Museums and social media – sharing pedagogies of practice

In the week that has just gone I have had the pleasure to attend to Museums and the Web Asia conference held in Melbourne. I have been inspired by the ideas, perspectives and openness of presenters both local and national, and reminded of why I find working with the GLAM sector so  enjoyable.

I was delighted to present with two colleagues from Musuem Victoria, Jan Molloy and Cam Hocking. We presented a paper (full version here) that looked at how we have collectively been working together to integrate social media into museum learning, specifically focusing on building teacher capacity (slides can be viewed here). Jan and Cam also shared how @mvteachers was developed and how it has taken on a life of its own while being used for #Twittertours. We share how we have moved from personal use to professional use, highlighted by the principles of:

• A way of being that lets go of authority with a shift towards sharing authority;
• Risk taking;
• Working in partnership across sectors (museum and education) to create a community that has permission to play and learn from others;
• Connections and networks both internally and externally;
• Mediation, scaffolding and support that others can build from;
• Acknowledgment that a healthy community will self-monitor, self-correct and model a professional approach to networking, sharing, and curation of content;
• A collective voice while also taking one’s place as the subject matter experts;
• Mindfulness that some areas of discussion and curation will still need a level of discipline and organizational input, yet many more will require participation and joint problem-solving;
• Extension of museum audiences across times and boundaries.

How have you been exploring social media to connect with learning?