um and then we'll circle back to uh the sort of broad overview that
helen's going to share with imls when she's able to join us again
um so i'm going to go ahead and share my
screen
all right so you should see
museums for digital learning which is the first project we're going to
showcase today so museums for digital learning is a
brand new platform that we are just launching
right now and it has been a few years long collaboration between
four main organizations that includes imls for the institute for
museum and library services as well as the field museum of natural
history history colorado which is the state
historical society of colorado and then also new fields lab um in
indianapolis so this gives a sort of broad overview
um of the um platform and of the project
and i'm going to walk you through a little bit of the the project in the
front stage of this platform for those of you who may be
interested in using this platform in your k-12
classrooms so what museums for digital learning is
really all about is thinking about bringing all of the
rich assets that museums across the country and i'm talking about
all types of museums not just history and science museums but also
science centers children's museums zoos aquaria planetariums um
historical centers every type of cultural organization really that you
can think of that falls under the umbrella of museums
and thinking about how we translate those rich resources of collections
objects of documents of rich media that we have
and packaging them up for k-12 audiences to be able to use and interact with
not only on-site at museums but really bringing those resources into classrooms
across the country so um you can see i'm just going to do a
little bit of a of a navigation of the site for you can
see you have a um a bar up across the top
we've got about resource kits collections hub
and museums about really just shares a little bit more about the project and
what you can expect to see on the site
as you'll see here objects are really the
sort of main basic building block of all of the resources that are a part of the
site we use objects and stitch them together
building content around those objects to make different
activities and then those activities are all
baked into resource kits that are tied together by
a question that students might investigate or a basic
theme that they investigate together the next part of the site is resource
kits which at this point is really the main hub
for k-12 educators to be able to access all the materials that museums are
creating um at this point we have pilot resource kits that have been created
by both history colorado and field museum the two lead content partners
but we actually have 16 museums that have come on board to create pilot kits
and we're in the process of recruiting additional museums
to be able to really make this a rich resource that has
a tapestry of different kinds of collections and expertise from
different museums across the country and there will be more to come
certainly as the site becomes more widely available to people so as you
uh start to look at what how to navigate this resource kits page
um there are a couple of different filters that you'll notice
you can also search if you have a particular topic or kit that you know
you're looking for but you can search by grade band k2 k
2 3 5 6 8 and 9 12. you can filter by subject area so
english language arts science social studies in the arts
you can filter by media type if that's what you would like to look for
and if you know specifically that there is a museum that maybe
you are very um a big fan of or have a particular collection mind
you can also filter by the types of museums that have
um that have contributed to the site so as you'll notice down here you can
then further filter by resource kits which as i said sort of
bring together these activities and objects
across a main theme across a question that you might want to investigate
but you can also look at individual activities if you'd like
and you can look at individual objects that are
part of those activities so as you'll see there are quite a few objects that
you can take a look at for the sake of today's
um overview we're going to take a quick
look at the resource kits so as you can see there's quite a few
different resource kits that are available here
it'll tell you in the upper right hand corner which museum has contributed to
this resource kit and some are authored by one particular
museum and some are authored by multiple museums as you can see here
this is one that field museum and history colorado have
co-created um and so we're going to take a look at
one of these resource kits together poly monster mystery is a favorite of
mine uh so we'll take a look at this once you click on that that that
tile that includes the resource kit title
um you're going to be brought to a landing page for this particular
resource kit that includes all of the activities we recommend doing
them in the activity that they're listed to be able to create the greatest
continuity and and gain the greatest meaning from
the objects and the activities that are included in a resource kit
from field museum we always start activity one by really setting the stage
and thinking about what is the question that students are going to be
investigating as they look at the objects and interact with the activities
that are part of a resource kit so this particular resource kit is about
the tully monster which for a long time was a mystery to
museum scientists to scientists around the world
and the trolley monster happens to be the state fossil of illinois and so
we at the field museum in chicago have quite a large collection of tully
monster fossils um and for a long time scientists did
not know uh whether the tully monster was an
invertebrate or a vertebrate and so really uh it is
posing a question to students whether they think
this um this particular organism may have been
