See the Civil War unfold 150 years later—through Twitter.
The reenactment began on Jan. 1, 2013, the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and continues to the anniversary of the end of the Civil War in 2015.
UPDATE: Read a review.
A must-read on how Internet technology is challenging the higher education model—by the inimitable Clay Shirky.
Udacity and other online teaching/learning systems are to education as MP3s are to the traditional music publishing industry.
Wordy but worth it.
Colonial Williamsburg offers an online/on-site history activity for kids called RevQuest.
More here.
You probably just hadn’t gotten to this yet due to information overload and/or filter failure.
Appearing to be in many ways a Science version of the Minnesota Historical Society’s History in Our Hands activity, Zydeco is a project to watch.
Both use mobile devices (iOS devices, to be precise) to support student collection and creation of data and evidence, then retain and avail those materials for further use in the classroom, at home, or anywhere a device can access the cloud.
Zydeco is an effort of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Read all about it.
Here’s a nice example of the kind of mutual benefits that can grow out of a relationship between “GLAMs” (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) and Wikimedia.
This Wikipedia “Wealthy Apple” article is based in large part on the Minnesota Historical Society’s MNopedia article on the same topic.
Because most MNopedia content is published under the appropriate Creative Commons license, its chances of finding its way to much larger audiences—through Wikipedia in this case—are much higher than if it were restricted.
The MNopedia project team at MHS established a connection with Wikimedia early on—and through ongoing cooperation, both resources are now being enriched.
Wikpedia is a better resource because of open, citable content like MNopedia’s, and through this relationship MHS delivers its content to many more people than it would on its own. Plus, more people are driven directly back to MHS and its resources as a result.
GLAMs—like anyone and everyone—are free to edit Wikipedia directly. While editing articles about one’s own institution is frowned upon (and often rejected), there are many options for getting good, GLAM-sourced content into Wikipedia, including through the mutual back-scratching approach exemplified here.
Many thanks to Liam Wyatt for nurturing GLAM-Wiki relationships and for helping us though this fun and rewarding process.
Two Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) projects have won American Association of Museums MUSE Awards.
MNopedia—described here and here—won in the category of Education and Outreach.
See the full list of winners, and the MHS News Release.
Here’s your museum collection of the day.
In an instance of meta-offbeat-appreciation, Roadside America says:
“Visible from its windows are dozens of miniatures…of Roadside American giants: Albert the Bull, Brainerd’s Bunyan and Babe, the Talking Cow, Big Brutus, and the World’s Largest Strawberry. Inside the van are more, along with research files, work space, publicity clippings, and a stack of offbeat travel guidebooks.”
As you may know, Roadside America chronicles low-brow public artworks, and here we have a mobile variation thereof. But mobile in the old sense, of course, in that the collection comes to you.
If you’re lucky.
The Minnesota Historical Society’s state encyclopedia, which launched late last summer, is still in beta, and still ravenously collecting feedback (which will help determine the direction of design, function, and content).
The site is filling up with comments, and there have been several related initiatives to garner user reactions.
Here are a few recent examples:
museumedia 