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Sticking to the "Language and Power" module I used to teach in the frame of the IB Curriculum, let me share a couple of thoughts considering a collaborative classroom museum project.

The students are introduced in the fascinating world of media and mass communication, and their aim is to create a targeted advertisement campaign for a currently running exhibition they visited. Concretely, they will have to create a poster, a radio advertisement, a tv-news announcement regarding the exhibition, a written invitation to the opening and/or the like. The students work in groups and each group has to create one type of text. As soon as they submit their work, they have to peer review the work of the other groups. Thus, all students will interact with each other and have the opportunity to discuss on critical aspects consisting the exhibition under discussion and the museum management in general, and all this in relevance to their own linguistic choices.

You may check my project plan here.

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Name

Museum & Language Project

Topic

Language & Power

Learning time

Designed time

9 hours

Size of class

25

Description

Language and Literature Class in the frame of the International Baccalaureate (1st or 2nd year High level)

Aims

At the end of the lesson, the students will have comprehended the relevance of linguistic choices considering different types of texts to communicate an event.

Outcomes

Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Evaluation

Editor

Learning Experience

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Social learning graph will not display correctly, because one or more learning types do not have group size set.

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Museum & Language Project · Learning Designer

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How would you define inquiry-based instruction?Where does inquiry fit in a teacher’s teaching day?What are some of the academic benefits of using inquiry discussions in class?How can training in the inquiry method help today’s young people?How can museums and schools collaborate in using inquiry-based teaching and learning?

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How would you define inquiry-based instruction?Where does inquiry fit in a teacher’s teaching day?What are some of the academic benefits of using inquiry discussions in class?How can training in the inquiry method help today’s young people?How can museums and schools collaborate in using inquiry-based teaching and learning?

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while experimenting with arts and culture tool in order to create my own virtual visit to my postcards from Bristol exhibition, I was thinking that an interesting aspect of learning in a museum is to engage our students in museum management and curation of an exhibition. To curate is to really take care of a group of objects which may seem to have much in common but this is not the case when standing in the middle of an empty room. Why are exhibits put there where we watch them in the end and how or what would our students had done differently and why?

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Describe the way(s) you could make a specific exhibit more interactive and explain how this could help facilitate the understanding of the exhibit.

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Describe the way(s) you could make a specific exhibit more interactive and explain how this could help facilitate the understanding of the exhibit.

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it's all about power relations... (activity IN the museum)

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it's all about power relations... (activity IN the museum)

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Teaching the Language and Literature module for the IB, I often had to focus on "(mass) media and power". Power relations, however, are everywhere, mediated and communicated in different ways, by various means. To identify such relations we read texts by engaging the also powerful Critical Discourse Analysis toolkit. Reading texts closely and focussing on the elements they themselves offer to the reader, we may then draw our conclusions about possibly communicated messages in a process of creating meaning. In such way students may closely "read" the exhibits and experiment with critical (discourse) analysis even by "reading" images!

The critical question they have to keep in mind is: HOW and WHY creators make specific choices regarding their elements/techniques.

The steps we need to explain to our students:

1. Watch
2. Find out striking elements/techniques
3. Analyse -- a. HOW do the striking elements/techniques create meaning (i.e. an idea, a notion, a theme)? b. What is the EFFECT to the recipient?
4. How does your analysis reveal the possible PURPOSE of the creator?

We may in advance give our students a worksheet, where we define certain elements/techniques as criteria that we need them to consider, e.g.:

colours and their semantic

subject/object - how are they represented?

agency

setting - semantic of scenography

language register

mimic, gesture, body language

keywords on the exhibit label

...

The students may work in groups and afterwards, and before leaving the museum, they should exchange their feedback with their classmates. A follow-up activity for this museum visit could be that they write essays (as requested for the IB Paper 1), even in groups.

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It is of great importance that the teacher gets familiar with the museum environment in advance, in order to facilitate the docent/guide and the students. We might not underestimate making sure in advance that there is enough space for all students to move conveniently in the museum.

Upon arrival, we need to set clear expectations and establish rules -repeat what previously introduced in the class, to ensure everyone is well informed and fit!

Try to use gestures and mimic while talking to your students, so that you attract their attention and avoid them being distracted by other stimuli around. Try to repeat or paraphrase what students say, to ensure all of your students have heard and understood. Short revision intervals are also recommended!

In order to involve students into the learning process, use concrete guiding questions on a particular object or theme, so that the students focus their attention on certain targets.

Giving the students time and the autonomy to explore the museum on their own, by setting a research question will definitely raise their confidence considering their independent learning competence.

