Book Club: "Creativity in Museum Practice" HME Meeting Notes Feb 23, 2015

 

“Creativity in Museum Practice” by Linda Morris and Rainey Tisdale

Thanks to everyone who braved the cold to join us at Mex-i-can in Hamilton this Monday!

We had a great discussion with people who'd read the book cover to cover, some who'd just skimmed it, and others who haven't gotten to it yet.

Overall, this book was deemed a valuable purchase.

You should invest in this book because:

• Pocket guide in back
• it's simple
• Chapter 2 is meatier "building creative cultures", recruiting creative boards
• Eg: opportunities for creativity in board meetings, almost like warm up exercises like the "Mystery object"
• helps people to understand the cost of doing business eg: have people play a sort of price is right game, with board/colleagues eg: understand cost of advertising, etc...
• Speaking with staff that aren't involved in financial undertakings
• "Get buy in"
• Chapter three tools for creative culture
• suggests you observe target audience intentionally, as well as analogous environments
• Helpful for strategic plans, training volunteers, program development
• it suggests you read outside your discipline to gain perspective and a mental break
• useful in workshops: the creativity inventory and mind maps were used to facilitate an interdisciplinary group of graduate students' exploration of creativity

Things to watch out for:

• allow for the book (especially the first chapter) to appear too elementary because later chapters expand the ideas and suggestions

Other great ideas from the meeting:

• Get staff meetings scheduled for 2 hrs before end of day, people motivated to stay on topic
• Have specialized meetings for marketing, education, etc...

HME January 19 Meeting CANCELLED

Just a quick post to let everyone know that the scheduled meeting on January 19th has been cancelled.

Education About Education: HME Meeting Notes November 17, 2014

Education about education: what conferences/courses/classes/diplomas have you taken? What’s been most useful?

Royal Coachman Pub: Waterdown

Professional Development/Conferences
University of Victoria
Diploma in Cultural Resource Management
online/distance learning

OMA
offers a Certificate in Museum Studies, open to all OMA members
can be (but is not necessarily) history-museum heavy
No chance for debriefing: intense 3 day in-person or several months online
Moves teaching locations around the province
useful, but sometimes difficult to complete with full time work

Algonquin College (in Ottawa)
2 years Applied Museum Studies
Co-op can be done at many locations/types of institutions eg: ROM, Parks Canada conservation centre, Fieldcote

Interpretation Officer from RBG has taken graduate diploma in Science Communication, from Science North and Laurentian University
it includes 8 week internship, field trips

NAI training
National Association for Interpretation
American version of InterpScan
Nature-based



teaching degree (huge help for any education related job)

Northern States Conservation Center Online Education Course 
Similar to OMA, do that one instead

-PRO  *forgot the exact name*  Youth workshop - useful for running camps and working with junior volunteers

Outstanding Camp Training Workshop
useful for training camp staff

Grand River Heritage Day Workshop 
extremely useful to find out what others are do in this area, to learn more about the area I am teaching in, and what resources are out there. It is FREE! Some years are more interesting/relevant to my programs than others, but it is really neat to see what is out there.

Ideas for Conferences OUTSIDE of obvious museum associations
Tech conferences (RBG employees who work heavily with tech)

Science teachers of Ontario
Need to know curriculum, what they need in the curriculum
Promote, but also learn
Subject integration is very important to teachers!

Medical Conferences (crossover with arts-teaching)





Ask yourself:
WHO is your audience? What do they need/want?
You can search online for your audience's professional associations, and their conference/other learning opportunities.
WHAT is your motive for going to a conference?
Is it for your own edification, promotion of your institution, education, networking? Seeing what others in your field are doing?
WHEN do ypu stop looking for courses that will improve your degree?
How about informal professional development? (like HME!)

Suggestions of Helpful resources/websites
Magic.piktochart
Fast, eye-catching
Could be print doc and/or presentation

Digital Human Library
Add any digital resource at your institution!!


NFB
Bear 71
Follow the life of a bear, but this idea can be applicable to tech-learning tools
Pre-visit activity
Note: setting up certain tech-based learning resources may be a good intern job

Using new media for interpretation
Helpful and thorough list of online resource for new media interpretation tools

Peer Learning: G-Chats
Can be seen in archives, or you can participate in real time
found through talk@museum-ed.org Digest

October 20 PLC CANCELLED

Unfortunately due to low numbers we've had to cancel the PLC set for October 20th.

Thank you so much for all your work in preparation and offer to share your time. We've put this topic on the list to be discussed for HME meetings in the 2015-2016 year.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do email us and let us know.

Thanks again, and I hope to see you at meetings in the future!

Teresa

__________
HME
http://h-m-e.blogspot.ca/
Sarah Hamilton
Teresa Gregorio
Nicole Knibb

October 2014 PLC: Partnerships

Hamilton Area Museum Educators
invites you to our October 2014 Peer Learning Circle

Partnerships
Monday, October 20, 10:00am-3:00pm
Art Gallery of Burlington
1333 Lakeshore Road, Burlington, Ontario

This session is FREE!

Come to this Peer Learning Circle to hear about how a variety of institutions have created and sustained partnerships.
There will be time devoted to networking, to encourage idea sharing and partnerships between colleagues and institutions.

Presenters and topics include:
Angie Warner
Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives
-partnership with local libraries

Bryan Webber
VP, Financial Development at the YMCA of Hamilton/Burlington/Brantford
-partnership with Sir Wilfrid Laurier

Meghan Cameron
-Great War Centenary Association partnerships

Check your inbox for submission forms.

