A new channel for dialogue with educators

Dear readers, Education at the National Museum of Australia now has a new space for communicating with educators. Presently, it is focused on the political cartooning competition for students in years 4 through 12. (Check it out!) But over time, it will grow in new directions. A powerful, flexible environment with new tools – it is set to flourish.

Know that we also plan to migrate all the content from here into the new space. (There's currently an obstacle in my way there, but I'm working on it.)

--> So, visit us in our new home. And drop us a line if it takes your fancy – we love to hear from you.

Best wishes from the Education team.

Snapshots of Remote Communities 2010 – WA Museum Albany Road trip

After Ned and I headed back to Canberra, the Snapshots of Remote Communities road trip continued.

Jenny, Education Officer with the WA Museum Albany drove approximately 1200 kilometres to visit four other schools who, together with Tambellup Primary School (see road trip report Day 2), make up the 2010 Albany region Snapshots schools.

The story of Jenny’s trip follows:

Tuesday 9 February

Drove to Kendenup Primary School (71 km from Albany) with dark skies and cloud building. I was talking with the teachers when a huge clap of thunder was followed by a lightning strike in the paddock across the road from the school.

This was followed by the skies opening and heavy rain drowned out the remainder of the presentation.

The storm followed me back to Albany and we watched in awe the spectacular lightning, overhead thunder and heavy rain continued until early morning.

Storm over Albany harbour at dusk.

Wednesday 10 February

I left Albany to drive to Kondinin Primary School (386 km) for an afternoon information session. The storm had come across the wheatbelt, so as I travelled firstly east, then turned north, trees were over the road. With the storm damage had come electricity failures; however fortunately as I travelled north, the Western Power people were restoring power to towns, banks and, most importantly for me, petrol stations.

I drove up through Borden, Ongerup, Lake Grace, Kulin and on to Kondinin. The temperature on arrival was approximately 38 degrees Celsius, and I was informed that was quite normal and a not particularly hot day for Kondinin!

Kondinin

Kondinin Primary School.

It was at this point I began to find Ned Kelly's cousins along the roadside. My first encounter was at Kulin, on the side of the road was Ned Kelly's horse, armed with rifle and Ned's helmet.

Opposite the school was another cousin standing in a garden. I went inside the B&B where I was staying and there he was again!

Welcome Jenny! Ned in the garden of a B&B in Kondinin.

Ned's horse, near the Kulin Country Races.

Thursday 11 February

Heading south from Kondinin to Jerdacuttup Primary (309 km) saw me driving back down through Kulin, Lake Grace, Newdegate, Lake King then south to Ravensthorpe and across to Jerdacuttup 45km east, then 5k down a dirt track to the school.

Stopped for a coffee at Newdegate and there on the shop counter was another of Ned's cousins. I bought that one!

Pink Lake (salt lakes north of Lake Grace) beautiful!

More of Ned's cousins at King Lake.

Lake King sign showing the Rabbit Proof Fence. Jerdacuttup PS sits on the fence further south, on its way to the coast.

Old rabbit proof fence at the turn off before 5 km of dirt road, Fence Road, to the Jerdacuttup school.

Jerdi Primary school ....so cute! 16 students plus two school buses (the kids call them 'the cat' and 'the mouse'!).

Friday 12 February

Drove back to Albany from Ravensthorpe. Total km 1100 in 2 ½ days!

Wednesday 17 February

Drove to Walpole Primary School to meet the lovely and welcoming staff and complete the final information session for the 2010 project.

Snapshots of Remote Communities 2010 - Road trip Day 4 (Kalgoorlie)

Friday 5 February 2010 (Kalgoorlie)

Today Peta, Western Australian Museum Education Officer, and I presented a professional learning information day with four participating Snapshots teachers - one each from Kalgoorlie Primary, Kalgoorlie School of the Air, Coolgardie Primary and Grass Patch Primary.

Our venue was the Western Australian Museum in Kalgoorlie which has exhibitions including a Gold Vault, a miner's cottage, the British Arms Hotel and the Ivanhoe Headframe.

The regional exhibtion for the Snapshots project will be held at the Museum's British Arms hotel, a heritage listed building claimed to be the narrowest pub in the southern hemisphere.

Like Sue at Menzies Remote Community School and the teachers at Tambellup Primary, the teachers today shared their enagaging and exciting plans for the project.

From restoring a school history lost in a school office fire, reconnecting with stories of parents and grandparents to using a local Town Hall as a school exhibtion venue and learning about the process and practice of photography, the students from these schools are in for a great year with Snapshots!