Watch the exhibits from a variety of aspects and try to deepen comprehension by experience. We most probably are not allowed to touch any of the objects, but let's imagine how the materials may feel like. What about the colours of those totally white greek statues today? How would our students re-colour them? Let's remake the past!

Get your students interact with the exhibits: ask them to compare exhibits to similar ones they have seen in the past, to objects or concepts that they know from other disciplines (e.g. What do our students already know about water-lilies from Biology, when they watch Monets sublime water-lilies? Or how do they associate those to the classical tale of "Däumelinchen" cf. "Thumbelina"?) Motivate your students to be creative and ask them to sketch what they see, and from their own point of view, or even to recreate poses and direct a choreography.

Explain your students how it is relevant to justify their answers to your questions, by concrete reference to the objects: Why do you think Aphrodite de Milo is melancholic, if at all? What are the characteristics that explicitly show this?

Keep in mind that only by incorporating a wide range of interactive tasks will promote the holistic engagement of your students to construct knowledge.

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A follow-up activity can only be beneficial regarding both organisatorial issues and learning processes. Sticking to the activity I sketched for while in the museum, I am now sharing some thoughts considering a fitting follow-up activity.

Let's suppose our students have just visited the Louvre and witnessed the following scene when in front of Aphrodite de Milo, which we captured in a picture:
http://histoiresminimales.blogspot.de/2016/05/ (see also below)

While there, our students have been taking pictures themselves, talking with each other, eventually listening to what the guide was telling about the statue and its mythology, some of them hopefully taking notes.

At the next class, show them the picture and ask them afterwards to analyse it from a "distanced" point of view, though based on the paper-sheet they had to work on during the visit. Warm them up by asking questions like What is the guide narrating? or What does the audience think while watching the exhibit? Last but not least What is the exhibit thinking about? A guiding question for their analysis essay can refer to the objectification of women in relation to its actual representation, its setting inside the museum, and the gaze of the visitors.

You need, however, to set certain assessment criteria, like the register and specific points to be referred in the analysis.

Good luck!

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nice to meet you, dear museum enthusiasts!

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nice to meet you, dear museum enthusiasts!

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I am Penelope, originally coming from Kozani, a small but quite nice -apart from rather important, thanks to the presence of the Public Power Corporation- city in Northwestern Greece. I currently live, work and research at Bonn, the former capital of Western Germany; the truth is nothing reminds of the city's vivid political past, except for the still vivid "Regierungsviertel", that is the area where among other government buildings is situated the Deutsche Welle and the United Nations campus.

It was actually a fortunate coincidence that I ended up in Bonn, after completing my studies (Diploma and M.A.) in Classical and Modern Greek Philology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at the University of Vienna. After a very short break at Brussels - i felt quite in panic, after five years "in Ordnung" in Vienna - I made my mind to go on and complete my doctoral thesis in classics and comparative media and literature studies. My doctoral research eventually brought me closer to the arts and more precisely to various representations, adaptations, translations of the Homeric Odyssey; for I am concretely examining Penelope's myth (no self-disorder!) on different media in (post)modernity... My project is part of the trinational graduate consortium of the Universities of Bonn, Paris-IV Sorbonne, and Florence "European Founding Myths in Literature, Arts, and Music".

However, all these theories I have been - and am still - studying would have been much less fascinating, could I not evoke, associate, and intertwine them to my Greek language and literature teaching courses. For this is what I love to do: make abstract literary and linguistic theories immediately accessible to my students of all ages, of all academic backgrounds, of all concerns.

Considering the sought for learning outcomes from the "Learning in a Museum" online course provided by the "School Education Gateway", i wish to confidently transfer project teaching methods and content language teaching on cultural heritage sites and in museums, thus linking theories of pedagogy, language learning, and cultural management, in order to effectively design innovative and experiential courses.

Looking forward to keeping in touch with you and receiving your insights and feedback, I am launching this padlet, in form of a learning - and museum experiences - diary. Let the sprites living, inspiring, and creating in whatever may be defined as a museum be with us...

Best Regards,
Penelope Kolovou

E-mail: penelope.kolovou@uni-bonn.de

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According to ancient sources, a μουσεῖον, that is the ancient Greek term for a "museum", means the home of the Muses, the inspirational goddesses of literature, music, and the arts. It could also mean a philosophical school or a library. Cassius Longinus, a philosophical critic, is compared to a 'breathing library' and a 'walking museum', the institutions dominant in the wholesale appropriation of archaic and classical Greek literature as well as Septuagint version of the Bible by an elite Alexandrian culture and its representative grammarians.