an invertebrate or a vertebrate uh so we look at
an object like this one which is uh rendering an artistic rendering of what
tully monster may have looked like but then also looking at some of the
real objects that are a part of our collection and bringing
those into the classroom a couple of key features that i want to
point out is that objects always have this uh this
ability to take a closer look if you want to zoom
in you can zoom out so there's some deep zooming options available and then
objects also have this really great object info button associated with them
when you click on that a little window pops up that has
all of the metadata associated with that unique object
so it will include um what collection it was from
it may include things like genus and species if it's a biological specimen
so a lot more rich information that you or your students may be interested in
looking at just click back and you'll be back to
that particular activity in this resource kit we've really set
the stage with the video that we have um from one of our collections managers
of fossil invertebrates paul mayer and he really sets the stage to be able
to think about um how scientists have really been
wrestling with this puzzle for a long time
so we asked them to view we asked students to view this video with a
couple of questions in mind how do scientists at the field museum
know about the twilight monster and which modern creatures do scientists
think the tolling monster might have resembled
after that we have them think about this question of do we think tully monster
was invertebrate or a vertebrate one quick
feature that i want to point out is that these videos are all embedded
into the the platform itself so you don't have to
click out and click over into youtube um you can play it right here in
the platform itself
after that in this particular resource kit we ask
students to think about what a vertebrate is so this is using a
different activity type this activity type basically allows for
a slideshow of different objects and rich media that
have particular pieces of information
associated with it so this really sets the stage for what
um for students to understand what makes an invertebrate what are the features of
an invertebrate so we're going to look at
a few different examples of invertebrates gastropods
millipede scorpion and ant fry zone fossil as you can see again
each of these has an object info button that you can click on and learn a lot
more information
then in activity 3 in this particular resource kit we ask students to think
about what a vertebrate is so they're looking at different examples
just as they did with invertebrates thinking about what the
main features of a vertebrate vertebrate organisms are so penguin
skeleton a fruit bat a sparrow
again these are all objects that you can find in the field museums collection
so again you'll find quite a bit of metadata associated with this particular
object
after looking at all of the key features that make something an invertebrate or
vertebrate we're going to take a closer look at
tully monster specifically so we have the tully monster id
in this activity students can actually interact with the object
themselves so we asked them to take a closer look
at one of our fossil specimens of the tully monster
and one of the things that i really love about this this activity type is that
you can actually have your students really manipulate the object and layer
information that they have found onto the object themselves so they can
paint if they'd like to so you can see they can add text so
we'll add text here
i'm going to label this eyebar so they can add text labels they can add
shapes and icons if they would like um so there's a whole lot of available
tools to be able to annotate a particular object
really nice feature on this particular activity as well is the download feature
so once the student has completed this particular activity
they can download um that image with all of the
information that they've included on that image and annotations
um and upload it onto google classroom or any other learning
management system that you might be using
following that activity we have a hotspot activity so it's
looking at the same fossil that the students were looking at
previously and in this instance they actually have
basically a key to what they were looking at before
so we have um some particular pieces that
are um that are labeled here with icons we have the eye bar that students can
find more information about the eye bar we have the body labeled the proboscis
the fins after taking a look at tully monster a
little bit more closely then we invite students in another one
of the slideshows to take a closer look at some of the various fossils that are
a part of the field museum's collection so this showcases the variety of
different fossilized specimens that we have and really help
students to understand that each individual specimen is going
to look a little bit different and scientists can gather different
information from different types of fossils
so we have some that show the full body in sort of a funny position there
we have others that just show a portion of
a tully monster specimen
finally in activity 7 we reveal that after 50 years of
research scientists were finally able to solve the mystery
of the tully monster and um they were able to determine that
telling monster was in fact a vertebrate so super exciting
and we would definitely invite you to take a closer look
at many of the resource kits that are here if you are a science teacher if you
are a social studies teacher if you are an
english language language arts teacher or a general
education teacher in early elementary i guarantee that there's a resource kit
and objects that would be of interest to you and your students on the site the
final piece that i wanted to take a quick look at is brand new
and we're rolling out new features all the time right now
