excerpt from The Universal Museum

Gareth Binns (The British Museum) - The institute of Historical research

Across the country there are many examples of history teachers working with museum staff, undertaking visits and projects, and museum education teams very open to working with teachers to run special projects or visit experiences. What does a museum experience offer history teachers and students? First, the collections: they are rich, they are deep, they concern real objects and real research. Second, there is the opportunity for access to experts, both audience experts and subject matter experts. Next is the physical experience of the museum, its environment and the kind of the facilities that it can offer. Fourth are cross-curricular opportunities - I think that if my colleagues wanted me to press one point home today it would be the cross-curricular value of museums. It is something we are able to do well within Key Stage 2 although it can become harder at Key Stages 3 and 4 and with further education groups. Many museums are iconic in terms of their subject matter: British Museum - Classical civilizations, Imperial War Museum - Holocaust and WW2, National Maritime Museum - Trafalgar, and so on. Tracy Borman mentioned the hybrid history GCSE, and on 21 March 2005 the British Museum is hosting a conference run by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR) and the Group for Education in Museums (GEM) to begin to develop that kind of approach with vocational history learning and vocational elements of history. Lastly within what the museum experience can offer is the quality of networking and ubiquity - the first of my facets of the universal museum. That is to say that in the UK, I believe teachers and students have almost unparalled access to a range of collections, resources and knowledge - a twist on the notion of the single universal museum. There are many types of museums. Some network together very well, some not so well, and there are now hubs in the regions with dedicated education staff and organisations to work through, such as GEM and the Campaign for Learning in Museums and Galleries. Our job is increasingly to work together better and to turn that depth of collections and knowledge across the UK into real learning opportunities.

The second area to which I would like to apply the idea of the universal museum is that of new technologies. Museums have been particularly busy in digitising content, and are now beginning to think more intently about how to use that digitised content for learning purposes. In 2002, the number of virtual visitors to UK museums overtook the number of physical visitors.

There is currently a wide range of highly innovative projects underway across UK museums, including CD/DVD initiatives, video conferencing, digital image and asset capture, PDAs, wireless technologies, white board teaching, 3-D visualisation, and so on. Museums are being highly innovative in the use of digital technologies and are very open to working with organisations and individuals to develop ideas. However, it does raise questions for us about the real and virtual, and about the role of objects. It challenges us with space and time, where people learn, how they learn and why they learn, and it challenges the engagement with visitors.

But is also allows our collections and exhibitions to be more permeable. If I go and stand this morning at the Rosetta Stone I can see crowds packed around it, but I have no idea what they are thinking about, how they are relating to that object or not. But we are beginning to use digital technologies and digital 'graffiti projects', as we are calling them, to capture people's ideas, thoughts and reactions to things. Digital technologies will revolutionise the way museums exhibit and engage with their audiences, and the Holy Grail for this is interactivity. Far from threatening the notion of the Universal Museum, technology will I believe, support, extend and re-engineer it, in ways we can as yet only guess at.