Nodem 06

Changing Paradigms within Museums

Author: Anne Kahr-Højland

Institution and affilation : University of Southern Denmark/The Experimentarium

Type of project:“Ego-Trap – the mobile is your key”; Augmented Reality with an educational aim in a semi-formal learning setting

Website:

www.experimentarium.dk/ego-trap (webaite for the exhibition)

www.kahr-hojland.dk (website concerning the Ph.D project)

Abstract:

This paper deals with museum exhibitions as remedies for education. On the basis of a brief outline of the development within the educational role of the museum the paper seeks to elucidate in what way mobile technologies in re-mediating interactive exhibits at museums may afford the learning processes at these places. In the light of the development within the museum field the paper proposes a new way of organising educational exhibitions by combining the three elements interactivity, the narrative and virtuality in an Augmented Reality with an educational aim. The paper closes by discussing the mobile technologies as possible media for fulfilling this Augmented Reality. The mobile technologies seem to have the capability of re-mediating interactive exhibits in a new paradigm of exhibitions, having Augmented Reality at the core – in closing this is suggested as an important field of research yet to be explored.

Paper:

Introduction

How do we involve the mobile phone in our exhibitions? This seems to be the urgent question that exhibition developers at museums all over the world are eager to answer (Goodin 2006). Judging by the presentations at the Ecsite Annual Conference 2006 (ECSITE 2006) nobody in this field doubts that mobile technologies hold the key to the very important target group consisting of teenagers; a very non-homogenous group who nevertheless have two things in common - they are huge consumers and they are very familiar with (maybe even addicted to) the mobile phone.
Along with this increasing focus on the ‘mobile’ as a potential exhibition remedy, learning occurring at museums and science centres has been subject to a rising interest within the educational field. At the present time educational researchers share a common approach: there is a widespread tendency to focus on the importance of developing new kinds of learning materials (Hawkey 2004)), an increasing focus on the learning processes happening outside school and how these may be integrated in learning remedies or used as supplements to the formal school system.
This paper asks whether the involving of mobile technologies in museums and science centres may contribute to more than just increased attendance. Hence the paper seeks to elucidate in what way mobile technologies, in re-mediating interactive museum exhibits, may afford learning processes in what I call semi-formal learning settings. After a brief definition of semi-formal learning settings, the paper outlines how the relation between exhibitions, media and visitors (learners) has developed from ‘the traditional museum’ to a new paradigm based on interactivity (represented in interactive science centres all over the world). In the light of these developments the paper proposes a new way of organising exhibitions that may afford learning processes even better than science centres currently do by combining the interactive exhibits with features of Augmented Reality facilitated by mobile technologies.
The paper closes by considerations concerning constraints and affordances of re-mediating interactive exhibits by means of mobile technologies.

Semi-formal learning settings

Museums and science centres, the central features of this paper, may both be categorized as semi-formal learning settings (Kahr-Højland 2005). These kinds of places are consciously aiming at being educational – they are presenting a certain kind of information in a certain way in order to make the visitor learn something – without being curriculum based as formal learning settings. Thus, what you learn in a museum is not part of a curriculum, nor is it to be tested after a visit. Similarly, museums and science centres are separating themselves from informal learning settings like amusement parks and trips to the forest as they are consciously aiming at being educative.
The distinction between formal, informal and semi-formal learning settings is reflected in the model below:

The traditional museum

Even if the term semi-formal may be new or at least states a new definition of the learning environments that it covers – broadly speaking museums – they are actually cases of a rather old, traditional phenomenon. For example, the process of collecting and presenting objects for the public with learning in mind has been practised by museums all over the world since the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford opened its doors for the public in 1683, long before schools and curricula were part of our general frame of reference (Hein 1998).

The traditional museum

When the Ashmolean first showed collections of specimens from the field of natural history in 1683, the term "museum" was not even known. Yet, what was practised at the Ashmolean transpired to be what people later on perceived as the prototype of a museum, meaning a site for presenting historical artefacts initially on tables and boards, subsequently by means of the well known museum attribute; the display case (Griffith 2003). In the traditional museum one finds no distinction between collection and exhibition. Thus, the number of arrowheads and shards shown in the traditional museum correlates with the number of these artefacts found at sites for excavation. The fact that the traditional museum is giving priority to the information that it provides rather than to the communication with the audience is underlined by the fact that until very recently, the staff at museums almost exclusively consisted of academics in preference to professional educators (Roberts 1993).

