No Science Museum over the weekend!
I have to say I am completely exhausted at the end of this week. I didn't get the last two photo challenge posts out on time because Thursday night was a bit hell-like as I got home at 7pm from a full day's work and then had to go straight to finishing of an evaluation report of our Geffrye Museum exhibition project. I ended up getting around 3hours sleep Thursday night (I just couldn't let the damn thing go - I think I deleted and re-did the illustrations 5 times) and was then up at 6.30am to get back to work, and then had to travel to UCL afterwards to hand it in.
Friday night, I pretty much got home and collapsed, and then had to be up early to work at the riding school all day Saturday.
Bad week was bad.
But anyway, that report was my LAST PIECE OF MODULE COURSEWORK. This is big. This means the only work I now need to complete that will be marked and affect my MA degree result is my dissertation, for which I have until the middle of September. This is the first time in what feels like forever I don't have a deadline coming up in the very near future and don't have an essay or something I really should be working on right now.
This is a very good thing, because working full time with a 3 hour round commute does not lend itself to productive evening working. Not. At. All.
More significantly, this is the first time in months that there is not something to do for our exhibition project at the Geffrye Museum!
Yes, that's right, the exhibition is up and running and open in its entireity: feely box, family trail, web interactives, slideshow, display cases and all. The social media initiative is finished, which means no more blogging, but that's still up there to see, with a load of behind-the-scenes pictures on Flickr.
Most importantly, the project has now appeared on the Geffrye Museum's official website, where you can also find the Interactive Map and Digital Story of Tea (!) made by me and my team mate, Hannah. You can also get a peek at some of the display.
We have a private viewing evening to go to this week. Pretty much the UCL team signing off! It feels slightly strange as, although it was hard work (mainly what kept me away from blogging for a while), I have really enjoyed working on the project and it's given me great insight into digital/online museum interpretation, which I will definitely want to investigate further no matter what I end up doing.
Bye bye Geffrye! I'll miss you!
Showing posts with label Stories of the World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stories of the World. Show all posts
5 May 2011
...is that Maps are Pretty
As I've said before, I think maps are awesome. It's the same thing as anatomical diagrams - I love to see schematics and things laid out in detail. I don't know how to explain it, but I think that visual representations of how things work, or how they're laid out, are gorgeous.
Anyways, for our exhibition project, we got to design an interactive world map. Well, we decided we'd like to design an interactive world map - the free rein to be creative we've had on this project has been great. I thought I'd treat you to some previews of our first designs/colour schemes. The final version goes live on the museum's website this week - bit scary!
Anyways, for our exhibition project, we got to design an interactive world map. Well, we decided we'd like to design an interactive world map - the free rein to be creative we've had on this project has been great. I thought I'd treat you to some previews of our first designs/colour schemes. The final version goes live on the museum's website this week - bit scary!
They're made using this website's wonderful outlines, this texture (which we may need to seek commercial use for if the designs are approved) and a wallpaper from the Geffrye's collection. The final version looks different to either of these two.
Maps. So pretty.
ETA: The finished map went live on the Geffrye website today - check it out!
13 February 2011
My Reading List
I'm currently on 'reading week'. A little break from lectures and seminars; not so much a break from work.
Our Geffrye Museum project is now in full swing, with the web team's projects approved and deadlines set. Being a real project in a real museum, it doesn't really set store by academic timetabling, and our work is running on as normal, although we are without the weekly team meeting this Friday. So a large part of 'reading week' for me will consist not of reading but of playing with photoshop as we continue to work on our designs for an interactive map, images for our 'digital story' and ideas for a possible set of advertisement cards to lay about in the museum's restaurant.
We're very excited about the resources we're creating. We finally have some nice graphics set for the map, which will let people discover the international origins of objects from the English home. I can't wait until we have a name set for the project, at which point we can set up our Twitter, Flickr and Blogger accounts and start getting people to pay attention to our fantabulous participatory events.
There is actually some reading involved. Our digital story, along with a good deal of the blog content we will be posting, is focused on 'the History of Tea in English Homes' which, while something I always wished my undergraduate degree had included a module on, is something I need to do a fair bit of research to be able to write.
Cue wonderful books such as this and the browsing of tea-related blogs and things we can link to. I love it when work is enjoyable.