and this just came online i think last week
this is called the collections hub and this is
actually um populated by all of the objects that are a part of
each of the resource kits that the museum content partners have uploaded
so any object that is uploaded into the site for those resource kits
also is uploaded into the collections hub which really places
learners at the center and teachers at the center
so whereas the resource kits have allowed museums to tell a particular
story using the objects and stitch those objects together with a
particular narrative they have in mind the objects hub or collections hub
allows for students and teachers to to take those
objects and pull them together in collections
that they may wish to use in a particular lesson or a particular
study so for example i have curated a tully
monster collection here to go along with our
other example so this is actually pulling many of the
tully monster specimens that have been uploaded into
the mdl site um and that is saved with my uh with my um
museums for digital learning id but then you can also take a look at the
objects page and let's say i really just want not
just to look at telemonster i might want to look at all fossils
so i'm going to do a search for fossil and as you can see
many many more fossils come up here um and also some of our rich media comes
up here so fossil hunting 101 or the field revealed
tully monster um video so we can curate these into a
fossil collection if we would like so i want to save this sea jelly fossil
it's saving it to tally monster so i just have to click change here
and then i say save to a new collection i'm going to title this fossils
save
and now any anything that i want to save and just click on this little save
button and it will save to fossils right down
there let's save a fern fossil
and a tree bark imprint fossil just as an example
i want to go back into collections let's see if i do a
so eventually this will show up i think it's just got a little bit of lag time
um in my collections along with tully monster i will end up with a
fossil collection that i can include and use with my students as i wish
so the last tab here that i just want to quickly go over
showcases the different museums that have contributed to museums for digital
learning or that plan to contribute to museums for digital learning in the near
future and as i said we are bringing on new
museums all the time and each of these museums is adding additional content
um in the coming years and so each of these museums as you can see we have
a wide variety of museums represented from natural history to art museums to
historical societies there is a huge wide variety and i
definitely invite you to check it out on museums4digitallearning.org
with that i'm going to hand it over to arana who's going to talk a little bit
more about games for change
okay i'm going to share my screen
see sorry
okay um so i'm my name is arana shapiro i am the managing director and
chief learning officer at games for change
and um games for change has been partnering for the past year and some
months with imls to develop and deliver a program called
game plan which focuses on museum education bringing game design
into museum education i'm just going to give a brief overview
of games for change and then i'll dive into an explanation of the program
um so games for change has been around since 2004
and it really is the leading advocate for the power of games beyond
entertainment so it's really about looking at digital video games
and how they can be used for good beyond just
entertaining um and our main areas that we work on
are this there's four main areas that where we work the first is um
this platform for the exchange of ideas we run events that um bring people
together thought leaders in the in the world of
games and um social good our flagship event is the
games for change festival which is happening july 12th to the 14th
uh virtual and free so everybody should join
um the second area that we work is um is with youth and and educators and
empowering um both youth and educators to help um
create the next generation of game designers that are looking at games
beyond entertainment and looking at how games can drive social good and i will
talk a little bit more about the programs that we
that we that um do that work in a bit um and the last two points we um
incubate new game projects through executive production
and engage the public about the power of games through digital and live
live arcades although most of them have been digital
lately so um game plan is again this collaboration between the
um between imls and games for change and specifically
the games for change student challenge so
we've been working on for the past year and a half
to bring um game design into museum education programs and really the the
way that we've done that is by adapting a long-standing program that games for
change has been running called the games for change student challenge
and that program has been running um nationally
for six years and is a sort of proven uh program that benefits hundreds of
educators thousands of middle and high school students by
teaching them game design and then um challenging them to design using the
game design skills they've learned to design games around
specific themes um and our themes change year to year and the themes are always
some kind of social justice social good um theme so um for example this year
the students in the games in the g4c student challenge are designing games
around diversity and inclusion around resilience
around advocating for animals and again the themes change yearly but really the
idea is that we're teaching students how to design not just games
but games for impact um so so the so the plan was to bring
this game design program into museum settings
and and at the beginning you know the plan was
to bring it in person into museum settings but then covet hit and we