A body of knowledge

In the traditional museum one finds a heavy focus on the information being presented. What lies behind the organisation of exhibitions within the traditional museum is a belief that presenting information for the public is equivalent to make the public learn something. This strategy for presenting information presumes a ‘body of knowledge’ existing independently of the visitor. The task of the traditional museum consists simply in making this body of knowledge available and perceivable for the public. Thus, this somewhat positivistic approach to knowledge as a body of information immediately ready to be picked up by the audience constituted a determining factor for the construction of traditional museum exhibitions.
Using this collection-exhibition equivalence as a fundamental principle for making up museum exhibitions, the museums themselves have been creating a picture of museums in general as un-inspiring places primarily consisting in endless rows of boards and display cases (Hooper-Greenhill 1999). Today, most museums practitioners are distancing themselves from the concept of the traditional museum. This is shown in the fact that a lot of museums are now eager to present them selves as something that is in opposition to the traditional museum (Johnsen 2004). This awareness of what is learned in museums and how it is learned is not just a matter of curiousity – it is a matter of the survival of the museums (Anderson 1997; Anderson, Gray et al. 2003).

Magic bullet

Even if museum practitioners have been conscious of trying to reach their audience – and to increase the number of visitors – since the 60’s, the means for this have consisted primarily in methods known from the field of mass communication. Thus, the museums have broadly speaking committed themselves to a ‘magic bullet’-theory, assuming that the medium itself – e.g. the display cases, the museum movies presenting the biography of the artist, the booklet guiding the visitor etc. – holds a capacity of manipulating the visitor {Hooper-Greenhill, 2004 #87.

Active Audiences

In the late 60’s it became increasingly evident that the consideration of the audience as an inactive phenomenon is not sufficient. In this period museum practitioners started paying attention to the fact that audiences, at least to a certain extent, actually create their own use of the media. The magic bullet approach has no longer sufficient. As Hooper-Greenhill concludes: instead of being manipulated, people are actually manipulating the media {Hooper-Greenhill, 2004 #87}. This is when the term ‘active audiences’ appears within the museum world for the first time, implying that museum practitioners are beginning to realize that the simple models applied from mass communication are not adequate. This is also the period where the first – very simple - visitor studies were carried out at museums in England and Australia underlining that the focus is no longer solely on the information being presented but also – as something new, marking a future paradigm shift – on the audience perceiving it (Schiele 1993; Rennie and McClafferty 1996; Hein 1998).
However, introducing new media like movies, tape recordings etc. into museums is not changing the general approach to communication. There is an increasing need for re-defining the relation between media and audience. Rather than transferring information from the exhibition by means of different kinds of media to the audience, the audience is characterized by being active in the process of meaning construction. In the process of decoding the message from the media the audience invariably deconstructs the message (Hooper-Greenhill and Moussouri 2006).

The visitor

This shift from focusing on the information to the person perceiving it happened simultaneously with a similar evolutionary process within the educational field. In the 70’s teachers and social educators in Denmark as well as in the rest of the western world started pleading for personal and self-driven learning processes (Hiim and Hippe 1999), (Wahlgren, Høyrup et al. 2002). The process of meaning making is happening within the individual. This shift of focus from the media as determining meaning, to the visitor/learner as the creator of meaning is reflected in the way museum exhibitions are now planned and organized.

The interactive paradigm – action and experience and the core
The opening of the Exploratorium – the world’s first science centre - in 1969 marks the beginning of a new paradigm as regards organization of museums. Having interactivity and the act of playing at its core, the Exploratorium immediately showed itself to be a success, at least according to visitor numbers. Thus, what was immediately evident was that this type of museum had a strong appeal to the audience.

