e-learning

Renaissance East Midlands is running a programme to support museums in delivering online learning resources for schools. The Renaissance e-learning manager, Bryony Robins, has been working with a range of museums to develop material for the Learn with Museums website.

Small grants

Museums were offered up to £3,000 to support their e-learning work in a programme of funding that will re-open in April 2008. A number of museums successfully applied for the grants and are now implementing the projects to trial projects that would give them more links with schools.  The projects are:

Northampton Museum and Art Gallery – the museum is developing its successful ‘In Your Shoes’ resource for use with the modern language curriculum. A first for the museum, and the region, this new project will make museum artefacts and information relevant to an untried area of the curriculum by developing the resources so as to aid language learning.

National Stone Centre – the centre is creating an interactive time travelling quest for students.  This will take students back through time to meet the things that are now found as fossils on the National Stone Centre site. Students will be able to find out not only what the fossils were, but how they became fossils.

Leicestershire Museums Service – the grant will assist the museums service in developing an online video resource showing a beam engine working. The resource will link to the science and technology curriculum and will give a clear example of ‘Forces’ in action.  Leicestershire are also developing museum trails using mobile technology (PDAs).

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery – the museum is using the funding to pilot a project on video conferencing working with local schools. The idea is to develop a facility that will enable schools to work with the museum from their classroom but also get much of value of a museum visit and work with museum staff through the new technology.

e-learning task group

As part of Bryony’s work, she is coordinating an e-learning task group that is open to all museums in the East Midlands.

The group meets on a regularbasis to find out the latest initiatives and developments and to compare notes on what is working well for them. It also focuses on the Learn with Museums website and helps to ensure that the site is the best it can be for museums, teachers and students. As part of the group meetings an element of training is introduced to support the museums in their online work. The training so far has included:

• How to use interactive white boards 
• Using PDAs in museums (these are new forms of technology) 
• Oral history – putting audio content online

The group is open to all and further information is available from Bryony Robins on 0116 285 1366 or email Bryony.