really had to adapt and um and started to think about how we
could bring museum educators into this program bring this program
into museum settings virtually and could that help
museum educators connect with their community in a time when it
was really hard for museums to connect with community
so i'm gonna what i'm gonna do now is i'm gonna show a short video that sort
of introduces the program i can find my
mouse and then um and then i will talk a little bit more specifically
about the different components of the program
so let's see here
okay here we go game plan is a professional development
program that brings museum educators together from across the
country to learn about games to learn about the
power that games can have to engage learners and to help
museum educators design and run a game design program
with youth in their communities game plan is a program that brings
together about 50 to 60 museum educators
from 40 museums across the country we come together regularly to learn
about games to learn how to design games and to learn
how to use game-like learning in museum contexts
as well as the professional development museum educators are also
learning how to run the games for change student challenge
in their museum context so they are running youth-facing programs
where youth are designing games that are that focus on the museum's content and
collections as well as a theme this year of
resilience through games the games that the youth are designing
are eligible to be submitted to our student challenge competition
and there will be a winning some winning games and some prizes
and some exciting stuff that happens around that
um but at the end of the day i think the real power
of the program is the um watching these museum educators come
together and collaborate as well as watching them really start to
understand how games and play
can have a place in museums and can help to drive engagement with
um the collections as well as deeper understanding of the concepts that the
museum is trying to teach i think game design can impact
museum education in a variety of ways i think that games
are such compelling tools for learning and
are so engaging for for youth and and for students
some of these youth are are coming from a variety of different backgrounds and
games or something that are universally accessible in terms of
everybody knows how to play um i also think that there are
opportunities through games to reach youth and reach audiences and attendees
both physically and digitally some of the educators in our program are
creating digital experiences for their students or they're taking their
their youth through the through the video game design process
and equipping youth with skills in in hard skills
in in coding and development and game design
uh so the there's just such an elegant solution here
to take so many different boxes my biggest take away from the program has
been that this platform is a unique opportunity to link
storytelling with gaming i see game design and museum education
as a great way to discuss and work through obstacles associated
with real world challenges for example games can be created based
on events that gave rise to art movements
learning about games can help museum educators by inspiring them to create
museum content within the context of a world that
visitors can see themselves in something that i've been really
surprised about in doing this work with the team of educators museum
educators from around the country is how open folks are to finding new
ways new techniques to bring to build up
audience engagement with the collections we always see things behind glass and
museums sometimes there's a distance between the
visitor and the stories that we see represented in the wall text but through
game design it the playfulness of game design really
mixes up the rules and allows people to also bring their
own stories bring their own ideas their own understanding their own
meanings to the museum at professional
development and the office hours for game plan um we were using different
virtual techniques tools how to create games
um on different web-based platforms or in an analog way and just receiving the
feedback from museum educators about how they can already incorporate what
they're learning and professional development
into their lesson planning for camps and workshops
i think that's what really made it special i'm so glad that this
is a successful uh program i'm glad to see how many
people are participating and how many other organizations are participating in
it and um just happy to see um
people using uh games and education and educational contacts and i'm just
happy to see what else comes of this hoping out of this i mean i hope that um
i will have by the time the program is through
designed a couple of really good games that we can play with and continue to
play test and refine with our visitors um at the brooklyn
navy yard um and i think like these games are
going to be fun for kids but also for adults
so i'm hoping to to use them in both contexts
um and i'm also excited to see once i implement the the curriculum that i've
designed around this what students come up with and what
campers come up with what kind of games will they create
um to help us all learn about resilience at the brooklyn navy yard
um and so it's just it's been um a kind of joyful uh learning
opportunity and it's given me more um tools and and vocabulary for my
toolkit um as a museum educator that i i believe
i will use not just this year but well into the future
i hope that even more museum professionals have the opportunity
uh to learn from games for change thanks so much
okay so that that was meant to give you just a little um
overview of the program and i'm just going to go a little bit deeper
into um some of the pieces of it um so we started by by recruiting
museums right and for participation um we were we recruited museums from across