Less cheery, but just as interesting, this week I am also researching the heritage of gangs and violent crime in the capital. Fetishisation and commodification thereof. We might participate via the Kray Twins Walk. I am morbidly fascinated by morbid fascination.
This is all in aid of research experience for an ethnography we are expected to write for our coursework. I have yet decide on exactly what my subject should be...it's supposed to be London-focused, on a group or particular aspect of culture or lifestyle. I want to do something equestrian-related but I'm not sure how far going to a different yard to my own with people I don't know would satisfy the requirement we try to focus on something unfamiliar to us. But anyway this means there's also reading on writing the enthography itself, which I've never done before! Scary!
But then I'd never written a report before last November and I thankfully got a very acceptable mark for that.
Lastly, my next piece of coursework is a report on an antiquities dealership! More reading, more field trips!
But first, I think his evening I will take some time to work on personal projects. I'm making a recipe folder!
Our Geffrye Museum project is now in full swing, with the web team's projects approved and deadlines set. Being a real project in a real museum, it doesn't really set store by academic timetabling, and our work is running on as normal, although we are without the weekly team meeting this Friday. So a large part of 'reading week' for me will consist not of reading but of playing with photoshop as we continue to work on our designs for an interactive map, images for our 'digital story' and ideas for a possible set of advertisement cards to lay about in the museum's restaurant.
We're very excited about the resources we're creating. We finally have some nice graphics set for the map, which will let people discover the international origins of objects from the English home. I can't wait until we have a name set for the project, at which point we can set up our Twitter, Flickr and Blogger accounts and start getting people to pay attention to our fantabulous participatory events.
There is actually some reading involved. Our digital story, along with a good deal of the blog content we will be posting, is focused on 'the History of Tea in English Homes' which, while something I always wished my undergraduate degree had included a module on, is something I need to do a fair bit of research to be able to write.
Cue wonderful books such as this and the browsing of tea-related blogs and things we can link to. I love it when work is enjoyable.
Less cheery, but just as interesting, this week I am also researching the heritage of gangs and violent crime in the capital. Fetishisation and commodification thereof. We might participate via the Kray Twins Walk. I am morbidly fascinated by morbid fascination.
This is all in aid of research experience for an ethnography we are expected to write for our coursework. I have yet decide on exactly what my subject should be...it's supposed to be London-focused, on a group or particular aspect of culture or lifestyle. I want to do something equestrian-related but I'm not sure how far going to a different yard to my own with people I don't know would satisfy the requirement we try to focus on something unfamiliar to us. But anyway this means there's also reading on writing the enthography itself, which I've never done before! Scary!
But then I'd never written a report before last November and I thankfully got a very acceptable mark for that.
Lastly, my next piece of coursework is a report on an antiquities dealership! More reading, more field trips!
But first, I think his evening I will take some time to work on personal projects. I'm making a recipe folder!
18 December 2010
It's only once essays are over I realise how much else I have going on right now.
Apologies for lack of posts, particularly so early in my blogging effort. My only defence is that I am terrible an concentrating on other things when I have coursework essays to write (I had 2) and not practised at all when it comes to coordinating blogging with 'real life'.
I'll get there. I promise. New year's resolution to blog at least once a week.
Anyway, Big News: it's snowing! No, not really.
I mean, yes, it is snowing - there is a considerable amount of snow - but that's not the Big News. Big News is I did go to Olympia despite the snow, which is all very well and good (and pretty) if you have nowhere to go, but otherwise a bit of a pain.
Olympia was awesome, as usual. I'd never been on Puissance night before, so that was a treat. I'm hoping I got myself a few decent photos (I haven't looked through them yet, given that the Canon raw codec will not work on my laptop but it's alright because I have Lightroom...that's another saga) since I got to borrow my lovely boyfriend's 100-400mm Canon L lens. Very exciting for me in my little 400d/50-250 ownership. I will get round to editing those now, along with some other things to get onto Flickr and subsequently here.
Did I mention I tend to neglect other things when coursework deadlines loom?
I was very pleased I did manage to get my first 2 MA coursework essays done in time for Olympia, actually, given my past track record of using every available minute until the deadline to finish such things. I've now done a report on a museum mission statement, a rather abstract and conceptual essay on 'living' and 'intangible' heritage (with liberal use of inverted commas) and a more grounded on the role of volunteers. I have Christmas off to start making moves toward organising my work placement next year (20 days minimum) and do some research on our exhibition project.
