Category Archives: Technology

Hagia Sophia: An Experiment with Virtual Tours

An experiment with a virtual tour of the famous Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

Warning: this is an experiment in historic site interpretation. Things went wrong but we’re also learning a lot together.

I’ve been working on improving and enhancing the interpretation of historic sites and house museums for decades, plus I’ve also been interested in ways to improve access to these incredible places. If you’ve ever met me at a historic site, you know I take LOTS of photos and share them in my workshops, classes, and in this blog.

Last year, a friend introduced me to the Insta360 One X2, a small camera with two lenses that captures 360-degree photos and video. It’s popular with skiers, mountain bikers, skateboarders, and other active sport players because it captures everything, which can later be edited to the best views and moments. But how can it be used in the interpretation of historic sites? Is this a low-cost solution to create immersive videos?

I’ve just returned from a vacation in Greece and Turkey, where I visited several museums and historic sites that have long been on my list. As usual, I took lots of photos, including video using an Insta360. Fixed at the end of a yard-long selfie stick, it allowed me to capture drone-like views above the heads of the people around me without interfering with their experiences.

This first video experiment simply stitches four videos together of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul during a daily prayer service. There’s no voice-over or narration as in a traditional tour, just a simple walkthrough with ambient sounds. Remember that it was originally a 360-degree video that was edited to frame the view and add camera movements. I discovered that the video is smudged or blurred at times. I’m not sure if that due to a dirty lens or the low light conditions, but I hid the worst parts with photos from my iPhone (yes, I was juggling two cameras at the same time!).

Take a look at the video and tell me what you think. How might this format enhance the interpretation of historic sites? What are possible next steps?

San Diego Adopts Virtual Deed of Gift

Photo by Matthias Zomer via Pexels.

The pandemic is prompting changes throughout museums and history organizations, including the processing of deeds of gift for collection acquisitions. It is the muddy stretch of the road. I’d prepare two deeds of gift, use sticky notes to show where to sign, attach a cover sheet asking the donor to sign both copies and return one to the museum, and enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope to encourage a quick response. Finally, you drop the packet in the mail and hope to hear from the donor soon. Otherwise, it entailed more follow-up that could take weeks, sometimes months, to complete. Meanwhile, the new acquisition stared at you from the shelves in limbo every time you walked into storage.

To streamline the process, the San Diego History Center recently adopted DocuSign, an online service that allows documents to be signed and returned quickly. No need for scanning signatures or using a mouse to write out an illegible name. DocuSign uses your name to craft a “signature” in a script typeface. I recently completed a house sale using DocuSign and sailed through piles of paperwork with ease.

Continue reading →

Resources for Transitioning Museum Programs to Online

Attending George Washington University’s online workshop to prepare for teaching online this fall.

George Washington University (GW), where I teach in the Museum Studies Program, recently decided to move all of its courses online this fall. To prepare, I completed an intensive three-day course to create effective online courses, which introduced the latest research on the factors that make online courses effective and wide (and overwhelming) range of teaching tools that are available.

I’m incredibly fortunate that GW is supporting the faculty with lots of resources and training this summer, which required the Libraries and Academic Innovation staff to move quickly to prepare videos, workshops, and materials faster than I ever would for a student course. Many of the ideas that I gathered could easily be adapted by museums and historic sites as they shift their programming, so I wanted to share them with you. Some don’t require any costly software applications or learning management systems, but just some new planning approaches:

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Productivity Apps for Emerging Museum Professionals

Projects are the buildings blocks for getting things done. When they’re small, they can be easily completed without much attention but when they get big, involving many people and large budgets, the complexity and risk of failure increases, especially when time and money is limited.

This past semester, graduate students in my “Managing People and Projects” course at George Washington University developed skills and used tools to manage these more challenging situations in a wide variety of museum-related projects, such as exhibitions, events, symposia, publications, school programs, and building construction. As a part of the course, students reviewed some of the latest application software (apps) for project management, including Shortcuts, Evernote, TeamGantt, OmniFocus, Trello, Asana, and Slack.

Unlike reviews prepared by CNET or published in a computer magazine, these reviews are written by emerging museum professionals for emerging museum professionals.  I might disagree with some of their conclusions, but often the difference was about cost or applicability at the start of one’s career.  If you’ve been thinking about increasing your productivity using apps, check out “A Beginner’s Guide to Productivity Apps for Emerging Museum Professionals.”

And if you want my recommendations on apps, I work in the Continue reading →

Canadian Geography Conference Highlights

Exhibition hall at IGU/NCGE/CGA meeting in Quebec, August 2018.

I’ve just returned from Quebec where I attended an international geography conference that was a combination of the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG), the annual conference of the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE), and the regional conference for the International Geography Union (IGU).  Despite the combination of organizations, I’d guess it would be comparable to a regional museum association meeting of about 500 people with the usual sessions, plenary speakers, and exhibition hall.

