Books On Phones

Google and Amazon are both making ebooks available to mobile phones. The action of reading books on mobile phones may not seem like the type of interaction or participatory learning that museums may strive for, but I do believe that this development is worth mentioning on this site. First of all, the story is a perfect caption for my logo above (ha!). More significantly, the availability of books on mobile phones adds to the variety of resources available to museum visitors. A mobile phone ebook can certainly supplement an exhibit interaction or museum conversation.


-- Rolf Steier

Wii Project(or) Play

This is a quick video I made playing with the concept of a "mobile smartboard" using a wii controller. This technology was shown to me by a colleague here at InterMedia. Information about setting up your own can be found here , (and here for a mac computer).
I generally feel uncomfortable with a design process that forces a particular technology into a solution or concept. However, I think that in this case, the potential affordances of mobile projectors (and mobile smartboards) are worth investigating in the museum setting. A major limitation to mobile phone-based learning in museums is that the screen size is quite small, as is the keypad. I think that there may be interesting possibilities for enhancing visitor collaborations and interactions with exhibits through the above technology.

-- Rolf Steier