Following our time with the teachers, Peta showed me the KCGM Superpit, an open pit gold mine which will eventually be 600 metres deep and 3.8km wide. From the lookout, we could see a range of trucks and digging machines, as well as layers of colour striated through the current 450 metre depth of the mine.

Back to Canberra tomorrow via Perth, Ned and I are looking forward sharing our adventures with our team at the National Museum. We're also excited to see the photos, artworks, stories and histories created and uncovered aas part of Snapshots 2010.

Snapshots of Remote Communities 2010 - Road trip Day 3 (Kalgoorlie and Menzies)

Thursday 4 February 2010 (Albany, Kalgoorlie, Menzies)

Today's travel began with a flight from Albany to Perth then a second flight (537km) from Perth to Kalgoorlie. Ned and I were met at the Kalgoorlie-Boulder airport by Peta, Education Officer at the Western Australian Museum Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

In the air again - Albany to Perth and onto Kalgoorlie-Boulder

A brief stop at the Museum was followed by a 130km trip out to Menzies, north of Kalgoorlie, to meet the Principal, Sue, at Menzies Remote Community School.

This school of 57 students is one of five
Snapshots schools in the Kalgoorlie-Boulder region,
accompanying the five schools supported by the Western Australian Museum Albany.

After visiting Menzies, we ventured a further 51km to Lake Ballard to see one of the most intriguing art installations in Australia, the Inside Australia sculptures by Anton Gormley.

51 scupltures modelled on residents of Menzies are arranged in a 7 km radius in the middle of the salty Lake Ballard.

In addition to the incredible changing colours of the landscape as the day faded into night during the return trip to Kalgoorlie, strong impressions from today include the ribbons of road unrolling endlessly into the distance and the stillness and soft, rustling wind in the trees around the Lake.

Fading light, Lake Ballard

Tomorrow we'll be spending more time exploring the Museum and meeting with teachers from the other four Kalgoorlie based schools.

Snapshots of Remote Communities 2010 - Road trip Day 2 (Albany and Tambellup)

Wednesday 3 February 2010 - Albany and Tambellup

Today Ned and I met Jenny, Education Officer with the Western Australian Museum Albany. Jenny gave us a tour of Albany with a special focus on the Museum.

Albany has a large inland harbour which made it a safe place visited by many explorers. European settlement began in 1824 as a convict settlement that was part of the colony of New South Wales. A couple of years later, Albany became part of the new Swan River colony.

We learnt that the Indigenous language name for Albany is Kinjaling which means place of rain. We also discovered that the suffix 'up' which is used in many towns around Albany (eg, Tambellup, Kendenup and Jerdacuttup) has the meaning'place of' while in other regions, the suffix 'in' (eg, Kondinin) has the same meaning.




Looking down the main street, York Street, towards the harbour


The Western Australia museum documents the local natural, social and maritime history and the cultural heritage of the local Aboriginal people.



Images from the Museum: the One Teacher School, the Eclipse Lighthouse exhibition and the Marine Discovery Centre.



The Museum includes the Residency.

Operated by the Albany History Society, next to the Museum is the replica of the Amity, the brig which brought the first European settlers to Albany in 1876. You can go below deck to see how people lived while travelling on the ship.




Replica of the Amity, Albany









After exploring the Museum, it was time to hit the road and drive to 2010 participating school, Tambellup Primary. 125 km from Albany and home to 100 students in a town of 450 people,Tambellup Primary is bubbling with great ideas for Snapshots of Remote Communities.

We're really looking forward to seeiing the snapshots of students from Tambellup! Thank you to Jenny and Malcolm from the Western Australian Museum Albany and to the staff of Tambellup Primary for an interesting day.

Snapshots of Remote Communities 2010 - Road trip Day 1 (Travel to Albany)

In 2010, the National Museum of Australia's outreach project, Snapshots of Remote Communities, is being conducted in partnership with the Western Australia Museum Albany and the Western Australian Museum Kalgoorlie-Boulder and a number of schools in both regions.

Snapshots is a photography and storytelling project through which students learn about their communities, local history and how museums work through developing an exhibition to showcase their learning and experiences.

Students' photographs will become part of an exhibition at their school, at their partner museum and online at the National Museum Snapshots page. Past exhibitions of Snapshots can be seen here.

To commence 2010 project activities, project mascot, Ned and I, a Senior Education Officer with the National Museum, are travelling to Western Australia to meet our museum partners and some of the participating teachers.

