BP5_Museum Box

http://museumbox.e2bn.org/index.php

As a child I was fascinated with collector boxes of rocks, shells, leaves; anything small that could be amassed into a container, which of course I decorated. I even had shoebox nurseries of tiny toads from a pond on the next street. The dollhouse beds and curtains I added did nothing for the toads' longevity, sadly. When I first took a look through the Museum Box site I felt I had found the 21st century version of a child's collector box! It's an exemplary Web 2.0 tool in terms of user-generated content and social participation; it allows users to herd all types of media into one appealing, familiar structure. The editing page has a comfortable appearance and intuitive navigation, even (or maybe especially) for children:

The "collector" is able to choose the number of openings in the tray, and the number of layers of trays. Each opening holds a cube of information that pops out and can be rotated by the viewer to explore all the faces. Note at the bottom of the page that the collector can add text, links, photos, video, sound and files of any type. The files can link to an entire Powerpoint presentation, for instance. When "text" is clicked, you are taken to a page with a text box and a full editor, including fonts, colors and page formatting. Sound and video can come directly from the camera and mic on the collector's computer, so the possibilities for a personal narrative are wide open! Because it allows for so many types of media to be included, Museum Box is amazing platform for teaching children about gathering information and organizing it into a clear and compelling presentation. Boxes can be posted to the Museum Box website and users are able to make them public, or to be viewed only by people at one school. I signed up for an account and requested that my school be registered, which takes a few days to verify. So, since I must wait for notification from Museum Box before creating my own collector box, take a look at this example of an explorer box from the public collection on the site:

Explorer Collector Box

As an aside, I was fascinated by Thomas Clarkson's anti-slavery campaign and the way he told his story with a box of objects; the inspiration for Museum Box. An early example of rich media being more effective and convincing! It's a wonderful story to tell when introducing Museum Box to children:

What especially excited me about this tool is that it's so wide open, such a completely blank canvas, that it allows children to first use a variety of other Web 2.0 tools to find information, images and media that helps to tell their story, and then go on to design, order, and categorize all of it into one box. I am more and more amazed by the possibilities; this will definitely be another tool for digital storytelling in my action research project this year. I love that children can make their own connections among the pieces they collect, so, for example, where one child may put all of an explorer's route maps on one cube, another will instead create a cube for each voyage, decade, sponsor, etc., and add a map to each one. While the end result is certainly pleasing, and both enlightening and fun for its audience, the process here is much more compelling than the product and is the real advantage of Museum Box.