Interactivity at science centres

The concept interactive exhibits is that the visitor has to participate – put his hands on – in an active way during the visit at the science centre. An example could be wheel chairs presented as a powerhouse made of your muscles: you are supposed to wheel a chair as fast as you can and as you wheel the chair lemonade will be dripping into a glass corresponding to the energy you use wheeling. After the wheeling you will be able to regain the energy lost by drinking the lemonade.
You will find lots of different kinds of interactive exhibits at science centres, some focus on the use or functions of the human body, some reflects conditions concerning chemical, physical or mechanical processes on Earth; common to all of them is that they all make the visitor use his hands and hopefully his mind with the aim of communicating science.
What characterizes this kind of interactive exhibits is that they are not meaningful unless a visitor interacts with them, being based on a constructivist approach to learning (Hein 1995). Using different kinds of interactive exhibitions, science centres have been able to both attract people and hold them – family visits at science centres often last about five hours (St John and Perry 1993; Falk, Dierking et al. 2005).
Since 1969 numerous science centres have appeared all over the world establishing the science centre as a sub-genre of museums, a museum communicating scientific and technical topics by means of interactive exhibits. Within a period of thirty years more than 800 science centres have opened their doors all over the world (Martin and Toon 2005).

Actually, the concept of interactivity as it appears at science centres has been so strongly established that it has been affecting more traditional museums, in a sense re-mediating the traditional display cases. As an example an art museum in Odense, Denmark, had to employ extra staff for an exhibition showing different kinds of installations and technical models, most of them embodying knobs and strings. Apparently the audience were so familiar with the interactive concept that they automatically started manipulating the exhibited models even if it was actually thought of as a ‘hand-off’ exhibition where touching was strictly prohibited (Installationer, Brandt Klædefabrik, 2000).

A constructivistic approach to learning

As already mentioned the big difference between science centres and traditional museums lies within the fact that the science centres seek to meet the audience, the focus here being on the person who is supposed to transform information into knowledge. Therefore I argue that the emergence of science centres based on interactivity marks a paradigm shift within the field of semi-formal learning settings, as the processes of transformation of information into knowledge now is being emphasized. In this way what is carried out in practice at science centres is a direct application of the fundamental educational ideas formulated by John Dewey, where the process of learning is inseparable from action and experience (Dewey 1938).

Science Centres confronting the positivistic approach to learning

Traditionally speaking science is associated with a positivistic approach to knowledge and learning whereas the humanities commonly relate to a more interpretive hermeneutical approach to learning. It is therefore worth noting that the first efforts to confront the positivistic approach to knowledge within semi-formal learning settings have been in the scientific field.
Yet while the traditional museum has been criticized for focusing too strongly on the information provided, the Science Centres might be a subject of criticism as regards this strong focus on the receiver. As regards the act of playing, I presume that no-one working in the educational field will question these elements in relation to the process of learning. But is the presence of these elements enough when enduring learning is the ultimate aim?
Critics state that games and entertainment cannot be successfully combined with technical education, as the act of playing will leave no room for the process of negotiating new knowledge into enduring learning (Wellington 1989). Thus, according to Karnezis, Gadamer has stated that the concept of play (Spiel) is defined by something that has its own order and structure to which the actor who plays the game is given over. Once the game is running, it will be the game that plays; the actors just following the rules of the game (Wind 1976; Karnezis 1987).

This means that if the museum exhibitions encourage playing they should at the same time seek to ‘scaffold’ their visitors (cf. Bruners interpretation of Vygotsky’s zone for proximal development (Bruner, Wood et al. 1976)). If the museum do not relate their exhibits to some kind of superior context or structure, there is a danger that the visitor might be seduced by the game being played at the exhibit; if the visitor is just following ‘the rules of the game’, then we are no longer dealing with a semi-formal learning setting – then the museum will rather fit in the category of ‘informal learning setting’ along with trips to the forest and amusement parks than the one of ‘semi-formal learning settings’, cf. the model page 3.