The big difference from museum and history conferences is that the geography associations seem to accept all presentation proposals. Each presentation is assigned a 15-minute slot in a 60 to 90-minute session according to their committees or study groups (e.g., health care, tourism, indigenous peoples, islands). Presenters in the same session usually have not met each other and there’s no moderator, so it’s just one presentation after another with no introductions or transitions. The result is that a session can be a mixed bag, so a session on “teaching geographic content” included Continue reading →

Video: Virtual researchers at work at Huntington Library

This 1:30 video features a video projected on a table showing scholars at work behind-the-scenes as part of a small exhibition on research and conservation at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. It was installed a few years ago in the former board room of the historic library building and is another example of the expanded ways that video is being used in exhibitions (it’s not just a tv monitor anymore).

You may notice that there’s no one in the exhibition. I do deliberately take photos of exhibitions without people so that the entire design can be seen, however, I also take them with people to show how they interact with the content. In this instance, it was a busy day but very few people wandered in and when they did, it was a quick glance and then back out–despite the cleverness of the video projection.  I can perhaps guess at the reasons—located off to the side, uninteresting topic, and passive experience—but it could also be a lost opportunity to do something more intriguing and distinctive.

Look again at the video. What’s distinctive about the exhibition? Continue reading →

What Can Historic Sites Learn From Geography?

You’d think historic sites and geography would be an obvious combination because they both focus on place, and yet, I didn’t really see the connection until a few years ago when I started teaching at George Washington University. Joe Downer, an archaeologist at Mount Vernon who was participating in my historic house museum class, inspired me with his work using ArcGIS and their annual conference. By coincidence, I was conducting research for my anthology on interpreting African American history and culture and encountered useful articles in the Journal of Historical Geography,  Southeastern Geographer, and Geographical Review. Finally, my wife became the Executive Director of the Society of Woman Geographers, which introduced me to lots of geographers across the United States (you mean they don’t just create maps?). As a result, I’ve increasingly used geographical along with historical approaches in my courses and in the business and interpretive plans I develop for my clients.

Next month, I’m diving in deeper by attending a conference of geography conferences: 2018 International Geographical Union (IGU) Regional Conference; Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) Annual Meeting; and the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) Annual Conference (or as they say in Quebec, Congrès régional de l’UGI – Congrès annuel de l’ACG – Congrès annuel du NCGE). Yes, it’ll be in Quebec, so I’m a bit nervous that the language and content will be foreign to me. Nevertheless, I’m encouraged by the preliminary program, which lists dozens of presentations that immediately appealed to me (and they’re in English!): Continue reading →

Learn from Leading Scholars in Your Home or Office

TED Talks has spawned the renewal of lectures as an engaging form of education (who would have guessed?) and many universities and organizations are regularly sharing lectures from their public programs, staff workshops, and student courses online with the public.  They’re also a great resource for house museums and historic sites, who can use them for professional development and staff training, or to check out a potential speaker for a special event.  They might even inspire museums to record their own events and share them online.  Here are a couple programs that caught my eye: Continue reading →

Video: Finding a Museum’s IRS Form 990

This blog shares lots of the intriguing ideas that I encounter at house museums and historic sites in my travels, and often they’re best explained through video. How else can you really understand how a hands-on activity works or how visitors behave during a tour? I’ve shared plenty of videos created by others but this past year I’ve been learning how to create my own videos for the museum field, using my ever-present iPhone to shoot video snippets, mastering ScreenFlow, and studying how others create videos on YouTube (e.g., Peter McKinnon, Curtis Judd, DottoTech, and Video Creators).  Now my efforts have been nudged along by the classes I’ve started to teach this year at George Washington University where I’m incorporating “flipped learning” approaches to move some of my lectures online to devote as much time in the classroom to group discussions and activities.

I shared one of my initial forays into video creation several months ago on a cool interactive technique from a traveling exhibition at the Indiana State Museum and this week I’m posting two more videos which are a bit more complex.  I’m hoping my videos will improve over time but I do want to maintain their “hand-crafted” nature so they stays personal (in other words, the quality should get better but don’t expect “high production values”).

I created today’s video for my museum studies classes to help students find the Form 990, Continue reading →

Met Museum Segmenting Visitors to Improve Its Online Collections

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently shared the results of its research on the users of its online collections, which approach about 600,000 visitors per month.  Digital analyst Elena Villaespesa collected information on motivations and knowledge through Google Analytics, heat maps, and an online survey to develop six core user segments: professional researchers, student researchers, personal-interest information seekers, inspiration seekers, casual browsers, and visit planners.  This typology will help the museum “plan new content and prioritize production of new features for the online collection” and is a finer version of the “stroller/streaker/scholar” categories that are often used by museum educators.

Using visitor research to plan and design the online collection is good application, but the article also points out several other ideas that will be useful to history museums and historic sites: Continue reading →