the united states and preference was given to new york city los
angeles atlanta and detroit just because those are cities that were
originally we were meant to work with because that's where we run our student
challenge but we ended up with a mix of museums
from um 18 different states so 40 museums were accepted total of 62
museum educators participating from 18 different states
um you know during the application process we held information sessions and
individual conversations and meetings and we
at the end of the day over 70 museums applied to participate
um and you know according to our applications the museums that were
participating were really interested in ways to increase youth engagement
to learn innovative new new innovative practices to level up their virtual
programming and connect museum content to a younger audience
the expectations that were set for participation were that the museum
educators would participate in three professional development
sessions held over the course of about eight months
um they would implement the student challenge in their museum settings
and and i'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment
and that there would be active participate participation in an online
community that we created in order to connect the museum educators um
together even though they're they come from different
uh states different communities and also different disciplines right they were
all different kinds of museums um so the professional development
sessions that the museum educators are attending um there are three like i
said there are three of them and they focused on three different things the
first was an introduction to game design and
digital game design tools and and that session really was about kind
of the nuts and bolts of game design as well as the nuts and bolts of the
student challenge program and the museum educators were introduced
to scratch as a game design tool they got an
in-depth training in scratch so that they would then be able to
teach it to youth in their settings for the
student challenge program the picture that's on the screen right now it are
the museum educators doing um a game design challenge one of the
challenging things for us as designers of these sessions were to
we had to really think about how are we going to teach these museum educators
game design virtually right because when we teach
game design we generally always start with um
analog hands-on game design and in order to
do this virtually we had to be really creative about the ways that we brought
people together so you what you see in this picture is
we asked prior to the session we asked all the museum educators to gather a set
of household materials the same set of household materials
and this group of six educators worked together with the materials they had
to create a game that would invoke an emotion
i believe their emotion was silliness and they created this cool costume
game with um uh foil and cups and it was really fun and
everyone had a good time playing it but um but we really did have to think
um creatively about how to bring this program to life virtually and we hope
the hope was that because we were thinking really creatively about how to
bring this program to life virtually it would help the museum educators
think about how they could deliver the program virtually so we really tried
throughout the professional developments to
allow the museum educators to learn by doing um the second session
uh museum educators came with a learning goal or a
a piece of content that they felt like didn't always land well or they had a
hard time getting youth to engage with and they designed a
learning game around it so we took them through the design process
they most of them were analog games some of them were digital games but they
you know they they left the eight hour session with the
prototype of a game and then went on to work on the game
um in between session two and session three
and session three is actually upcoming in a couple weeks but we're gonna be
working on designing game-like learning experiences so creating
experiences at your museum exhibits um uh i don't know experiences for youth to
participate in that feel like a game and we're also bringing together some
practitioners from the field to talk to them about best practices
um so that's one component of the program
um and then this the another component of the program that i
will talk about is just this online collaborative community
we are working with a platform called participate
and um all of the participants in the program have access to this online
community there's the ability for them to discuss
things to we we have a whole resource page up
there that has a game design curriculum and curricular
materials um and they can they can just they can
talk to each other they can communicate and um one thing that we found is that
this is a really valuable piece for the museum educators who
often are kind of working with their own in their own museum some of these
museums are so small that the museum there's only one museum educator at the
museum and so they're kind of in a silo and they really value the opportunity to
come together and play games and talk about games and
talk about the programs that they're running
um great so um i'll just tell you a little bit about
what we've found as we've as we've piloted this program because
it's the first time we've done it um one of the things that we know for sure
is that this program requires flexibility
it's very different than schools which we knew going in but um but
because with schools you know even even even
if schools are different the general um structure
of a school is the same but every museum is so different the way they approach
um their education programs the way the content that's in the museum the
size of the museum the the um community that museum serves
like it's just so different that the program really we had
