National Museums Online Learning Project

An exciting new learning tool for children and their teachers has been made available across the websites of nine national museums and galleries, allowing kids to interact directly with a wealth of source material 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Funded by the Treasury's Invest to Save initiative, and sponsored by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, The National Museums Online Learning Project combines existing online content with new web technology to drive forward a whole new kind of e-learning. Its goal is to give pupils, teachers and lifelong learners alike access to the widest range of original source material and help people of all ages to find out more about art, science, history and culture.

WEBQUESTS

So how can the project help to educate your child? One of two complimentary applications featured across each of the nine museums' sites, WebQuests is written by educators and mapped to the national curriculum at Key Stages 1-4. The investigations are open-ended, encouraging children to come to their own conclusions and making learning a journey of discovery that can continue beyond the walls of the museum or classroom.

WebQuests provides teachers with a mass of high-quality e-learning web resources which translate into highly interactive and engaging lessons and homework projects, encouraging pupils to think critically, utilise their IT skills and directly interact with a source material.

Lessons include: Updating Cubism, which challenges pupils to update Cubism for the 21st century; Park Life, which asks how children can improve their park; Charles Darwin's Big Idea, which asks children to make a short film about the ideas of Charles Darwin, and many more. Each challenge is supported by images taken from museum's digital collections with learners encouraged to use their sketchbook and download notebooks to keep track of ideas and material along the way.

Clearly designed and highly accessible, Webquests gives UK schools access to the nation's cultural riches in a simple, free and fun to use environment regardless of location, funding and resources. For many it will be the first time they have experienced the world of history and culture provided by these national museums and galleries, but we can honestly think of no better place to start.

THE COLLECTIONS

The nine national museums include the British Museum, Imperial War Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Royal Armouries, Sir John Soane's Museum, Tate, The Wallace Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum, which have combined their own online collections, working together in a way that has never been done before.

"This is a great example of global museums working together for the public good," said David Anderson, Director of Learning and Interpretation at the V&A. "This project paves the way for future museum and gallery collaborations, providing new opportunities for the public to enjoy and learn from these terrific collections and then share this worldwide via the internet."

The combined collections are available through WebQuests and, for older students and adults, via Creative Spaces, a social networking application that allows users to share their ideas and experiences of the museum collections.

WebQuests and Creative Spaces are available on the following sites:

The British Museum
Imperial War Museum 
National Portrait Gallery
Natural History Museum
Royal Armouries   
Sir John Soane's Museum
Tate
Victoria & Albert Museum
The Wallace Collection

By Emily Jenkinson

Uploaded 15th April 09