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Learn about exciting new developments at Night Kitchen Interactive.
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.
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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.
In this presentation, Matthew Fisher explores the "AnyPlace" model for creating an affordable and easily reproducible place-based historical interpretation tool for cultural heritage organizations. Originally presented at the Museums and the Web conference last month, the full paper is available from the MW2011 paper sessions.
As indicated in the title, the AnyPlace platform builds from the PhilaPlace website that was developed in collaboration with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. For more information, we invite you to download the AnyPlace handout and explore the working prototype at http://anyplace.whatscookin.com/.
The History of Vaccines has been selected as an Official Honoree in the Science category for the 15th Annual Webby Awards!
Of the nearly 10,000 entries submitted worldwide, fewer than 10% were distinguished as an Official Honoree. We are proud to share this recognition with The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Night Kitchen Interactive is thrilled to receive an Honorable Mention for our History of Vaccines website in the education category at this year’s Best of the Web awards. Presented by the Museums and the Web community, the awards recognize outstanding achievements in website design and mobile applications for museums and cultural institutions. Projects are judged on criteria including content, functionality, visual design, interactivity, and technical approach, as well as their ability to provide engaging and relevant educational resources to specific audiences. Learn more about the History of Vaccines website, developed for the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, in our case study here.
Night Kitchen Interactive is proud to be partnering with the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian on American Indian Responses to Environmental Challenges, an instructional website for classroom learning (project launch June 2011). Documenting four American Indian communities, the website highlights first person narration of the environmental issues facing these tribes and their responses to those challenges.
The site presents a media-rich, scaffolded learning environment with progress tracking and assessment features. Students watch videos, explore interactive activities, and answer questions along the way to gain deeper insights to the integral role the environment plays in the daily lives of American Indian communities and draw connections to local environmental issues. The culminating classroom presentation activity allows students to collect notes taken across the site into one central web-based planner.
Following an extensive discovery phase with the Smithsonian Institution Archives, Night Kitchen Interactive is creating a new website centered on clearly presenting the Institution’s three distinct but related services, and providing multiple opportunities to showcase SIA’s expertise through dedicated areas for exhibits and educational materials.
Our solution involves integrating the Drupal CMS with SI’s centralized data asset network (proprietary centralized collections management system and media delivery service). Ultimately, the new website will establish a cohesive online presence for the SIA and present its wide range of online resources in a manner that is intuitive and easily accessible to audiences seeking assistance with preservation services, as well as in answering questions about institutional history.
Night Kitchen Interactive is collaborating with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to create an interactive web presence for their How Things Fly exhibition. The exhibit, created with middle school students in mind, introduces visitors to the key principles of flight through fun, hands-on activities.
Building on the physical exhibit’s interactive nature, the online presence for How Things Fly will allow visitors to try their hand at a variety of interactive web-based activities, such as designing their own paper airplane and launching it into social media cyberspace.
Following the Phase 1 launch of its newly designed website, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) has opened up Monticello.org to visitors, inviting them to comment on, tag, and favorite content across the website. In keeping with TJF’s goal of “engaging global audiences in a dialogue with Jefferson’s ideas”, the new website now reflects the voices of Monticello’s own staff (ranging from guides and volunteers to researchers) and the broader community of Jefferson enthusiasts. Over 200 fans have already joined the Monticello community since its soft launch in late December. Since online community engagement can’t happen without creating the tools and environment to foster it, we took some important steps to help make this happen. Read more.
Night Kitchen Interactive’s Director of Learning Strategies, Stacey Mann, will be speaking at the 2011 AAM annual meeting in a session that weaves together the disciplines of learning science and exhibition design.
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