Transcript
Unknown Speaker 00:00
My name is Anneka lava tally and I'm a senior digital strategist here at MC n and a little about MC n. It's a nonprofit volunteer run professional organization committed to growing the digital capacity of museum professionals. MC n has developed a deep active community engaged in year round conversations, webinars, resource sharing, and of course, we culminate together at this annual conference. As an MC and member, you get to join special interest groups, be sure to check one of those out. There's a few of those meetings today and next week to find out some of the benefits of membership. If you're not already a member, we hope that you'll join us You can learn more at mc n.edu. And I'd also like to take a moment to thank Microsoft, our registration Assistance Fund sponsor axial or Ignite sponsor, and all the other sponsors listed on the program schedule for helping make this conference possible. As mentioned earlier, today's session is a live q&a. And so we're using the chat box for questions, but we really hope that you'll want to participate on camera. So we'd love for you to just put your name in the chat box saying you have a question and we'll call on you and just unmute yourself and turn your camera on and participate. You're also welcome to turn your cameras on throughout the session where this is a conversational space and so you don't need to be hiding from us. So I'm going to kick it off to Antonella Bochy, who's also going to introduce your co presenters Maria Rosaria Re Alessio Caccamo Francesca Amenduni Amenduni Lucien
Unknown Speaker 01:42
Carlo de medio Mara Valente.
Unknown Speaker 01:44
And I hope you have a really great session.
Unknown Speaker 01:48
Thank you so much, Hannah. Thank you for introducing hires. I have to say that we're very thrilled and excited. This is our first time on MC n. But really, this is amazing. I really love this conference. I really love meeting you all. I wanted to tell you something about our group I chair the Center for Museum Studies at the Department of Education, university Roma threat. A in Italy in Rome, of course. And here you have some of the of the colleagues that are working with me and within the Center for museum studies on different projects and subjects. Of course, as you might understand from from the title of the center, we deal with museum studies, but our interests, our research interests are focused on the use of technology in museum environments, especially of course for educational proposes. And there are different young people here very bright young researchers that I'd like to introduce you. And we have Francesca I am just mentioning them according to the to them pictures that I'm seeing here. So Francesca Amenduni, Maria Rosaria Re and Mara Valente, Alessio Caccamo and Carlo de medio they are they have different profiles. Why do we have been trying to do in our Center for museum studies that was created in 1994. So, it has a considerable soundtrack, especially in international research and in training for museum educators. We have been trying to have a an interdisciplinary team and and that's why they have you know, we have been contributing together to the virtual interactive exhibition that we have put together and that we introduce with this session as Francesca Amenduni. She She will tell us about her But anyway, she has a profiling in a background in psychology. Maria Rosaria. Re is as a background in in humanities. Mara Valente is an artist story in and of course, they they are now researchers in in education and and the experimental pedagogy in particular that is our field but anyway, and their background is is different that Carlo de medio is an engineering an engineer, so Sorry. And Alessio Caccamo is a be a visual designer. So as you might imagine, we we have been trying to, to collect different kind of off profiles in order to be the most effective we could, in our, in our work. Has I said, either, I hope that that you had the opportunity to watch our video our our presentation.
Unknown Speaker 05:37
But in order to sort of ice breaking session, you know, introduction, let's say so, and I would like to let all the contributors participate and tell something about what we did. So as, as you can get from the title, we have been working on designing different inclusive learning paths, we have been working on this idea of inclusion of using museum environments, as places to facilitate participation in social in, in social in the social life of the community. So that that's why we have been working in from different kind of perspectives on the topic of, of inclusion, and the specific project has been carried out, within our university with different departments involved, but also, but also in at the international level with the University College of London. Anyway, the pilot experimentation is based on this connection of digital storytelling and, and museums, and and on on this connection could in dance, education and public engagement. And so the background for for this research is based there, and I would like Maria Rosaria Re, to tell us about this idea of the object as facilitator in this in this sense.
Unknown Speaker 07:38
Yes, thank you. And I love the idea. The main theme, as Antonella said before, about the through your app is to link the Digital Storytelling methodology to cultural heritage education, in general through the use of virtual reality. The idea is that the object, the museum object is for sure a migrant object because it tells a lot of stories from the beginning of the object, for example, how these objects were created, or how they were found, how they arrived in a museum. And we think that this connection between migration and inclusion in terms of such an inclusion could be pivotal in our project,
Unknown Speaker 08:30
through the use of digital storytelling, so through the use of narrative story, we want to promote communication and collaboration, but for sure, also empathy within our within our app, because according to the main literature of the field, for sure, the Digital Storytelling methodology is is very effective in educational terms, also for the growth of tide and person, because listen to a story of an
Unknown Speaker 09:07
object
Unknown Speaker 09:08
and can suggest that our emotion and can link our idea or senses, our imagination, to the to the culture in general, being active part of our culture. And this is for sure, our main theme that we want to communicate through our app. So the Digital Storytelling can be inclusive in this way, because we want to promote the transversal skills and promotes the active citizenship of our visitors through a completely new interactive way of collections and museum objects.