The importance of the presence structure within exhibitions

So, if we want enduring learning to occur in museums, we will have to prompt the reflective processes in the visitor which means the visitor has to ‘scaffolded’ in his use of interactive exhibits. This scaffolding of the visitor may consist in the use of some kind of structure within the organization of exhibits, as the addition of a structure may help the visitor feel safe and also automatically makes him relate the information provided to a superior context; that is the presence of a structure may boost his reflective processes (Labov and Waletsky 1967 (1997); Gjedde 1999).
In science centres you will generally speaking find no kind of route or guidance of how to find your way through the exhibition even if this will often be spread over thousands of square metres accommodating hundreds of interactive exhibits. Actually this “doing it on your own”-concept is considered a very important part of science centres as semi-formal learning settings (Alexander 2006; Issidorides 2006).
Nevertheless, in my opinion, this free choice concept represents a huge problem concerning the learning aspects. As the science centres are generally characterized by being both huge and chaotic in their construction they signalize a considerable extent of independence which seem quite overwhelming to most visitors. Also, studies have shown that there is a tendency to random ‘button pressing’ and a reluctance to read instructions, which inhibits interaction (Peacock 2002; Quistgaard 2006). Seen from an educational point of view it is problematic bringing the learner in such a position where he is most likely to feel overwhelmed and insufficient.

Therefore in order to prevent the feeling of insufficiency caused by ‘random button pressing’ I argue that some kind of structure within the organization of exhibits is needed. A structure may be obtained by combining the exhibits in a mutual relationship; a storyline where each single exhibit correlates to a superior meaningful context. As an example of how to structure the exhibition, the Experimentarium in Copenhagen had an exhibition about dinosaurs which offered two different paths to be followed through the exhibition; the “scary path” and the “less dangerous” path. Each path consisted of exhibits about dinosaurs demonstrating different aspects of the dinosaurs (some more bloody than others) both of them ending up by a chicken run demonstrating the fact that hens are the contemporary descendants of the dinosaurs.
The act of adding a (narrative) structure to an exhibition does not represent a new style of presenting in itself. Thus, one often finds the ‘fixed path’ in the traditional museum. What is new, is the combination of a (narrative) structure and the explorative approach to learning. The challenge thus consists in creating a structure which is closed enough to make the visitor feel comfortable and yet open enough to afford an explorative approach to the exhibition.

Augmented Reality With an Educational Aim

Having suggested that the act of playing is not to be regarded as similar to the act of learning, as it is both implicitly and explicitly maintained at interactive science centres all over the world, I will argue that a new way of organizing museum exhibitions is needed; in order to afford learning within museums I propose an organization of exhibits which seeks to combine the three elements interactivity, narration and virtuality. These elements may be combined in what I call ‘augmented reality with an educational aim’.

Augmented Reality – The voices of Oakland

What is meant by Augmented Reality may best be explained through an example: In 2005 Stephen Dow, Jay David Bolter and their colleagues implemented a virtual add-on to the Oakland Cemeteries in the US (Dow, Lee et al. 2005). When people visited the cemetery they had the possibility of being guided from one gravestone to the other by means of a PDA with head phones connected to it. During the trip around the cemetery the dead were ‘brought back to life’ through voices of actors who dramatized the lives of the dead. In this way the history of the dead along with the history of the US were revealed for the visitors and an extra dimension was added to the experience. The stories that were told were determined by where the visitor was situated in the cemetery. The Oakland-experience was in other words determined by both the physical setting and the PDAs.
The use of the PDAs and the so called spatial narratives in Oakland Cemeteries creates a virtual add-on to the cemetery: when using the PDA one experiences a new – virtual – dimension of the cemetery, in this case it is the stories of the dead, the history of the US. The PDAs in this way supports the creation of a narrative - a narrative which is determined by the place of Oakland cemetery; thus, the setting for the experience, has heavily influenced its design and implementation ((Dow, Lee et al. 2005).
The Voices of Oakland is an example of how a combined use of the narrative and the virtual dimension may provide individualized experiences for the visitor. At Oakland Cemetery the use of PDAs and headphones succeeded in establishing an “I-bubble” for the visitor, meaning that the visitor had a unique experience, the voices in his ears revealing stories about the dead people. At the same time the narrative – the story of the dead people combined with the story of the US – was a principal factor in giving the information presented on each grave stone new relevance as each piece of information was being put into a meaningful connection provided by the narrative (Bolter and MacIntyre).

