Presentation to 2007 National Art Education Association.

1. Museum Educators
Innovating with Technology
Troy Smythe and Kris Wetterlund
National Art Education Association
Thursday, March 15, 2007

2. Conditions for Classroom
Technology Innovations
• Yong Zhao, Michigan State University
• Kevin Pugh, University of Toledo
• Stephen Sheldon, Johns Hopkins
University
• Joe L. Byers, Michigan State University

3. Museum Educators Innovating
with Technology
• The Innovator (Educator)
• The Innovation (Project)
• The Context (Museum)

4. ARTstor Projects
• Docent Project
• History Museum
• Video Conferencing
• Teacher Partnership

5. The Innovator (Educator)
• Knowledge of the technology and its
enabling conditions
The staff in charge of training docents
had never used ARTstor before, and
more importantly had to learn to use the
Offline Image Viewer with Artstor to
create presentations for the docents.

6. The Innovator (Educator)
• Pedagogy-technology compatibility
The history museum educator stressed
her emphasis in bringing in resources
from all disciplines to aid teaching
history at her museum.

7. The Innovator (Educator)
• Knowledge of the organizational and
social culture of the museum
“Socially savvy educators are much
more aware of the potential for
problems and can frequently negotiate
compromises among the various
stakeholders that smooth the way for
successful technology experiences.”

8. The Innovation (Project)
• Alignment with the museum culture
The most distant from the museum
culture was the video conferencing
project. That educator held the
philosophy that sharing strategies and
techniques outside of her museum was
not a desirable practice.

9. The Innovation (Project)
• Required resources are available
Projects that required new technologies
suffered the least amount of success.

10. The Innovation (Project)
• Distance from the innovators current
practices
The docent project staff had always
used PowerPoint and images acquired
internally, so using an outside database
with new presentation software was
quite distant from their current practice.

11. The Context (Museum)
• Technological infrastructure (facility,
network, equipment, etc.)
The museum educator and the teacher
in the teacher partnership project were
used to working informally together. The
lack of a common technological
infrastructure hindered their project.

12. The Context (Museum)
• Human infrastructure
A healthy human infrastructure would
include flexible and responsive
technical staff, knowledgeable
colleagues who can help with the
innovation, and supportive
administrators.

13. The Context (Museum)
Organizational culture(support staff,
policies and procedures, etc.)
• The video conferencing project suffered
from lack of support by those expected
to implement the innovation.

14. The Innovator
Knowledge of the technology
Pedagogy/technology compatibility
Knowledge of museum culture
The Innovation
Distance from culture
Distance from resources
Distance from innovator’s practice
The Context
Technology infrastructure
Human infrastructure
Organizational culture
Successful Tech Projects

15. Docent
project
History
museum
High
Distance from
museum culture
and existing
practice
Dependence on others
High Low
Low

16. Video
conference
Teacher
Partnership
High
Distance from
existing
technology
Dependence on technology
High Low
Low