Article: "My Evidence: Who's the Authority Here?"

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/robinson/robinson.html

This paper discusses a project called My Evidence, funded by San Francisco's Exploratorium. The project allows people to explore their own belief systems, by examining the ways we know what we know, and the ways that we choose what to believe. This online program poses statements of belief and asks the user to choose which statements they believe in the most, and how they acquired the belief that the statements are accurate. With this information, a personalized visual evidence map is created for the user, and this map can be compared with the maps of other users. People can see the ways of collecting evidence that they believe are the most effective and accurate and compare this with the ways that they themselves normally collect evidence.

The issue of belief systems and the collecting of evidence is very important today as a result of the massive amounts of supposedly "scientific" information and data available currently on the web. Many websites from which people gather the "evidence" fueling their beliefs are seen as credible authorities on a given subject, but these sites may have been created by anyone, and do not provide sources or any real, documented facts. For this reason, it is important for us to attempt to understand the ways in which people gather what they perceive to be factual information, and build belief systems based on this information.

This article is also pertinent to some of the themes we've been discussing in class, as it describes changes made in the program over time in order to increase accessibility and personalization, making it more available and relevant to people's lives. This is one challenge constantly faced by organizations, especially museums, in presenting information on the web.

A super good lecture, and a happy day

We had a guest lecturer on Monday (although for some reason this week has seemed really long so it seems like weeks ago already), and she was super good. Although I think the purpose of Elisa's lecture was to outline some of the current issues being faced in creating internet museum experiences, the part I liked most was actually her discussion of her own work. Her use of sound to help build an experience people can relate to in a tangible way is exactly the sort of thing that museums, both virtual and physical, can use to help inspire audiences to learn and think. So anyway, guest lecture=awesome (as are Rob's lectures)!
In completely different but still totally wonderful news, today I started volunteering for the Boulder History Museum, and it was the most exciting thing ever. I get to make my own exhibit! Granted, it will be a small, 2-D exhibit, but that is way more creative control than I expected to be given my first day volunteering! I am unbelievably excited to start my research. Hopefully I can relate some of my experience volunteering to the stuff we do in class.

Merciful mother of God. How adorable.

Since we are learning to post pictures, I thought I should share this picture of a tiny monkey whose mother left it so it turned to a dove for love, and the dove gave it all the affection it desired, so the monkey and the dove lived together happily ever after. True story.

Interactive Museum Websites and Online Exhibits

Today our lab assignment was to check out some interactive museum websites and online exhibits in class. I looked at one of the websites listed as well as a few websites of museums I had actually been to. The purpose for doing the latter was that I felt that comparing the online aspects of the museums to what I knew about the insides of the actual museums would be helpful in assessing the pros and cons of the use of the internet in the display of information and objects for museums.
The sites I visited included:
http://nanozone.org
http://www.smm.org/explore
http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/imaging/index.html
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/online_interactive.htm

Let me preface this by saying that during our class discussion today the thought on my mind, which we touched on briefly, is that there is no way seeing a picture of something on a website is as powerful as seeing it in real life. That led me to wonder about the effects of interactive websites and online exhibits for museums on people's ideas of the importance of museums themselves as well as the specific objects they contain. It seemed to me that by simply showing the public a picture of something, you take away much of its emotional and intellectual value, making it appear less interesting or pertinent to one's own life and experience, lessening its perceived importance. This could be disastrous in terms of adequately educating future generations, and finding funding for museums around the world, as well as for the fields of study which contribute to the findings of museums.

While I still think that this holds true to some extent, what I saw on the websites I visited changed my mind at least in part. It seemed to me that the designers of the sites had included some really excellent and thought provoking teaching tools in the pages they built. One of the things I enjoyed the most was the ability to show the audience/page viewer/reader/whatever where the artifacts in the museum had come from. By this I mean that if a skeleton or piece of pottery had come from an ancient city that had been dug up 20 years ago, the website offered numerous photographs and maps of the digging site. This is something that is often missed by going to an actual museum, and it allows you to really feel a sense of reverence toward an object if you are able to see the amazing place it came from.

In addition, many of these websites' interactive sections are very effective in showing how and why things work the way that they do. On the Science Museum of Minnesota's website, you can learn how animals make the sounds that they do, for instance. In some museums, an object is presented and it is explained who made it and for what purpose, but it is at times difficult to get a sense of how it was made and what it was used for on a daily basis. For this reason I was pretty excited to find description of such things on the websites I visited.

Ok, I'll stop rambling and get down to business. So, on the nanozone website, I found that animation and audio were the two main media tools utilized in at least the sections I explored. The site was very geared towards children, which I sort of approved of because it means that they are trying to get kids interested in science and museums and other cool stuff. I'm not sure I fully understand what a plug-in is, so I can't really answer the question of whether it required one or not.

On the second site I visited, the Science Museum of Minnesota's website, the interactive page had several different little areas you could explore, some more interesting and well-developed than others. In general, this website utilized games as teaching tools as well as photographs, videos, and an entire audio section. I found the audio section to be fairly interesting, as well as a small section in which a "comic book" was made to portray the events leading up to the uncovering of some ancient bones in Turkey. Some of the photographs in the other sections were a little bland and impersonal, which I thought sort of detracted from the site.

The two Chicago museums whose pages I visited were the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry. Both sites relied primarily on photographs and videos as their major forms of media. These sites' interactive sections seemed as though they could be geared towards people of any age, and I enjoyed that flexibility.

And that's all!

An eventful day

Dear new blog that I just started a couple days ago,

Today my laptop decided to change its own display time to an hour later than it actually was, just to mess with me and make me think I was late for class. I told it to try to consider someone else's feelings for a change. That shaped it right up. Besides that, no new news. This evening there was supposedly a graduate picnic with free food and beer, and I really wanted to go but I was told I needed my Buff card, which I didn't have on my person. It was, in fact, lying innocently inside my purse at home, where I'd left it. Home is a long bike ride from campus, so by the time I finally arrived, I was so hungry that I couldn't wait for the free food and free beer, and just shoveled down whatever was in my fridge. Ah well, maybe next year I'll go to the graduate picnic, if it is an annual event, that is. I guess making friends and getting a free meal can wait a year.

This is a really confusing experience, I hope you know.

This is my first non-Myspace blog, and because it is not being posted on a page designed for high-schoolers, I'm deeply confused as to what I should write about. Normally I rant and rave about daily happenings that anger me, or I post song lyrics that I like, but since this blog caters to a slightly different audience, I'm assuming it should be about something important. Because I'm doing this for a Museum Technology seminar, future postings may regard technology and museums. But not this one. Nope. Well, maybe a little. Today I learned what "ram" is. It was awesome. The motherboard of a computer still seems quite terrifying, however, and I hope to avoid ever being asked what all the little metal pieces jutting out from it do. Anyway, so far my class seems very cool, especially because I really want to know more about computers!

That's all I've got,

Jordan