to very quickly be very flexible with um and so what that meant was that the
student challenge became and the implementing the student
challenge became um something that we figured out ways for
museum educators to be able to customize it so they could deliver it
in a way that made sense for their museum so that's one of the most
important things that we learned and i think moving forward
as we work with museum educators we we know that
we can have a kind of skeleton of what we think should happen but we have to
allow a lot of space for museum educators to be able to
be flexible and and implement as they see fit the professional
development has proven to be the most valuable the museum educators have
really um valued the kind of tools that they're
able to put in their toolboxes um and certainly the implementation of
the student game design challenge is one of those
tools but but they themselves stepping into the
role of game designers they themselves understanding how to
design experiences in museum settings that are game-like
um and just the kind of also just being exposed to lots of different ways of
delivering programs virtually lots of different um protocols for
working with youth that has been the most
um valuable um and then like i said before museums can be silos so
um really this online community and collaboration has been particularly
valuable and i think you know part that's part of what makes the um
platform that heidi just spoke about so um so powerful as
well just that there's a way for you for
museums to come together to share content to
um to share best practices and and um and work together and then you know um
we are um going to be running a second cohort in the fall it's going to be
smaller and focused primarily on the professional
development program but um but we're very excited to sort of
take what we've learned and move it into out of a pilot and into
like a more structured program so um with that i think
i will turn it back to helen if she's here
okay and i'm gonna hand it over to helen okay and
okay here we go okay
so we go
so i hope can you see that is that showing up
hi helen yes you can see it great all right
so hello everybody i am sorry for that snafu
you are not going to see my face in order to preserve bandwidth but i am
going to um i'm going to sweep the stage instead of
set the stage and we'll have plenty of time for questions
because i'm not going to take very long to do this
um clearly you have heard from some fantastic grantees of ours in the
national through national leadership and i'm just
going to flip through the slides to get to something that's going to be valuable
here let's see so there we are
so what i hope that um you all got from this showcase is um
one second
is a new understanding about the cool things going on in museums
and um what they're doing in the education arena in this regard
and particularly get some familiarity with
museums for digital learning and game plan projects
and now i'm going to give you sort of an inside scoop into the grant programs
that make this stuff possible and could potentially be useful
to you guys
so uh imls is the independent federal grant making agency
that is the primary source of federal funding for
the nation's museums and libraries and the idea is that we
ensure that all americans have access to museum library and
information services so that's this the base from which we operate
now the question is oh and this is my diy
venn diagram which i could probably use a little venn diagram
tool the next time but we'll go with this this is my answer to
why museums and games or why museums in you know digital media and learning and
um so the answer to that question is that um
i've sort of tried to put together some of the
areas where games can have a learning impact and museums have an interest
where these come together so as indicated by
this diagram and certainly by our previous speakers
you could see that lots of projects may address more than one of these
learning outcomes or or ideas so museums use games as delivery systems
for content knowledge and behavior change as you saw with some of the
examples that heidi showed or you can imagine a game that you know
helps you understand climate change and maybe
provokes behavior in you know recycling behavior or something like that
games are used by museums as guides to physical spaces and content
we've supported some projects that use games to promote an engagement
within the gallery space itself as you move around the
gallery museums use game play to promote
perceptual attentional and cognitive abilities and skill development
and this is sort of less associated with particular content
or collections objects but some museums such as children's museums
have this as part of their mission that sort of brain development tools
aronda talked about game design which itself when
you know done in a museum setting with content and themes of a museum
is building all sorts of 21st century skills
um so that's a really good game plan was a good example of that
and finally many museums are using games to augment their collections information
and metadata so they're using the power of the crowd to gather information
about collections through through games
so there's two programs that we offer that are the primary sources
for funding for these kinds of things that we're talking about
museums for america and the national leadership grants for museums
museums for america has the goal of strengthening the ability of an
individual museum to serve its public so this is primarily allowing
museums to fulfill their high level goals in their strategic plan
you can see some of the details about how the funding works
but an important thing to remember is that um
you know only museums can apply to museums for america
but that doesn't mean that game developers can't be a partner
in a museum project and get funding through
the museum's budget for that project an example of that kind of museums for
