WebWise 2012 in Baltimore.

It’s been a couple weeks since the WebWise conference in Baltimore, but the information hasn’t gone stale yet.  It’s still cutting edge and thought-provoking because most of the projects discussed are still underdevelopment and it’s unclear if they’ll succeed or not.  However, they do provide a glimpse of current and potentially future practices in the use of technology for historic sites. The webcast videos are now available except for LeVar Burton’s presentation, which is waiting for broadcast permission. Heritage Preservation will be using portions of the webcasts to create webinars that will be available later this summer including, “Crowdsourcing in Public History” and “Oral History in the Digital Age.”

The first panel session, History Places and Spaces:  Learning and Participation on the Move, was moderated by Nancy Proctor and looked at the ways that mobile technologies (that is, technologies that are aware of your location) can provide new and better experiences for visitors.

Rob Stein at the Indianapolis Museum of Art opened the session by stating that the field already recognizes that location should be a required element in basic content but the challenge is the proliferation of software and hardware platforms.  Every digital device (website, cellphone, tablet) seems to be in a unique format and requires special treatment.  To overcome this, Stein suggested we rethink Continue reading →