My own definition of a museum is the house or even a site in and/or on which material culture is exposed in such way, so that cultural heritage is transformed into a narrative communicating the past within a modern context. Making explicit the bond between the past and the present, and transferring the meaning of exponents onto other fields of contemporary concern should be part of ultimate learning goals. Why do, for instance, not all of the Caryatids stand in the Acropolis Museum at Athens, and how does this question shape part considering Greek/English cultural politics? Or how has a statue of divine Aphrodite, similar to Venus de Milo type, that is an armless and half-naked marble lady exposed in the Louvre Museum today, played a prominent role considering tourism on Cyprus of the last decades (a representative answer to be found here)? There has much ink been shed as possible replies to those random questions. Nevertheless, what would be a decent, pedagogically legitimate and effective way to narrate the historical past and explain present, setting comprehensive grounds for the future for our students? For a museum should be a place where, on the occasion of material exponents, questions about the past are mostly welcome, when one seeks to better understand the present above all. And much more, i guess...

How would you define a "museum"?

Cheers!
Penelope

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To reflect on Nina Simon's ideas about opening up museums to community means to reflect on the passion to build bridges between museums and the society, without any preoccupations or concerns, so that everyone may actively participate in and connect with culture.

In such terms, museums should overcome the old-fashioned status of being elite institutions for advanced studies conducted by the few and responsibly overtake their role as open spaces ready to be occupied by art and history and science enthusiasts, by curious and creative people who are willing to actively engage and participate in the exhibitions. And such target group may not be restricted by preppy sociocultural concerns anymore.

For it is only within a participatory culture that our students' creative skills may be engaged and it is only through active engagement that they can comprehend, absorb, and critically master the exposed knowledge. When in a museum, we want our students to be co-creators, not merely visitors and what is more uncritical voyeurs.

We wish exhibitions and therefore our visits to museums to be designed as experiences and give our students the opportunity - namely a great chance - even to contribute to the museum's content, in that they are invited to create an artwork indeed instead of repeating in guests book "X was here..." - so what?

To give visitors the motivation and therefore the stimulation to personally share their potential and make their contribution part of the museum does not mean any distraction from the museums topics of concern and the relevant exhibits! This generous "distracting" gesture, as a decision of historical, social, and cultural heritage management has a more valuable effect: the actual participation in knowledge about the exhibits.

Participation means after all social agency, and participating in a museum's trans-formation immediately makes our students from simple visitors as passers-by to creative agents and therefore successful learners.

In order to engage our students in the creative - learning activity, we need to design a stimulating invitation for them to participate! Inspired by Nina Simon's shared experiences: let us our students to give their feedback on polygonal colourful note papers instead of rectangular white ones... Let us surprise them with something that seems to matter! For the more special the invitation we present, the more valued our participants should feel, the more efficient they will work towards knowledge.

In line with this idea, let us design fascinating experiences instead of expected exhibition installations. Let us transform material artefacts, theories of history, any kind of exposition stuff into social objects, mediators of meaning that is worth to be lived, understood, and remediated. Let us emancipate a voyeuristic visit from just watching things that are nice to watch... and let us experience and talk about things that really matter!

In the end, we do not need museums because they have nice things to show. There is an ultimate goal: the experience of life in the museum should afterwards transform our lives outside the museum for life. Let all possible answers to the question HOW? be the steps we - educators of all kinds and disciplines - do have to highly motivated and focused need to work on, in order to inter-connect museums, teaching syllabi and curricula, and our community.

TO ADD: how museums design do facilitate visitors' interaction which involves to construction of social belonging and knowledge

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Opening up the Museum: Nina Simon @ TEDxSantaCruz

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What would be the best way to fit a museum visit into your curriculum?

How would you prepare your students to benefit from such interactive experiences?

How would you follow up their experience?

Once we open up museums to community, and creatively invite everyone to equally, interactively and creatively participate in constructing the museums, we have achieved to enjoy interactive forms of exhibits, allowing for a more efficient process of knowledge creation too. In pedagogical terms, we rely on constructivist and constructionist learning theories (see Jean Piaget and Seymour Papert): it is through active engagement and interaction that our students may achieve knowledge and critically apply it afterwards.

