Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 4, 2010

He is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum , and an expert in using social media in a museum setting. We were lucky enough to have a fabulous space for the workshop in the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Here are some reflections on the instructional design: 1. I said yes. Photo by James Leventhal.

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Social Media Reflection Learning Social 94

Nonprofit Tech for Good

JANUARY 16, 2012

Once you receive the invitation to join Pinterest, simply follow the instructions to create an account. Business always underestimate the fact the nonprofits are some of the most active early adopters on the Web. Only add your location if you are a location-based nonprofit, such as a museum, zoo, performing arts venue, etc.:

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

How do you find your way around a multi-faceted museum? I spent some time playing with this question last week at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a large general museum that is moving toward redesign of the permanent galleries. The instruction becomes a kind of social object that gives people something to talk about.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

I often think museums are like church--passionately loved by staff and devout audiences, irrelevant or off-putting to lapsed or uninterested adults, alien and overwhelming to newcomers. Two years ago, my dad and I embarked on a podcast project called Museum Hater. Help people understand why you do what you do.

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 4, 2012

Museums have been grappling with this question for years ( here's a 2007 roundup of such projects ), most aggressively in zoos and natural history museums where staff hope to inspire conservation and in history/concept museums that focus on civic engagement and activism. No small task for a museum exhibition.

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2011

Thirteen students produced three projects that layered participatory activities onto an exhibition of artwork from the permanent collection of the Henry Art Gallery. When activities were not facilitated, people were often too timid to interact. As one participant said, "the museum feels friendly in a way it usually doesn't."

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 26, 2017

One of them was the curator of the world largest archaeological museum, Grand Egyptian Museum. Our aim is to promote the psychological well-being of young children in Hong Kong through parent-child activities using media such as art, music, drama and story-telling. In 2010, the conference was held in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Museum 2.0

JUNE 25, 2014

A man walks into a museum. Two years ago, we mounted one of our most successful participatory exhibits ever at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History: Memory Jars. There were no written instructions, just a mural that suggested what to do and labels that prompted people for their name and memory. He shares a story.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2016

For example, when we held community meetings about the development of a new creative town square next to our museum, a group of middle/upper-class moms talked about not feeling safe downtown. Include a mix of individual activities (often writing or drawing), partner/small group work, and whole group discussion. AFTER THE MEETING 9.

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Museum 2.0

JANUARY 28, 2009

What role does “promoting human happiness” play in the mission statements and actions of museums? That’s the question I’m pondering thanks to Jane McGonigal and the Center for the Future of Museums (CFM). Earlier today, the CFM offered a free webcast of Jane McGonigal’s talk on gaming, happiness, and museums.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

In the spirit of a popular post written earlier this year , I want to share the behind the scenes on our current almost-museumwide exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz Collects. This is the first time we've had an ongoing activity with a lot of materials (Memory Jars). Memory Jars installation.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 1, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0. I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. These are all active social endeavors that contribute positive value to the social Web. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Does that sound like a fun and rewarding casual activity to you?

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

I've long believed that museums have a special opportunity to support the community spirit of Web 2.0 This month brings three examples of museums hosting meetups for online communities: On 8.6.08, the Computer History Museum (Silicon Valley, CA) hosted a Yelp! Me: Have you ever been to this museum? meetup for Elite Yelp!

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Tech Soup

JULY 16, 2013

Additionally, 30 million library users reported going to the library for employment-related activities. According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a staggering 100 million Americans don't have a broadband connection in their households. TechSoup for Libraries: Edge Benchmarks: Gadget Instruction.

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Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 13, 2007

Barrie gives lovely instructions on how to close your eyes, squeeze tight, and conjure the Mermaid's Lagoon. But it's not so easy to integrate into larger-scale museum writing. The key is not to write the story/label/instructions. What does Peter Pan make you think of? A ticking crocodile? Julie Andrews? Johnny Depp?

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2009

This week, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience , featuring rock posters from San Francisco in the heyday of Bill Graham and electric kool-aid. It is an incredible museum experience. All of the instructions are handwritten on paper or cardboard.

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 2, 2014

There are many artistic projects that offer a template for participation, whether a printed play, an orchestral score, or a visual artwork that involves an instructional set (from community murals to Sol LeWitt). Song Reader looks back and encourages reengaging in a tradition that fosters participation. That''s expected.

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. These are all active social endeavors that contribute positive value to the social Web. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. This is a problem for two reasons.

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2010

When a participatory activity is designed without a goal in mind, you end up with a bunch of undervalued stuff and nowhere to put it. It's not just a personal activity; it's an opportunity to be part of something. The first activity is creative, the second editorial. The project is designed to scale.