america project is something we funded back in 2014 at
historic hudson valley they got funding to work with developers
to build design and build a game called traders
and raiders which allowed users and
and usually students to learn about the transatlantic trade and piracy
and how this manner this part of historic hudson valley played a role in
this vast and complex system
the national leadership grant program is it is a slightly different goal the goal
for national leadership is to advance the whole
field's ability to serve the public so you're
solving a problem in museum practice or in the
museum field i'm not going to give any examples because both museums for
digital learning and game play are perfect examples so i
don't have to provide those at all those are projects
that are producing resources that are going to
help museums during their project and afterwards
to this new level of engagement you can see here that grants go up to
750 000 research is funded there but there's a
one-to-one match for non-research
projects and finally i just want to point out the
some of the characteristics and eligibility issues for these two
programs and i've mentioned this already but when
we're looking at museums for america we're really looking at an
individual institution and its community and its
target audiences but successful projects really have to demonstrate that they
have in-depth knowledge they have to show that there's a
demonstrable result what's going to come out of this
this project a new program a new exhibit a new game
something like that on the flip side national leadership grants are about
broad impact of course you still have to be an expert
and have that in-depth knowledge but you get to be collaborative so you
bring those people that you need to the table to help make
a project successful and shared results are very important so
intentionally producing something that's going to
get have legs and get out there into the field
eligibility is a bit different as i said museums are the only eligible entities
for museums for america but in national leadership because we
know there are many kinds of organizations that can work to benefit
the museum field um including like games for change where
arana is we accept applications from museums from
institutions of higher ed and from organizations that advance
museums and the profession
and finally just a quick
a quick time check here we're going to have applications
due oh don't look at the at the gray bar that's got
the wrong years or just add one to the gray bar that's your game challenge for
the day so we're looking at applications due in
november of 2021 this year you don't have to go
back in time we'll um we'll check them out make sure
they're okay and ready to go to review and the review period is about four
months there and awards will be made in the summer of
2022 for projects that begin on september 1st
and my colleagues and i are available throughout the process of
application and and consideration of what you're going to
submit to help you along the way to help you construct the most competitive
project you can so never hesitate to contact a program
officer our names are all on the website when you go to our website and look for
apply for a grant or grant programs you will find our names and contact
information so that's all i'm going to say i know we
have some questions in the chat and i know
that i'm going to just move this slide thank you good luck
and um please let's let's hear some questions
wonderful helens hello everyone this is ashley jones
with imls i'm just taking a look at the questions
box we have a few questions uh we can start with
um the first one comes from from lois and and this came through
during heidi's presentation but i think could have applied to
to either project uh lois asks are your resources
accessible for students with special needs
i can talk about that a little bit for um mdl
you know each of the individual organizations that are creating
um resource kits are responsible for the the content
that's a part of them um but i know at you know field museum
we really follow universal design for learning standards
so making sure that we are considering all uh different
types of learners and their abilities and also thinking
about different learning styles because we
know that that's going to make everyone really successful in engaging
with the resource kits so um yes i i would say that um that's
definitely something i know that the core partners are thinking about
um and it's uh it's something that we are uh encouraging the
the new museum partners to think about as they're coming on board as well
um and it's definitely something that um you know the museum field broadly thinks
about regularly and i'm happy to just to answer that for
our program as well um you know and i just saw in the chat i
apologize that you couldn't see the slides um
i'm sure there's a way for us to make those available but i said most
everything that was on them so i'm sorry about that
but um i one thing that i didn't say that i should say is that the
the one of the things that this program has resulted in for games for change is
an adaptation of our of our student challenge correct student
facing curriculum for museum educators to use in museum
settings so that curriculum has um been designed in such a way that
it that it um gives uh
gives recommendations for remediation as well as extensions
and has been designed again you know using universal design practices um
so that and that is available on the games for change website for free
wonderful all right um so we've got another question uh this one comes from
caitlin um this is both for uh heidi or arana
the question is can you share the content of all the content of the
projects you presented today how can be tied to national or state
standards for learning
sure yeah um i did not point this out but i should have
