Combining museums and teenagers can be a daunting combination. If you saw the movie Museum Hours, you can appreciate the perceptive presentation of teenagers' texting behaviors. Additionally, among all the glorious art in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the teens focused mainly on art work with horror movie themes, such as the collection of painted beheadings.
How can we extend this interest to other works of art? This is a key question/challenge for museum educators.
Dana Allen-Greil of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. offers a creative solution. An educational technologist for museum learning, she created a program to incorporate teen
behaviors, such as tweeting and snapping photos, into meaningful learning experiences.
As Allen-Greil points out, "Each work of art is paired with a social media prompt such as: take and share a photo (via Instagram), craft a text response (via Twitter), or ponder a question
with a friend. By explicitly inviting and helping to shape teens' social media interactions with the Gallery, we hope to turn what might otherwise be a frivolous encounter into a learning
experience."
To learn more about how she engaged her audience through social media, view the presentation below.
