The latest news on our company, current hot projects, speaking engagements, and insights on the latest trends.
Client: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
Project: American Indian Responses to Environmental Challenges
This educational site provides activities, multimedia and information for students to discover the integral role of environmental education and preservation in the cultural heritage of American Indian people.
Created for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, this new website documents four American Indian communities, the environmental issues facing the four tribes and their responses to those challenges.
Night Kitchen Interactive has partnered with the College of Physicians of Philadelphia to adapt the History of Vaccines site for mobile devices. The mobile site will continue to inform audiences through timelines, activities, articles and multimedia resources, in addition to providing up-to-date access to the History of Vaccines blog.
Night Kitchen’s Director of Learning Strategies, Stacey Mann, presented a session titled "Walk the Walk: Using Learning Theory in the Exhibit Design Process" at last month’s AAM conference. The productive session was a great success and was very well received. Presenters challenged attendees to consider various types of learners when programming exhibits, encouraged exhibit designers and museum educators to communicate with one another, and explored methods for using educational theory to inform the exhibit design process. The presentation also provided attendees with practical steps to help identify audiences, learning goals, and achieve buy-in from stakeholders and decision makers at their institutions.
Night Kitchen’s principals Matthew Fisher and Dan Kuetemeyer facilitated a fun, informative presentation and hands-on activity at the AAM 2011 conference in Houston last month. “Engaging Children in Objects and Art Using High-Tech to No-Tech Tools”, was presented in collaboration with Julie Charles and Erica Gangsei of SFMOMA, and Sharon Shaffer, Ph.D., of the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center. Together, the team compared and contrasted the SFMOMA’s new mobile game and the Early Enrichment Center’s object-based facilitated approach to engaging children with art in a museum setting.
The Country Dog Gentlemen are on the move once again, and will soon be available as an iPhone app. SFMOMA’s mobile Gallery Game features the colorful canines Dingo and Collie, who encourage visitors of all ages to explore the museum’s collection through fun and thought-provoking activities. The activities connect families to the works of art and to each other, transforming a museum visit into an art-filled adventure.
Monticello.org has received a Silver MUSE Award in the category of Digital Communities! We are proud to share this honor with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
Judges said: "This site is a great example of how social media can extend the visitor’s experience through an ongoing dialog. The cross posting of content from Museum staff, the public and historical experts really brings a wonderful wealth of viewpoints, information and entrance into the time of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello."
Read more on our blog about how community engagement has played a role in the redesign of the Monticello website.
Night Kitchen Interactive has been selected to create a Drupal-based website to promote and distribute Osteoware, a complex software program that will assist researchers and the academic community in documenting human skeletal remains.
Developed by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Osteoware will allow scientists to input real-time data entry of observations, which will be cataloged into a structured query language (SQL) database. The website will provide scientists with free downloads of the program, along with information about features and functions, and will include a forum for customers to pose questions about the program, discuss usage and best practices, or contact NMNH support staff about the software.
Night Kitchen Interactive is excited to be working with the Carnegie Museum of Art to develop the Teenie Harris Online Exhibit and Digital Archive in preparation for the upcoming exhibition, Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story, opening in late October 2011. A website will present the story of the Teenie Harris Archive and will allow the visitor to explore the 1000 images showcased in the exhibition, both online and through kiosks in the installation. We will also be developing a digital archive that will enable visitors to browse and search all 80,000+ Teenie Harris negatives in the archive, in addition to enabling visitor comments, tags and favoriting of the images.
If you’re attending the American Association of Museums’ Annual Meeting this year, we invite you to attend the following sessions and stop by our booth at the MuseumExpo.
Walk the Walk: Using Learning Theory Research in the Exhibit Design Process
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
3:45 - 5:00 p.m.
Engaging Children in Objects and Art Using High-Tech to No-Tech Tools
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
9:00 - 10:15 a.m.
MuseumExpo (Booth 1532)
Monday, May 23 to Wednesday, May 25