um on the website on the platform each of the activities is aligned to um
national learning standards so we make available ngss if it's a science
resource um the c3 framework um common core
depending on what the the content area connections are um and uh and we also
note that you know the resources that are a part
of mdl are not meant to be core curriculum and
they're meant to add to and create another rich layer
on top of existing curricula for k-12 education
um and k-12 classrooms and so really looking at where the standards
alignment that's listed on those resource kits and activities
within the resource kits fits within your core curriculum and
thinking about making that connection so that
um students don't just have a chance to you know engage with that
particular standard with mdl um but also get to uh have a fuller picture of what
that standard um is all about uh with the core
curriculum as well so really thinking about that as
as nice icing on top of the the curriculum cake
and for um game plan for the student challenge curriculum
um we the curriculum is aligned with um the next generation science standards as
well as the um 21 as well as 21st century skills um
but really for the next generation science standards it's mostly the
cross-cutting concepts and things like thinking being able to
think systemically complex problem solving making
connections those kinds of things that game design really helps to foster
hey thanks um so we've got another question um this is specific to museums
for digital learning can you talk about the benefits of
curating these resources into a single site like museums for digital learning
rather than the museums offering these resources on their own websites
absolutely i can speak to that and helen feel free to chime in too because i'm
sure you have some thoughts on this from my mls's perspective as well
um so you know one of the things that we recognize as the core
team is that different museums have different platforms
and you know some museums have um national if not sometimes international
recognition thinking about smithsonian and other
really large institutions other institutions are going to have you
know more regional recognition um and then some museums are very local but
have really rich stories to tell that can add to students understanding
and so um you know every teacher is not going to be aware of every single
um platform that exists online for for the
wide variety of museums that exist across the country
and so really aggregating all of these and creating a platform that brings all
of these pieces together allows for more visibility for those museums
and more um awareness for k-12 educators about what types of resources exist
maybe not in their own backyard um but you know five states away um
and then also uh thinking about the uh the affordances of bringing together
the collections and stories that exist across
that rich tapestry of museums across the country
so what happens when and this is one of the things that i
i noted was that um history colorado and field museum
um collaborated on a few kits um last year and uh what we were exploring
in that was really thinking about what rich
stories can we tell when we bring together the collections
and expertise of two very different museums in many
ways so the field museum is a natural history museum
and so you know much of our collections and much of our expertise is really in
the way of thinking through a scientific lens and when we
think about uh the human aspects we we tell that
story through an anthropological lens whereas um history of colorado is really
coming from an historical perspective a social science perspective
and so we were able to create a kit that explored different ways of knowing
about human history thinking about the
different lenses that anthropology can afford um through
uh more of a scientific lens and through uh using the tools of history more of a
social science and humanities lens um and so um you really can think about
a much more layered um understanding that
you're building and students um as you're thinking about a particular
topic or theme when they're exposed to different
perspectives on that theme um you know one of the things that we're interested
in looking down the line as we're creating additional kits is thinking
about how you know a science museum like the field
museum can collaborate with an art museum to help create new on-ramps for
students who might be you know more interested in the arts
than they are in science but we can still
tell really interesting science stories and art stories through those two
different lenses um so it really just creates uh more
perspectives and more lenses for students and teachers to be able to
explore um all of the the topics that museums um
have expertise in and collections in
and i would just add that you can search across the entire
platform so your search results will yield
uh resources from a variety of museums which you would not have found if you're
just going to individual institutions at a time
so ashley can we squeeze in one more question or are we at
time here you know i think we have one question i think we can we can do with
it with the time we have left it seems like it'll be pretty quick this
is from liz uh and the questions for rana is there a
way to apply for the fall cohort of game plan
absolutely um yeah so we we are gonna start um
uh publicizing application process in july
um so the best way to do it would be to go to the games for change website
either start checking back in july or sign up for a newsletter and you'll
for sure hear about it
okay so we're at two o'clock we know that there are
new sessions starting at two o'clock we want to let you go and and free up the
airwaves and i thank uh my colleague ashley and
arana and and heidi tremendously for this session and
um we welcome you to contact any of us to follow up and
continue asking questions or learning about opportunities
thanks a lot