhibit currently on display at the Hirshhorn has an accompanying education program that can be downloaded for $1.99 from I-Tunes. The goal, as explained by Proctor, is to serve both on-site and off-site visitors. The decision to work with the developer Toura was based on the tool being free to developers and its ability to make the applications available on other platforms and sellers. The Smithsonian  has also found mobile technology useful for guiding on-site visitors. The National Air and Space Museum has a mobile web site for on-site visitors. The site, at http://airandspace.mobi/, directs visitors to amenities, bathrooms, and exhibits. The Smithsonian recognizes that visitors carry mobile technology and that programming for it makes the museum more accessible. Proctor ended her discussion with a question presaging the next phase of mobile learning, "How can we best deploy games for learning?"

School Strategies
Christopher Lehmann, Principal, Science Leadership Academy of Philadelphia stated the case for integrating mobile technology into all aspects of learning. He repeatedly pointed out that today's students are attached to their phones and use them to organize and make sense of all aspects of their life . . . except for formal education. He offered several examples of how students utilize mobile technology in his school and encouraged the museum attendees to develop mobile learning platforms that take advantage of students' natural tendencies towards this tool.

New Applications in Mobile
The next phase is mobile gaming, argued by David Gagnon, Games, Learning and Society Mobile Learning Team, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Gagnon's group has developed an open tool for the Mac operating system called ARIS that will be offered as a tool to "educators who want to use place based / inquiry / narrative / gaming activities in their curriculum." ARIS, which is currently in alpha testing, has three interactive capabilities. The platform allows users to meet people via streaming video, read stationary plaques, and carry movable objects from place to place. Gagnon likened the resulting media products to a new kind of interactive documentary, allowing people to become a part of the story by engaging in the real places. Gagnon's application is similar to SCVGNR, which has already debuted a mobile challenge tool.

Conclusions
Each of the speakers offered a personal perspective on the current and future state of mobile technology. Each of them pointed out the unique technological challenges in developing and implementing mobile applications, which will be shared in a future post. All agreed that, in spite of the challenges, mobile technology is both an important and fast growing segment of the digital world and that museums are a natural venue for implementing mobile learning. The summit offered a peek into the future, and it will be up to museum staff to create unique and interesting content for mobile applications to engage visitors in mission-based learning.

Related information: 
See Hamlet's Blackberry: To Surf or Not to Surf, a  new book by William Powers discussing balancing connectedness.