Interactivity

In the second – interactive – paradigm one finds a strong emphasis on interactivity, as action and experience are considered crucial for the process of meaning making. As already mentioned the interactive concept has shown to bee a success in many ways, thus, there is no doubt that hands-on exhibits are essential for the learning museum (Quistgaard 2006), but this is to some extent incompatible with a high degree of free choice.
Following the constructivist approach to learning held by among others Hein, Roberts and Hooper-Greenhill, a widespread use of interactive exhibits within museums should be maintained Hein, 1995 #81; Hooper-Greenhill, 1999 #102; Roberts, 1997 #229}.
As I see it, one of the great challenges of museums in 2006 is therefore to combine traditional and interactive paradigms in a focus on both the receiver and the information provided. This is where the narrative is entering the field, as the narrative seems to hold several basic features which make it an advantageous means of presentation.

The narrative

Jerome Bruner has, among others, argued that our consciousness is basically structured by narratives (Bruner 1990; Bruner 1996). In these two books Bruner deals with the influence of the narrative in both experiencing and creating meaning. Bruner distinguishes between two essential modes of thought in common discourse – narrative and paradigmatic – and he argues that the narrative mode has been given a far too low priority in the educational systems of the Western World. According to Bruner, narratives should be considered the most basic tool possessed by the human being in order to create meaning, organize experiences and understand the world. Bruner claims that we are all born with a narrative form embedded – a form which we can use in organizing knowledge and that we might successfully use this narrative readiness in acquiring knowledge. In this way Bruner suggests coherence between the narrative and human cognition, and at this point he is supported by the cognitive scientist Jean M. Mandler. Mandler concludes that all human beings possess an embedded understanding of what happens in stories and that humans from a very early age develop distinct expectations of the structure of traditional stories (Mandler 1984).
If the narrative is a key constituent of our way of thinking, therefore, it must be fruitful to use the narrative as a tool in an educational context. The narrative as an educational tool has been investigated by, among others, (Bruner 1990; Bruner 1996; Davis and Gardner 1999; Gjedde 1999; Millar and Osborne 1999; Bostroem 2002; Brier 2002; Norris, Guilbert et al. 2004; Avraamdiou and Osborne 2005; Dow, Lee et al. 2005; Klopfer and Squire) all of whom emphasize the successfulness of using the narrative as an educational tool.

To briefly sum up some of the conclusions presented by the theorists listed above, the narrative’s capacity for presenting ideas arises because:

It can put complex phenomena into a framework that is recognizable to the recipient
It can be easily decoded by its audience
It can make the recipient identify with the phenomenon presented and thereby open to a deeper level of understanding
It can contain what I will call different layers of narration, which makes it possible to communicate with a target group consisting of widely differing people
The narrative calls for interpretation rather than explanation, and in this way it invites reflection which makes a thorough understanding of the phenomenon more likely.

The narrative is noted for – thanks to the characteristics listed above - its ability of appealing to humans in general and at the same time ‘stories’ are a tool for structuring information; this function may therefore be used by exhibition developers to influence the action and the mind of the visitor. The narrative, even by way of a semi-closed structure, has the ability of giving preference to some piece of information rather than others. The use of some kind of narrative structure means that we are no longer dealing with an exhibition solely based on the act of free playing.

Virtuality

As regards the use of the virtual dimension as a means of presentation in semi-formal learning settings one might argue that the virtual dimension already has made its entry in museums all over the world – thus, in the year 2006 the existence of a well functioning museum which does not have a homepage on the Internet is hard to imagine.
Here however, the use of the virtual dimension in combination with interactivity and the narrative it is more like ‘individual computer based games’, rather than homepages. Through a much more widespread and refined use of mobile technologies than is known today museums and science centres will be capable of offering their visitors individual experiences. By means of a virtual add-on to an exhibition, it will be possible to create several different virtual add-ons to one and the same physical exhibition or show room. In this way a wider use of the virtual dimension provided by the mobile phone will make it possible for the audience to create their own “I-bubble”, that is, their own unique, personal museum and learning experiences where they will get a personal approach which they will be able to provide a feedback to by means of the keyboard of their own mobile phones. In other words: The virtual dimension may support the feeling of individuality and relevance – it will support the idea of ‘meeting the visitor where he is’ - even if the visitors are in the same physical spot.