Directions

Parking

• Guests of events can pay $4 for a day pass instead of the usual 1.75 per hour at the meter. These passes are available for purchase in the lobby on the day of the event.
• Metered street parking is also available on Nelson Avenue.

Lunch

• There are a number of lunch options in the Burlington downtown area.

On-site Lunch

• You can order a lunch for between $12-$14, which will be delivered to our meeting room for lunchtime.
• You can order a boxed lunch, which will include a sandwich, pasta salad, whole fruit and cookie for $12 per person.
• There is a roasted veggie wrap option for vegetarians.
• We can do a few assorted sandwiches and mark the bag as to what they have in them.
• Any food allergies/preferences, please do let us know.
• A can of pop, juice or water can be added to your order for $2.
• To order lunch, please reply to one of the HME coordinators with your preferences. Payment can be made in cash at the PLC.

Pre/Post Visit Resources: HME Meeting Notes Monday September 15, 2014

We had a nice, large group who met to kick off the 2014-2015 year! We met at Bangkok Spoon, which had great food and a bustling atmosphere.

McMaster Museum of Art FAQ videos

Video 2
Video 3
Video 4

• We made them using software from Adobe Creative Suite: Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro.
• Used animations and some video footage of museum staff, sound effects, voice; created entirely in-house with help of summer student and Communications Officer. These videos can be found on the museum’s blog as well as YouTube.
• Museum in England where school vids made video for rules (teacher is the actor who brome the rules). On our FB.
• Some online sites (historic house museum in new york city) had a contract where people had to sign.

Are there any resources you direct visitor to prior to visits?

• Environmental programs: ministry of natural resources. Look up species.
• Doubtful if teachers read or use any pre-visit materials. Have to question how much museum employee effort to put in to these materials if they are little used.
• Pre/post visit packages: Homer Watson developing this year.

Photography policy

• without express permission, get back of heads, just hands.
• Summer camps, direct to parents, a bit easier. But still don't put photos on Facebook.
• Idea: can use employees' kids.
• Photo sign offs for high school program. Some without just noted. Ended up getting many photos, and they can be used far into the future.

Water festival coming up in Haldimand.

Post visit

• survey. Not much response.
• Follow up email with hope you have a good time, thanks. Personal contact maybe more effective than survey.
• Can create a quiz for teachers to take home with them after program and use in classroom.
• Pre-visit orientation research shows learning outcomes better for groups who were told about schedule for the day first.
• Hypothesis is that kids were more relaxed because they knew what was happening.
• Kids take in more with activities to fill in along the way?
• Ask questions while waiting at end of day: what was your favourite thing today? Informal way of getting feedback and reinforcing positive learning from the trip.
• Schoolwork on field trip: should coordinate with teacher so kids take the work seriously.
• Try to keep it short: kids aren't going to write out paragraphs.
• Feedback: tried with a qr code, didn't help. Try with incentive of itunes card. See if that gets feedback.

Seniors: equally need to be informed of no touching rules.

Social Media

• Wifi in space: many people ask for it.
• Facebook's “out”. Twitter and Instagram are the more popular of social media sites. AskFM is popular, but very easily devolves into a bullying avenue.
• Twitter ideas:
• Taxidermy animals (a mascot for a museum) has it's own twitter feed.
• Natural History of Museum on uk had jar of mould with twitter feed.
• Top 5 reasons to follow museum mascots on social media
• Tweets from dead Prime Ministers.
• Tweets/retweets for prizes.
• Pinterest

Maybe do a meeting about emergency planning.
Paint club: everyone gets materials, painting is described, booze, get to go home with original artwork

Book Club: Linda Norris of Uncatalogued Museum

Question: Follow Up

Back on May 31, one of our members asked a question about bussing and educational programs. 

She was kind enough to get back to us with some very valuable answers!

Note: Keep this sort of information in mind for our upcoming autumn PLC on October 20 (details to be in your inbox soon!)

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I am finally following up on a question that I posed for the group during the spring in terms of bussing and their schedules. I chatted with the director of Transportation for the District School Board of Niagara and the Niagara Catholic School board about busses needing to leave early.

In short many of the buses are doing two runs and need to be back for high school pick up at 2:00, which involves at 1:30 departure. There are buses that do not have the high school run and typically need to leave their destination by 2:00pm. These are first come first serve. The secretary must request a bus that has a 2pm departure from their destination. At Ball’s Falls we also have some programs in the spring that go until 2:30. There are a few buses as well that can leave their destination at 2:30. Again this is first come first serve.

One thing that we can do is make it clear to teachers their departure date when booking. I know at Ball’s Falls it is on their confirmation letter, but I am also going to redraft the e-mail they receive with the note in bold that they need to confirm with the bus company that the bus is able to depart at 2:00pm.

If no later departure date is requested, or all later departure buses are already taken the bus will need to leave at 1:30. Teachers can call other bus companies in order to find a bus that does have a later departure date.

She recommended that the teacher bring a copy of the bus confirmation sheet along to the class trip in case there is a conflict between what the confirmation sheet says and what the bus driver says. If there is a conflict she also provided a list of numbers to contact.

If there are any issues as well she would like us to report them to her so that they are aware.

 

I included her e-mail below as well as NSTS contact list for all busing companies. Since we deal mostly with Niagara Schools I only contacted the Niagara School Transportation.

lori.powell at nsts dot ca