I am making some thoughts on how the hands-on learning approach facilitated in modern museums could fit into my curriculum. I teach Modern Greek language and literature to university students. Cultural awareness is included in our aside learning targets, and as a classicist, I take advantage of ancient Greek in order to foreground modern Greek culture as a continuum. A usual occasion to introduce my students to ancient Greek art is when at a language level of A2 we start learning the family grades: 'kori which in Modern Greek means the daughter used to mean a special type of a statue in terms of ancient sculpture. Therefore I show them pictures of such statues, and eventually those of the male version that is a k'ouros. A visit to the Academic Art Museum with the antiquities collection would be the best place for my students to watch those artefacts live! On this occasion, they could also learn some mythical figures and their origin from different Greek places. A follow-up activity could be that they find out more information about three mythical figures that fascinated them, in form of a wiki, as part of the complementary e-course they have to follow once a week. What are the three questions they would pose their figures? How would their colleagues answer the questions, as in a role play?

Here goes to my a bit more detailed reflections in the form of a coggle!

https://coggle.it/diagram/WrUWuOLDpm1YLxsr/t/-/c8cdbdf0532b95d0f8d10d00e9edabd22efb2f00c89b0fb7f1c7c919387208ca

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Planning a visit to a museum does not merely mean lots of stressful paperwork and administrative tasks for the teaching staff, but is also a stimulating, educating and in the end a funny activity for all participants: the teachers, the students, and the docents welcoming them at the museum too.

To raise curiosity about the visit under planning, we teachers could first of all show our students the building of the museum and ask them what they think the building could host. Why do they come up with such ideas? How do they associate what they actually see (ask for description) and what they imagine to be within it?

Let's now announce our students the name of the museum as such and then reflect with our students on it: Why do you think it may be called "Academic Art Museum"? or What could the difference be between the "Bundeskunst halle" and the "Kunst museum" in Bonn? During this discussion our students may also consider what they do expect to watch in the museum. In any case, after our students have reflected on the name of the museum we are going to visit, and shared their ideas, we elaborate on them by finally defining the name of the museum. After we have introduced them what the building really hosts, we ask them once again how they can now consider the building's architecture and design to be relevant to the exhibition we are planning to visit.

It is necessary to reactivate previous museum experiences of our students at some point. Have they ever visited a museum? What was it about? What did they do there? Did they like it? How can they now associate the name, the exhibits, the building, the interior design? What were their initial thoughts about it and how did their thoughts and emotions evolve during and after the visit?

Leaving the past, what are our students' expectations regarding the forthcoming visit to the announced museum? Come back to the question after the visit and compare how their expectations were met or disappointed. It would be fun to ask them visualise their feelings as in a sociometric mapping.

Since we want our students to actively participate into the construction of knowledge, we need to make explicit - and let our students also interact in this discussion already - about the expectation that they are visiting the museum not only to watch, but to talk, interact, involve, feel, create, and lively experience indeed!

In such terms, we need to stimulate their emotions too. Let's ask them How do YOU connect yourself, your interests, your habits to the expected exhibits? Of course we should ask them this same question also during as well as after the visit. Sociometric mapping is indicated in this case too.

Since we consider museums as community centres and therefore socialising agents, it is of great importance to set the rules valid during a museum visit in general and in the one we are going to visit in particular. Should the visit take place in a (foreign) language class, a useful idea would be to practice imperative forms this way. A suitable activity would then be for our students to play the docent / the guide for other groups visiting the museum!

Story-telling! A paper-sheet with guiding questions would help our students to explore objects, situations, installations and exhibits in a quest of engaging those into a fascinating story taking place in the museum. Even if our students may never ever recall what kind of architecture influenced the construction of Parthenon columns which were indeed made of Pentelic marble, they can still imagine fabulous stories about massive ancient feasts taking place around or play the roles of curious tourists and well informed guides in the class. Let's see what impressed them in the end...

If teaching IB curricula involving Content Language Integrated Learning and Critical Discourse Analysis, one could benefit from the input offered by a visit to a museum and prepare, in order to prepare the obligatory Written Task in form of a docent's introduction to the exhibition or a fantastic mystery story involving the museum.

Last but not least, let's consider once in advance What makes an exhibit relevant? What makes an exhibit to art? What makes an exhibit an "exhibit"? How are objects, materials, concepts, histories exhibited in different ways, and why at all? Let's come back to those questions again after the visit.

Let's see what our students have learnt from this introductory class: In groups they are asked to create their mind map considering what we talked about in the class. They swap their mind maps and comment on those of their classmates.

Let the adventure begin!

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Reflections on a lesson plan involving a visit to a museum

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Reflections on a lesson plan involving a visit to a museum

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...to be posted no later than April 11th.