Therefore, when I suggest a new way of planning museum exhibitions with interactivity, narration and virtuality at the core, it is because these three elements in combination will be able to put action and experience as well as structure, reflection and unique, personal experiences at the core.

The table below distinguishes between the three different kinds of exhibitions – the traditional museum, the interactive museum and the interactive/narrative/virtual museum.

Exhibition Context	Traditional Museum	Science Centre	Interactive/narrative/virtual (Augmented Reality)
Primary Focus	Information	Audience/receiver	Audience + information Interactions between visitors and media + interactions between visitors
Media	Display case, boards supplemented by movies, tape recordings etc.	Interactive exhibits, hands-on	Interactive exhibits + structure + Mobile technologies
Learning approach	Positivist approach: body of knowledge being identified by the audience	Constructivist approach: learning is an individual process occurring in and directed by the individual itself	Constructivist approach + learning communities

As it appears in the model above, the “augmented reality” –paradigm may be regarded as a continuation of the interactive paradigm but in contrast to this, the new paradigm seeks to offer an experience which is characterized by being both individual, experimental and structured. These are the basic features held by the concept of Augmented Reality. Also, the new paradigm seeks to afford another important dimension as regards learning; that is the one between one visitor and another. The affordance of communication between the visitors is therefore most important; this inter-personal communication is made possible by the Augmented Reality as the set up of a meeting between two visitors may be incorporated in the storyline, whereas the technicalities of how to arrange a meeting between visitors will be solved by the mobile technologies.

The Personal Exhibition

Augmented Reality as it appears in “The voices of Oakland” seems to mark out a new paradigm within learning in semi-formal learning settings. Though, seen from an educational point of view, what this kind of augmented reality seems to be lacking – bearing my previous stressing of the necessity of all of the three elements the interactive, the narrative and the virtual in mind – is the interactive element, the hands-on experience. The challenge therefore does not lie as much in transferring this kind of augmented reality to traditional museum settings; rather the challenge consists in combining this kind of augmented reality with the interactive museums, as each hands-on exhibit may seem to hold a story itself - each of them representing a sequence of actions leading to a climax or conclusion. The challenge therefore seems to consist in how to embed these exhibits in an overall narrative without disturbing the narrative held by the exhibit itself.

As an attempt at combining all of the three elements, a new exhibition is being developed at the Experimentarium in Denmark: in this new exhibition the visitor will be guided by means of his own mobile phone. The voice in the phone will lead him into a narrative of which the development depends on how the visitor acts and on his actions and experiences at the interactive exhibits at the Experimentarium. The idea of the exhibition is that the hands-on concept still should be at the core; the narrative facilitated by the mobiles provides a semi-closed structure for the experience and supports the meaning of the information provided by the interactive exhibits. The overall theme of this narrative is ‘a personal test’ where each exhibit functions as an independent intermediate goal which is naturally embedded in the superior structure. During the process it is revealed that the person who is in control of the test is not the one you think it is.

The mobile helps by creating a structure, a narrative in which the exhibits do not stand as isolated experiences. Each exhibit refers to a larger structure, they are all part of a whole; the mobile phone provides a narrative to help establish an interpretative framework for the user.

The mobile technologies

Mobile technologies are valuable remedies for creating such an experience of being in an “I-bubble”. They are getting increasingly popular within the young target group, but do not only benefit from their strong appeal to the young ones; they may also contribute to the improvement of the learning potential of semi-formal learning settings as these new technologies possess the ability of controlling a narrative or computer game (due to their features as computers) at the same time as they benefit from the familiarity most young people feel for this medium.
The mobile technologies also benefit from the fact that they are mobile, they represent tiny computers which can easy be brought in the museums without inhibiting the mobility of the user. This, among other things, makes the mobile technologies capable of combining the three elements I have been pleading for in the updated version of the ‘learning museum’, namely interactivity, narration and virtuality.
It therefore seems most likely that the use of mobiles in semi formal learning settings may boost the attendance to these places as the mobile benefits from appealing very strongly to the young audience. The question is, can the mobile contribute to more than fascination and unreflected playing; does the mobile phone offer features that support reflective processes?