Ah, yes, exhibition project. This is the other Big News. Scary and exciting all at the same time. Our 'Museum and Site Interpretation' class are working with the Geffrye Museum in London to produce an exhibition as part of the Cultural Olympiad 'Stories of the World' project. Sounds very big and important, doesn't it? Supposedly it's tough, and will take over our lives, but it's also a fantastic opportunity to get some real experience of heritage sector work in a fabulous setting.
Two of us are assigned as the 'web resource development' team, I suspect mainly due to the fact we expressed a greater than normal familiarity with certain social networking sites and visual media. We did both feel the need to make completely sure the role didn't require any in depth technical knowledge - coding is not a strength I possess. I think it was enough we knew enough to ask if coding was required.
Our role is set out as:
So much to coordinate! But first, I am having 'fake' Christmas at home before flying to the states on Tuesday (weather permitting) for Christmas in Memphis with boyfriend's family.
Adventures!
I also think maybe I'm not cut out for Adventures. I'm currently lying in bed with a hot water bottle on my hip I have done indeterminate minor damage to, either related to hauling heavy stuff around in aid of looking after ponies in the snow all morning or to pushing a car up a frozen hill. One of the two.
I'll get there. I promise. New year's resolution to blog at least once a week.
Anyway, Big News: it's snowing! No, not really.
I mean, yes, it is snowing - there is a considerable amount of snow - but that's not the Big News. Big News is I did go to Olympia despite the snow, which is all very well and good (and pretty) if you have nowhere to go, but otherwise a bit of a pain.
Olympia was awesome, as usual. I'd never been on Puissance night before, so that was a treat. I'm hoping I got myself a few decent photos (I haven't looked through them yet, given that the Canon raw codec will not work on my laptop but it's alright because I have Lightroom...that's another saga) since I got to borrow my lovely boyfriend's 100-400mm Canon L lens. Very exciting for me in my little 400d/50-250 ownership. I will get round to editing those now, along with some other things to get onto Flickr and subsequently here.
Did I mention I tend to neglect other things when coursework deadlines loom?
I was very pleased I did manage to get my first 2 MA coursework essays done in time for Olympia, actually, given my past track record of using every available minute until the deadline to finish such things. I've now done a report on a museum mission statement, a rather abstract and conceptual essay on 'living' and 'intangible' heritage (with liberal use of inverted commas) and a more grounded on the role of volunteers. I have Christmas off to start making moves toward organising my work placement next year (20 days minimum) and do some research on our exhibition project.
Ah, yes, exhibition project. This is the other Big News. Scary and exciting all at the same time. Our 'Museum and Site Interpretation' class are working with the Geffrye Museum in London to produce an exhibition as part of the Cultural Olympiad 'Stories of the World' project. Sounds very big and important, doesn't it? Supposedly it's tough, and will take over our lives, but it's also a fantastic opportunity to get some real experience of heritage sector work in a fabulous setting.
Two of us are assigned as the 'web resource development' team, I suspect mainly due to the fact we expressed a greater than normal familiarity with certain social networking sites and visual media. We did both feel the need to make completely sure the role didn't require any in depth technical knowledge - coding is not a strength I possess. I think it was enough we knew enough to ask if coding was required.
Our role is set out as:
To create an SOTW web resource inspired by the objects selected for the concourse case displays, this could be a digital story or podcast. The team will also be required to tweet and blog about the project, however they will need to have a corporate awareness about the content of the posts and what/where/when things are posted.So, very exciting. And gives my blogging here another justification as 'work experience' I suppose. I find the new importance (or lack of importance, depending on your view) of digital aspects of heritage work and I'm quite looking forward to spending the holiday looking at the kinds of things we could bring to the project before we start really working on it next term.
So much to coordinate! But first, I am having 'fake' Christmas at home before flying to the states on Tuesday (weather permitting) for Christmas in Memphis with boyfriend's family.
Adventures!
I also think maybe I'm not cut out for Adventures. I'm currently lying in bed with a hot water bottle on my hip I have done indeterminate minor damage to, either related to hauling heavy stuff around in aid of looking after ponies in the snow all morning or to pushing a car up a frozen hill. One of the two.
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