Most art galleries ban mobile phones. At The Study in Poole, Dorset, they're positively encouraged. So keen is education officer Sandy Wilderspin to see them being used that she has a stockpile of Nokia 3G handsets that she loans to school parties. With them, children are able to compile their own digital scrapbooks which are automatically downloaded to their own personal websites.
Along with The D Day Museum in Portsmouth and Urbis in Manchester, The Study is piloting a Culture Online initiative to reinvent the traditional school visit to a gallery or museum. Called OOKL ( an anagram of 'look' –geddit?) it's a name silly enough to give it credibility in the digital world, and cleverly emphasises how it can change the way that children respond to exhibits. They don't just look, they ookl.
First the bad news for any visiting school party: the mobile phones are not linked to any commercial network so they can't be used to phone mates stuck in school to tell them what a great time you're having. And the good news: as pupils from Haymoor Middle School in Poole quickly discovered, there are other ways to make the most of a Nokia.
They were soon in text mode and thumbing in notes on the modern paintings and sculptures that they found rlly v v intrstng. The Study is devoted exclusively to modern art but kids don't seem in the least intimidated by the abstraction, finding their own narratives in the swirls of colour. The gallery catalogue might describe Jeffrey's Steele's Toccata as asymmetric inter-related rectangles but Hollie conveys so much more when she notes that it's "like when you are so busy that your mind is muddled."
The mobile can also be used as a dictaphone so Lucy with all the professional aplomb of a talking head on The Culture Show, interviewed Rebecca about a painting that had taken her fancy. There's nothing like knowing that a recorder is running to get interviewees to do some serious thinking about a picture and try to distil their thoughts into a coherent soundbite.
The phone's in-built camera offers pupils further opportunities to chronicle their visit. They photograph whole works or home-in on a detail than interests them. Better still, they can snap their chums standing alongside a painting or contorting their bodies in the abstract geometry of a modern sculpture.
"Instead of just walking around, the phones encourage the children to interact with the art. And that process is what's important not the photographs and text they end up with," says Sandy Wilderspin. Once pupils have raced around seeing what's on offer, she insists that they restrict their collections to the 15 objects they most like. "It makes them have to think about what they like and why they like it. I want them to see themselves as curators having to make decisions about what they'd like to collect for their own galleries."
And using OOKL they really do collect art works. Most of the exhibits are labelled with a two digit code. When a pupil keys the code into the mobile, a digitised image of the exhibit is automatically added to their scrapbook. They are simultaneously sent a text message containing background information about the object and the names of other pupils who have chosen it. This enables classmates to meet up for impromptu chats about their mutual choice – like a couple of the Haymoor lads – to exchange congratulatory high-fives.
The second phase of the work begins back at school. Pupils can access their online scrapbooks where they'll find the downloaded images, text messages, photos and sound files. They are now free to edit them, to add new text or even import multimedia material from other applications.
They can also disregard the 'only 15' rule and delve into The Study's database of other images that they might have overlooked during the visit. Better still, they can take a peek into their classmates' galleries and borrow any images that take their fancy. Pupils can collaborate to compile composite galleries devoted to a particular artist or theme. The group from Haymoor were planning to pool their material to create a PowerPoint presentation with which to wow the rest of the school in an assembly.
A password system ensures that these school galleries are for private view only. But a teacher can choose to publish the best of them on the OOKL website. It's still in its infancy, but over the years this compendium of other visitors' impressions could grow into a fascinating and useful educational resource.
Although OOKL is cheap to run, setting it up – shelling out for the mobiles and paying to digitise the exhibits – will cost venues that opt to participate in the project serious money which they will have to recoup by charging schools for the service. But, for the moment, The Study, Urbis and the D Day Museum - thanks to funding from Culture Online - are still offering the service for free. So if you're planning a visit to any of these venues, book soon – or oobk oosn as they doubtless say in the digital world.
Teacher tips
- Do your own reccy of the venue before the class visit.
- Download the teacher pack which contains suggestions on various themes pupils can study, together with a detailed breakdown of the ways in which a visit helps to meet national curriculum requirements.
- Treat the visit as an opportunity for collaborative learning. There are no right or wrong responses to the works on display. Pupils must feel free to express their own views and to share them with their classmates both in conversation on the day and by visiting each other's virtual galleries.
- Encourage pupils to access their individual websites on the home PC. It's an ideal way of engaging parents in the learning process.