In the following I will consider the characteristic features of the mobile with regard to discuss the constraints and affordances of using mobile technologies as learning remedies in semi-formal learning settings.

The mobile – constraints and affordances

One of the main reasons why the mobile phone is an obvious choice as technical device for this Augmented Reality is that it benefits from at least two things; firstly, its properties as a handheld computer, secondly, it benefits from being a well-known medium for the visitors in general.

What characterizes mobiles is that they are all based on computer technology. Many of us are not aware of our own considerable use of computers in our daily lives. When using the microwave oven, the sewing machine, the camera or the washing machine, only few us are conscious about using a computer, because we think of ourselves as doing the task, not as using the computer embodied in the artefact (Norman 1989). Similarly, only few of us are aware of carrying a hand held computer in our pocket, a fully functional computer appearing in the shape of a mobile phone. As Marc Prensky puts it, today’s high-end mobile phones “(…) have the computing power of a mid-1990’s PC (…) even the simplest voice-only phones have more complex and powerful chips than the 1969 on-board computer that landed a spaceship on the moon” {Prensky, 2004 #126}. This feature of the mobile qualifies it as a well-functioning organizer of a narrative – or an augmented reality.

At the same time the mobile is benefiting from being an extremely popular medium. Today most of the visitors at science centres are in possession of mobile phones. Mobile phones play a significant role in most people’s daily life which means that people in general are very familiar with the mobile as a medium. Thus, the mobile represents a hand held computer capable of organizing a narrative, an interactive game play, and at the same time the mobile benefits from being well-known by its users.

In continuation of the critical approach to learning mentioned earlier, one might ask if there is a risk of the mobile ‘disturbing’ the hands-on experience in a way that the active part is pushed to the rear; is the mobile phone stealing all of the attention from the interactive exhibits, preventing the visitor from acting and experiencing? As Ingemann and Gjedde shows in (Ingemann and Gjedde 2005) interactivity as well as the inter face of the mobile may possibly steel all of the attendance from the information they provide.

The mobile as a digital showcase

When I propose the mobile technologies as an ‘exhibition tool’ it might be fruitful to explore, it is among other things because I believe that the mobile phone will have a too seductive role in the exhibition. The mobile is an example of a long-lasting technology, a tool we use without reflection – with the use of Donald Norman’s term the mobile has turned into a transparent medium. The mobile has become so familiar to us that we are no longer conscious of our own use of it. This is what Paul Dourish calls the receeding of the medium:

“The most successful technologies are those that recede into the background as we use them, becoming an unannounced feature of the world in which we act” (Dourish 2001)

Today, it may seem unlikely that the mobile should recede in this way, but Alison Griffith draws attention to the fact that the display cases when first introduced as a new medium for presenting objects in museums, were exposed to massive criticism as the display cases seemed to steel of the attention from the objects they were supposed to highlight (Griffith 2003). Inspired by Griffith’s review, the use of the mobile as a facilitator for an Augmented Reality in semi-formal learning settings may be considered a kind of ‘digital display case’, meaning that the mobile initially will be facing the same problems as the display case did when it was first introduced. The digital media account for a new way of highlighting information, the challenge for the mobile is to become as transparent as the – now un-conspicious – display case.

Summary

In this paper I have briefly outlined the development within the field of museum communication ranging from the traditional museum which seems to emphasize a ‘body of knowledge‘ to science centres having interactivity at the core. The description of this development within the museum world serves as a launch pad for sketching out the framework and means of communication considered necessary for the ‘learning museum’ anno 2006.
For exhibitions that afford learning I have emphasized the educational advantages of combining the elements interactivity, the narrative and virtuality. These three elements may be gathered at museums resulting in an Augmented Reality with educational aim.
I have pointed to the mobile technologies as an obvious medium for bringing this kind of Augmented Reality to reality; the mobile technologies – for one thing - may hold the key to the very attractive target group of young teenagers and - for another – they may have the capability of controlling dynamic systems, that is, for example an interactive narrative, without necessarily disturbing the interactive experience.
I therefore urge to further research in the field of how mobile technologies may re-mediate interactive exhibition in order to comply with the learning processes of young people.

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