Unknown Speaker 09:49
Thank you Maria Rosaria Re and and starting from where you landed. This idea of developing cross sectional skills, and the In particular 21st century skills in order to be active citizens, that's what we really focused on through this technologically enhanced environment. I would like to ask Francesca, if she could explain this link and how we could manage in supporting this idea of enhancing critical thinking skills through the the possibility of experiencing this kind of environment.
Unknown Speaker 10:36
Yes. Hello, everyone. I will tell you something more general. And then I will explain it specifically what we do with each rule. Yeah. I think that all of you have listened about the the method of resolve thinking, we start, we started from the idea that you when you look at the pieces of art that we did the use of good questions, so you can reflect upon the piece of art. And we tried to combine the idea that digital storytelling can answer reflection on that object. So in the in the our students at the beginning, watch the piece of ours there and listen, our story related to the piece of art, and I have to reflect we try to design critical questions to simulate their reflections. And we also tried to create the AFI lusia in order to support a deeper reflection on topics that are related with empowerment with inclusion, and we the topics that are ready I'll just say that can support empowerment for example, I don't know if you had the chance to see the video. But the one of the topics that we develop there was related with the role of the of the women in India to scan Asia. So I think that's my the other side, I could also tell us something that the experience that she had in Villa Julia museums and the reflection that students have, as related with for example, with the role of media, and we tried to make something similar from the direct speech experience in in the museum to the virtual experience, because in fact, yes, of course, we had the the COVID-19 and we had to redesign the experience that we tried to,
Unknown Speaker 12:57
in fact grow from where where we started because yes, what we should you should tell the audience because we don't know if all of them add the opportunity to watch the video and to understand which is the content of what is developed through this virtual environment. And I would ask Maria Rosaria Re and Mara also to, to summarize a little bit the contents and experience and the these idea of designing a certain a certain deanery. Within the trust, can they trust can museum and the objects that are collected within the trust? Can museums museum be like Julia and in Rome? So can you tell us more about what we designed from content to and also, let's say irrational point of view.
Unknown Speaker 14:16
And I just want to let everyone know we only have 15 minutes left to open up for questions from other people attending so so
Unknown Speaker 14:23
Time Warner Yeah, yeah. Okay. Let's just give an idea of what we did and why we chose certain objects.
Unknown Speaker 14:33
Yes, we constructed a learning museum Learning Path setting from five museum objects of the Missouri to school be legible. Yeah. That is one of the most important Etruscan Museum in Italy. And these five objects was worse selected because they are closely linked to the women figures in the Etruscan word. The idea was to Promote and solicit critical thinking through the use of an aeration. And we produce these learning paths in persons before the COVID experience. And unfortunately or fortunately for our atria, we decided to create this app in order to have an opportunity for other people, especially who has social exclusion problem because our first experimentation was with people with cognitive dissonance, maybe baby and and we use this app in order to promote inclusion and critical thinking reflection or so via online also through the virtual reality.
Unknown Speaker 15:50
So yes, they do behind it was to us they to scan women, way of living as a as a main theme as a topic in order to enhance the definition of and the understanding of reality in the development of certain reflective skills through interaction. But starting from the Visual Thinking and digital storytelling connected to that specific object, each object tells its own story. And that makes sense that elves making sense of reality. And it helps reflection,
Unknown Speaker 16:44
I think, underlined and choices that we made for the Trulia app. Absolutely. Absolutely. From his
Unknown Speaker 16:58
point of view as an expert in a visual and design point of view, of course, very briefly, because as Anatole, does, we need to open to questions. Anyway, please.
Unknown Speaker 17:16
Yes, thank you. Hello to everyone. So from the Visual Communication Design point of view, they are our application as to fundamental graphic six on the one end of the visualisation of the museum spaces and its artworks and on the other the interaction and the movement movement within it. As regards to the first point, it was designed to make the visual environment of the museum. So that was abstract and neutral in terms of your language. The motivation traits back its origin from the aim to create that counterweight environment of respect to the declarative the richness of the objects it contains. Nevertheless, the sequential structure of the room so as we maintain these layout is a typical element of the contemporary architecture near to the villa Julian museum. From the point of view of the software user to design your application, the artworks contained within the application individual environmental wear designer using a 3d modeling software rhinoceros together with photo editing software, Adobe Photoshop, for the definition of the current Dexter, Dexter, Susan and Paterson, of deterioration and the objects. Next for the interaction part that the design elements were incorporated with the Unity softer, the user saw can move within the visual space for an interfaces designer with Adobe XD and designer to obtain the highest level of usability and readability and about the readability we have to say one thing to get that it's very important for us the app is designed to achieve an eye level or readability For this reason, even the font that we use India will have the high mobile allowing as easy reading even even towards the subject with SL D. Yes, sir.