Along the way, Ned and I will be taking some of our own snapshots to document this part of the project...we are looking forward to the trip!

2 Feb 2010 Canberra to Perth to Albany, Western Australia





In transit - Ned taking a coffee break during our stop over in Sydney airport before the 3337km flight to Perth.






Names and places in WA - checking departure times at the Perth airport...
Ned thinks Cloudbreak is a great name!









Buckle up - Ned straps himself in for the 375km flight from Perth to Albany.






From the air - snapshots of the changing landscape from Perth to Albany: mines, farmland, river courses, red dirt tracks...can't wait to see some of this from the ground (and maybe the sky!) through the students' snapshots this year.

Arriving in Albany - the welcome from the Amazing Albany airport.

Albany is the oldest European settlement in Western Australia and was established shortly before Perth in 1826. 400km from Perth, Albany hugs the Southern Coast of WA.




Tomorrow we'll be visiting the Western Australian Museum Albany and travelling to two of our Albany schools.

Celebrating Harmony Day 2010

Celebrating Harmony Day 2010

A special program for primary students at the National Museum of Australia

The National Museum of Australia is offering a special Migration Stories education program to celebrate Harmony Day in March 2010. Harmony Day celebrates the cohesive and inclusive nature of Australia and promotes cultural diversity.

Download the flier here to find out more information about the special Migration Stories education program. For bookings and further enquiries, please phone (02) 6208 5345 or email bookings@nma.gov.au

Mara Mason in her Latvian national costume sharing her family migration story
at the National Museum of Australia.

Drawing the Lines 2009 winners

NIEC 2009: Successful and Sustainable Practice

Although the NIEC 2009 conference has now finished, I just wanted to share a few more presentations.

Cliff Downey and Sam Osborne discussed the Dare to Lead project through some best practice examples of their 'school to work' projects. They highlighted three projects that focused on Indigenous students gaining experience at different workplaces including R. M. Williams, Ernst and Young, and Ernabella. Particularly inspirational was the experience with Ernabella, where Indigenous students are undertaking TAFE-accredited courses in the construction industry. The students have since won a contract to build a house and training centre in the area.

Tom Calma, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Justice Commissioner and Race Discrimination Commissioner, was the keynote speaker for Wednesday. Calma proposed two lessons for the future of Indigenous education in Australia:
Lesson 1: Listen to us - implement regional education plans in consultation with local Indigenous people and honour them. Also ensure that policy makers don't focus on cultural differences.
Lesson 2: Ensure that there is equality of inputs when there is an expectation of equal outcomes. Calma gave an example of the Garrthalala homeland school, Arnhem Land.

And finally, Alicia Boyle, Desert Knowledge CRC and Ruth Wallace, Charles Darwin University gave a presentation about e-learning. Boyle and Wallace really emphasised that many types of learning are involved with using digital media and learning - and the need to start with a purpose, and not with the course says should happen or digital media. Boyle and Wallace gave the example of an Indigenous group of students learning about biodiversity. Rather than using a visualisation that was based on a tree diagram, the visualisation was redesigned to reflect Indigenous knowledge of the bush - that when a particular tree blooms, then the turtles come out, and then you know the eggs will be laid.

Here are three projects that Boyle and Wallace have been working on that are really worth taking a look at:
E-portfolios for Aboriginal Artworkers in Central Australia
www.desart.com.au

Collaborative Online Learning
centralaustraliaeandtnetwork.ning.com

e-assist
www.cdu.edu.au/centres/spill/

Lyn pretending to be Mia

Just as I was about to start writing this I was interrupted by yet another delegate who wanted information about our wonderful Plenty Stories series.

Mia and I are here at the Fifth National Indigenous Education Conference where delegates are waxing lyrical about the Plenty Stories books we are displaying. "These are just wonderful" is the refrain of everyone who comes to our stall. Many delegates have been really excited to find themselves or someone or some place they know in the books. We really have had a fantastic response to the books with people seeing applications for them beyond the primary school, for secondary and even adult education.

The only disappointment people have had is that they cannot purchase the books immediately, we could have sold dozens of sets.

The conference itself has been great and very thought provoking. A worthwhile experience for all.

Lyn

NDF - Day 2

Good to hear about an education project, Digistore, between the Ministry of Education and National Archives. Watch out for the new website due to be delivered next year based on the TLF Scootle model. Very similar to projects we have been working on with The Learning Federation recently. They identified four curriculum themes to be mined from the Archives:

1. perceptions of youth
2. perception of dissent
3. perceptions of environment
4. perceptions of enterprise.

