Dimensions
of Information: Giles Lane & Rachel Murphy
SchoolChildren
The first
idea looks at school children on a museum trip. Whilst some current projects
(Jones et al, 2003) discuss the use of public authoring systems in an
outdoor space for children, we are exploring the use of this type of system
in a museum space. The benefits would be:
- A platform that can be accessed both by adults and children to give children a sense of equality for ideas and validation for work.
- Intergenerational communication – a child’s perspective to a given subject may be very different from adults and lead to unexpected appreciation of interpretation.
- A more valuable use of the children’s work feeding back into their day-to-day schoolwork.
- A space to allow children to voice their own ideas outside of the context of school (or family) trips.
- Use of different form factors – moving beyond the handheld device to encompass emerging technologies like large Organic LEDs (OLEDs) Displays and input devices.
In the picture below we have visualised the kind of generic contemporary communications device that a child might use in a museum to add content to the system. The device would allow text input as well as offering the ability to leave voice annotations and make drawings. Photos and video clips could also be captured by using a built in camera.