Unknown Speaker 19:21
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. So, so we will open to two questions. I know we we we have a short amount of time allowed to us so I hope we'll be able to to answer your your questions, please, please share your questions on the chat or, you know,
Unknown Speaker 19:47
anywhere maybe just to kick it off, I am happy. I would be really curious to hear and I don't know who wants to speak to it. But you know this this idea of the virtual and the physical instance storytelling and and the sort of major considerations that are things you learned through this project that you think we need to know about.
Unknown Speaker 20:10
Yes, I Please, God, no good, good answer this question.
Unknown Speaker 20:18
Yes. Can you please explain better what you want to say? Yeah, because it's what?
Unknown Speaker 20:25
Absolutely. Sort of what were key learnings from the sort of the difference between physical learning in a physical space versus virtual representation?
Unknown Speaker 20:38
Yeah, there are a lot of difference.
Unknown Speaker 20:42
I'm sure there's a lot sort of, maybe what's, what was most significant to you?
Unknown Speaker 20:47
Yeah, and there are a lot of limitation, I can see because the difference is that in the physical Museum, you can see the perfect representation of the object, for sure. And sometime in some kind of Museum, we have the possibility to touch the object to smell the object, and you can feel your sense the learning object, in a beautiful environment, we are trying to represent all this characteristic, but obviously, it's impossible. So we have to go over the problems of the real representation, because sometimes you don't doesn't allow us to go inside and get the 3d representation of the object. So we work with images as some time the object is not really the same of the physical object, but our specialist Alessio Caccamo. produced the object for this path with his and his captor the eat, we say in
Unknown Speaker 22:09
jerk.
Unknown Speaker 22:11
The other limits is the sense limits. So it's impossible to give to the user a sense of smell or taste, but we try to insert the something like a soundtrack. So, we follow the user with the sound and every room have a different soundtrack. And we try to make the environment the most similar as is possible to a real Museu
Unknown Speaker 22:49
we have
Unknown Speaker 22:53
seen them So, I wanted to answer especially First of all, five minutes. Yes, we have five minutes left. So I tried to to be very brief, how many actually, thank you for your question, we had to to readjust the the target audience, because we we actually conceived this this environment for different kind of of public of users. And then after museums had to close down in in Italy, we we we had a completely different kind of, of users. We at the very beginning we thought that this what we were conceiving word was doing to support the physical visit at the at the museum. Instead, in the end it it became adjust that a virtual virtual reality is dimensioned. But actually, we through the experimentation and if you are all interested we of course you can contact us afterwards. And we can give you more details regarding the results of the experimentation we carried out where we we got the very interesting feedback from from the users that were engaged in in this kind of solutions. Another question is do you plan to transition to mixed reality? Given your new reality living through the pandemic? Yes, I think we we have to think about this kind of of mixed reality we've been experiencing during this this month in the past cobbin era, bad and so we need to Focus on this kind of mixed reality for the future, even if a vaccine will be found and, you know, we'll try to, to be back to what we remember as normal life, but it will never be the same. When is the story better told in virtual reality than in the physical space? Yes, thank you, Siri that that is true. And actually, it can be better told in virtual reality because of the engagement levels that we managed to reach through this narration and to the possibility for the objects to tell their stories as as migrants as as living beings.
Unknown Speaker 25:56
And also Antonella because of special educational needs, for example, of cognitive problem, if they have the possibility to stop the narration in a visual experience. And to clarify the meaning for example of particular terms, have layouts that it's useful for their characteristics, it will be better in terms of inclusion for sure.
Unknown Speaker 26:21
So better also in disturbs, absolutely. So, because I see time is running. Hang out, Hana says that we are going to have an a hare China, actually an MC n, virtual reality AR China's so she is going to set it on the Slack platform. And so more questions will will come and would be glad to answer to your, to your questions to your queries. Yes, yes. Fantastic. Nice.
Unknown Speaker 27:01
Try to get everyone that I'm seeing on the channel. Interested in that added to it. But if you look for channels, MC 2020. I'll make a VR AR so we can see and if we need to split off we will. Absolutely so so very much.
Unknown Speaker 27:21
Thank you. Thanks to all the people that were attending this session, please contact us we are available for or by other discussion or you know, other kinds of connections. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 27:38
Fantastic. Thank you so much.