They have a specific Maori reference group, which again raises the issue of an Indigenous reference group for Australian content as our national curriculum is developed.

I think there is still a lot of work to be done by the cultural sector to make our content more relevant, accessible and discoverable by the schools sector. We need to build better educational metadata into our collection systems. Apparently DigitalNZ is looking at being able to retro-tag objects against key education fields, such as year level or curriculum theme. I'll be interested to see how this turns out.

It was good to see an example of an organisation, Capital E, using Voicethread and Wikispaces ( http://refugeestories.wikispaces.com) as part of the development of their kids' opera Kia Ora Khalid: How long does it take to call a place home? . I've been wondering myself how to go about doing something similar. Looks like a successful model and the opera looks great. They are interested in doing something similar with schools in Australia - I hope they make it here. Presenter Stephen Aitken mentioned a cool game for kids to play to experience a bit about what it's like to be a refugee: www.playagainstallodds.com.

The final keynote speaker for the conference was Museums 2.0 guru Nina Simon talking about 'Making risky projects possible'. You can check out her presentation here - http://bit.ly/ndfnina so no need for me to cover it in detail. Full marks to Nina for making an engaging presentation, and packing out the auditorium, during the conference graveyard shift. She even suggested a weird & wacky place for me to go and visit during my stay: Carlucciland. She ended with a networking exercise where we had to write on the back of two business cards one thing that we need and one thing that we can offer to others at the conference. The idea was to seek out your 'mate' and then ring the gong when your networking was successful. I wish I had written something cool like a Magnum icecream, but ended up seeking a killer schools app/website (apparently these things don't exist), and offering enthusiasm and support (apparently the equivalent of a weak handshake).

Off to do some in-depth research/professional development at Te Papa tomorrow, then a participatory museums workshop with Nina Simon on Thursday and meetings with our cultural sector equivalents on Thurs/Fri.

It's always about relationships

Reflecting on Daniel Incandela's excellent prentation yesterday at the National Digital Forum in Wellington, New Zealand (see Alan Maskell's earlier blog), I was struck by his continual reference to creating strong and trustworthy relationships inside his museum (Indianapolis Museum of Art) in order to achieve the impressive new media products that he has helped to create. He showed that his capacity to listen carefully to what others wanted at the museum and his capacity to deliver on these things enabled him to later move much further to produce more innovative projects, again with institutional support. It is clear that if we want to move forward with our agenda to produce excellent new media products for education audiences then we must continue to develop strong relationships both within and outside the NMA, but particularly internally.

NIEC 2009: Engaging with Community and Culture

The theme for day 1 at the National Indigenous Education Conference (NIEC) was Engaging with Community and Culture. It was a pretty full day, but here is my wrap up for day 1.

The International Keynote Address was given by Dr Lorna Williams in the morning. Many delegates are commenting on how inspirational they found Dr Williams' presentation, particularly for bringing a Canadian perspective to the conference. Dr Williams advocates the importance of Indigenous educators and elders within education systems.

The conference is so huge there are seven parallel sessions running at once. Lyn and I attended the sessional keynote from Greg Lehman who gave us all much food for thought. Lehman talked about the importance of defining and constructing Indigenous identities, particuarly for young Indigenous Australians. Lehman asked questions such as - how do we address the cultural identity of Indigenous Australian students? Lehman finished his presentation by proposing that Indigenous australian students may need to define a 'new' type of cultural identity for themselves, one that is relevant to the beginning of the 21st century.

In the afternoon I attended several presentations, but I will focus on the very inspirational presentation from Tricia Rushton. Rushton discussed the Smith Family's scholarship program called 'Learning for Life' which provides students with essential learning resources, such as backpacks, textbooks. Importantly students must continue attending school to receive their scholarship money. Currently about 4,000 Indigenous students receive a Learning for Life scholarship.

Rushton particularly stressed that the role of the Smith Family at schools was in establishing relationships, rather than purely about outcomes - between teachers, schools, communities. For example at Ramingining school, the Smith Family supported an breakfast initiative called the Breakfast with a Mentor for parents and students before school. The impact of the Breakfast with a Mentor was that students became less violent, more focussed, and arrived on time to school. Rushton argued that the Smith Family was a broker for setting up and supporting relationships.

Rushton finished with a very thought-provoking thought from a Yolongu Ramingining leader "The Smith Family walks with Yolngu until we don't need you anymore".