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Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2015

No one planned the love locks, but their success is rooted in the same principles that make all the best participatory projects work: it requires no instructions beyond its own example. We often say at our museum that "make and share is better than make and take." The other participants teach you how to play.

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Connection Cafe

MAY 10, 2017

There are so many easy ways to curate images—from team outings, program activities and events to pictures of your mission in action and those you serve. Brooklyn Museum: [link]. See instructions for doing a live video. There are many Instagram accounts from which you can take inspiration — we offer a couple! Adobe: [link].

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2009

Over the past year, I've noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. Users active in online social environments based on social objects like Flickr (photography), Ravelry (knitting), and Wikipedia (information) often trend older.

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 23, 2009

Like many people who've worked in science centers and interactive experience museums, I've always been perplexed by the fact that hands-on workshop audiences top out around age 14. They are more than just workshop spaces--they are member institutions, like museums. Isn't this one of our dreams for museums?

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Tech Soup

MAY 26, 2011

While it is a feature of many social sharing sites, often times those very sites do not provide beginner-friendly instructions on how to use tags effectively. What Value Do Folksonomies Bring To The Online Museum Collection? Tagging, a feature found across many social media channels, is used to help surface content during searches.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

As the museum's website puts it, "this exhibition examines how artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process." If the participatory instructions were integrated into the standard black labels, visitors would not be as aware of the commonalities across the interactive art pieces.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 19, 2006

TechSoup's Virtual Office space was pretty busy last night, hosting an earlier mixed reality event in Cambridge and SL , featuring Pathfinder Linden , head of educational activities for SL. A Museum group is also forming to discuss and explore what museum's can do in SL. Both events had their share of clunkiness.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Tagging is such a functional activity, and if you don't see direct benefit from doing it, the interest in it as a fun afternoon activity is pretty low. When museums embark on collections-tagging projects, they are almost entirely focused on this secondary benefit. But here's the problem: visitors don't see the same opportunity.

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 9, 2007

Rock climbing (safely) is a two-person activity. The gym staff aren’t offering instruction or serving as users’ partners; instead, they facilitate connections among the users. I got thinking about this the other day with regard to museums. One person holds the rope, the other ascends the rock. How could this happen?

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 6, 2007

I used to teach gadget workshops for kids in museums. In fact, I’d argue that by saying “If something starts to smoke…” in the beginning of each workshop, I introduced an element of suspense to what otherwise might feel like a pretty “safe” activity—a museum program. What is active failure? * you lose ?

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 7, 2008

For many museums, visitor research--how people use the museum, navigate exhibits, and understand content--may be an equally important arena in which to adopt groundswell listening techniques. I spent an hour this morning "brand listening" to what the online world says about one of my favorite museums, the Exploratorium.

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 9, 2007

Serious games now are viewed as “resources” (for education, training, instruction, simulation) or “platforms” (for messages, persuasion). I think about this a lot with regard to museums and data. museum, in which every time a guest hits a button their entry is recorded and used to create something great.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

I'm thrilled to share this brilliant guest post by Marilyn Russell, Curator of Education at the Carnegie Museum of Art. This is a perfect example of a museum using participation as a design solution. Inspire visitors to look, think, and respond actively to the works on view? SOLUTION: POST-IT NOTES?

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2007

This week, we're looking at the first section, Talking Back and Talking Together , which features comment boards, talk-back walls, and discussion forums at a variety of museums. At the Boston Museum of Science's video kiosk on wind power, 3/4 of people were most interested in making their own video (as opposed to watching others).

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Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 2, 2008

Museum 2.0's If you do indeed want to cultivate a community discussion, start with a blog "family" to fuel the blog, or, better yet, consider another venue like Twitter or a social network that is a more conducive environment to active participation among strangers. I feel them every day. They are all personal and provocative.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

I’ve been exploring how to integrate social media into instruction at face-to-face workshops and as well as webinars. The concept of before, during, and after is an important way to plot out your instruction, getting a good understanding of the audience, and modeling. I struck out.

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 10, 2009

The automatic tools for uploads to other venues (like YouTube) enhance the sense that Spore creatures and activities exist outside the walled universe. Spore is a chemistry set without instructions, and only some of us are motivated to invent our own experiments. What does the ultimate "game 2.0"

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 24, 2010

This is the third in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. This post covers my personal process of encouraging--and harnessing--participation in the creation of The Participatory Museum. Check out the other parts here. The challenge was to figure out how to do it and end up with a high-quality book.

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