National Digital Forum 2009 - Being online now: culture, creativity and community

Looks like Mia has scored first points in our battle of the conference blogs. I'm in Windy Wellington learning about digital innovation from the Kiwis - they really seem to have got their act together over here. Lots of high level engagement and innovative products based on digitised cultural collections. I'll focus this blog post on the two keynote speakers.

Daniela Incandela, Director of New Media, Indianapolis Museum of Art, gave an inspirational and jargon free talk about technical and online innovation in his five years with the organisation. He started in their Education section with a passion for video production. His passion and dry sense of humour seem to have allowed him to build strong relationships across the organisation which have led to a variety of innovative products - the most recent being ArtBabble. It's interesting that he hasn't shied away high quality video production to create ArtBabble, almost the antithesis of Youtube in terms of quality. Yet they have still engaged directly with all new forms of social media such as Youtube, Flickr, Blogs, Twitter and so on. A recent development has been an iPhone tour which is apparently flexible and re-usable - I'd love to get my hands on that to create some tours of our galleries.

Jane Finnis from Culture 24 (formerly 24 Hour Museum), gave a history of their trials and tribulations over the last 10 years. This actually paralleled very closely with my own experiences as a journalist and editor trying to engage with web publishing as a non-technologist - ie for much of this time it was all about the content, not the technology. The most amazing thing is that she has stuck it out for so long. A good example of building relationships across communities to create diverse, interesting and re-usable content. But this model of content development, crafting and creating authorative articles and rebuilding websites every few years based on user evaluation really doesn't sound like that much fun in an age of dynamically generated content through blogs, youtube, flickr, twitter and so on.

Finally, we ducked out early to play on the Te Papa rides and missed the Living Heritage Awards where young people celebrate New Zealand's heritage by creating their own web pages about their local community. Sorry I missed it - I'll have to find out more whilst I'm here.

Over and out from Day 1.

National Indigenous Education Conference 2009, Hobart

Good morning all. This week I will be live blogging from the National Indigenous Education Conference 2009 in Hobart. The conference theme for this year is 'Strength in Community: Closing the Gap'.


Lyn and myself have an exhibit at the conference to showcase the Plenty Stories series that have been written by Senior Indigenous Education Officer, Trish Albert. The books are resources that aim to give primary teachers confidence in teaching Indigenous culture and issues. So we are here to let the 623 conference delegates know about this fabulous resource.

Last night was the conference opening, which we attended in the Town Hall and were served very tasty bbq kangaroo and wallaby. Then we had a tour across the road at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

TMAG have a special exhibition on called Tayenebe which explores how Tasmanian Aboriginal women are reviving traditional fibre skills through basket-making and weaving. I was fortunate to talk to one of the artists about the baskets she makes from bull kelp (a very wide, flat seaweed), as it is similar to one displayed at the National Museum. The artist explained they only use kelp that is found on the beach, and large pieces are very difficult to find. The kelp has a texture like leather and contracts substantially when it is dried out. The exhibition will be touring to the National Museum in March next year.

Anyway more to come as the conference unfolds... Will be a very exciting week.

From Little Things Big Things Grow: Teacher Preview

September has been a really busy month here in the Education section at the National Museum of Australia. Last night we held a teacher preview for the new exhibition, From Little Things Big Things Grow which presents the story of the fight to improve the rights of Indigenous Australians during the years 1920 to 1970.

Exhibition curator Jay Arthur spoke about some of the remarkable stories in the exhibition, as well as some of the processes behing making the exhibition.

Education staff also previewed two new Indigenous programs: a secondary program for From Little Things Big Things Grow; and a primary program on Early Contact where students explore early interaction between European colonisers and Indigenous Australians.

And Alan, or as he refers to himself as the 'minister for free stuff', spoke about some online Indigenous resources from the Museum, as wellas a list of free online resources he has compiled. Please contact Alan if you are interested in finding out more.

Thanks again too everyone who attended. There will be another teacher preview at the end of the year, so watch this space!

Education section planning day

Education Section welcomes Claudette to the team.

Here is education at work. Planning for next year. What improvements can be done in running our business.

Snapshots at Bloomsbury State School

Our very last visit was to the teachers and students at Bloomsbury State School. And boy did they put on an amazing show of all of their work!

Bloomsbury is located about one hour north of Mackay, on the way to Townsville and Cairns. The theme of the work by the students was 'My Bloomsbury' and all of their photographs, paintings, lino prints, and installations of their favourite things in and around Bloomsbury.

The exhibition was held in the Memorial Hall at Bloomsbury so that members of the community could come and view, and even purchase! some of the work on display.

And finally, here is a picture of myself and Mrs O'Keefe: